HOW-TO: Transform your mini PC into a police robot
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Mar 5th 2005 6:35PM
posted Mar 5th 2005 6:35PM
Don't get too excited, as this one isn't a play-by-play instructional. Rather it's a tip o' the hat to our ever-more fantastically robotic pals in the land of the rising sun. A bunch of young Japanese geeks (a herd? a swarm? a gaggle? Do we have an official collective noun for this?) have put together this most excellent "police robot" out of a Kuro box, 32 feet from the crab-bot, a webcam, two torch lights and some rechargeable batteries. The result is the above rather formidable autonomous, programmable bot. Good job, kids — we sure as hell wouldn't want to meet this thing in a dark alley.
Where are the tentacles. I could've sworn I saw that thing in Legend of the Overfiend.
Of course any criminal suspects being chased by this thing only have to hold it off until its OS chokes and gets a blue-screen.
Now give me a killer copbot based on a Mac mini and watch 'em sweat.
No no, they didn't get the legs from a "Crab Bot", they got them from a "Centipede Bot", also part of the "Mechamo" series of bots.
You can see the legs definetly come from a "Centipede Bot" here:
http://www.e-clec-tech.com/mechamo.html
"A bunch of young Japanese geeks (a herd? a swarm? a gaggle? Do we have an official collective noun for this?)"
A Zergrush? :D
"A bunch of young Japanese geeks (a herd? a swarm? a gaggle? Do we have an official collective noun for this?)"
I respectfully submit that a collection of geeks be called a "Hackle of Geeks".
Actually a "Collection of Geeks" works well too :-D
-- Robert
I think we should use the terms "bit, byte, megabyte" etc. as the collective noun for computer geeks. One of them would be a
bit of a geek, 2 - 8 would be a byte of geeks, 8- 1024 of them would be a kilobyte and so on....
A cruster of geeks - oh . . . calm down.
I always thought it was a grip of geeks...
Any group of 4 or more geeks is a "party", as in "My party was killed by a +3 Orc of maiming."
or
"My party had no attendees"
"Of course any criminal suspects being chased by this thing only have to hold it off until its OS chokes and gets a blue-screen."
Err ... KuroBox is a PPC based barebones Linux platform ... since when did a headless Linux box blue-screen?
I like how the Japanese continously find new (sometimes disturbing) uses for average objects.
Would have never guessed they were japanese...