If you grew up / live in a house that has a crawl-space underneath and were (or perhaps still are) the one who gets pegged for crawling under the house to run television or Ethernet cables, then this robot will come as a blessing. Our robot-breeding friends over in Japan -- at the Chiba Institute of Technology and the University of Tsukuba -- have announced the development of a crawling robot that can slide across dirt floors and lift itself over plumbing and other pipes. It's designed to fit spaces 500 millimeters (19.68 inches) wide and 300 millimeters (11.8 inches) tall, and a remote allows you to steer it around and shoot still images of your crumbling foundation (we also assume it can transmit them live to a display somewhere). Currently, the unnamed bot is only being tested on the CIT campus, but prototypes are expected to be unleashed by March 2007, with full commercial production coming by April 2008. While this bot doesn't yet (from what we gather) know how to lay cable, we really hope someone teaches them how, given that it's no fun to spend the better part of an hour crawling around under a house to
lay an Ethernet cable, only to find that it's a foot short -- not that we're still bitter about that one hellacious day in 1998 or anything.
posted Oct 28th 2006 9:28AM
i for one welcome our crawing, foundation inspecting robot overlords.
crawling i mean
i hope cable is the only thing it lays... ill be mighty pissed if these guys start layin Dynamite under my house. although...
I for one welcome our subservient, crawling underlords.
Besides, if they get ideas above their station, we can turn on under floor heating and cook 'em. :)
If they start laying cable, a second cooperative bot would be useful. There's gonna be places where they can' get to but could pass cable through.
We use those Axis cameras where I work. They're great little cams, with a built-in linux video server streaming MPEG4. At over 1500$, though, they're a bit on the expensive side: http://www.axis.com/products/cam_213/index.htm.
In these worrisome days, these things would make wonderful surveylence(sp) units for possible terrorist targets.
See if they had this in Aliens they would have never gotten in.
I solved a similar problem using an R/C tank, wireless camera, and a wife doped to the gills on pain killers:
http://hallert.net/misc/tankcam/tankcam.html
Probably a little cheaper, but rhen again, not quite as capable by an order of magnitude.
thank you
Dude.
measure twice...