Pollen-sniffing robots put on duty in Japan
By Donald Melanson 
posted January 29th 2008 6:11PM
posted January 29th 2008 6:11PM
In yet another example of robots getting the short end of stick, a Japanese weather forecasting company is set to deploy a swarm of some 200 pollen-sniffing robots throughout the country, which will warn us humans of any impeding pollen-related dangers (and no doubt scare a few unsuspecting animals in the process). As you can see, the robots are of the spherical variety, and measure a scant one foot across and weigh in at about 2.2 pounds. Sticking true to creepy robot conventions, they also boast glowing eyes, which light up in one of five different colors to indicate the level of pollen in the air. Somewhat curiously, that information takes a rather roundabout way back to the company's headquarters, with 200 allergy suffers volunteering to keep watch on the robots and rely their status back to the company.
Something that's not mentioned in the article summary but is clearly on the Japanese company webpage is: These are going to be equipped with poison dart gatling guns on the undersides, to prevent vandalism. The gatling cameras will analyze the faces of passerbys to figure out intention to vandalize and then fire on the bad people.
I dunno, but to me that sounds like a bad idea.
it sounds like a triumph
shall a note be made?
Why was it necessary to give these things two eyes ?
Because two is twice as many as one...
SNIFF THIS!!!
I'm allergic.
Couldn't the 200 low-tech pollen robots that are robot-sitting the 200 high-tech pollen robots just....Oh, never mind. They're just too inscrutable for me.
The science will get done!
For the people who are still alive, no doubt.
But beware! Any cake promised is a lie.
//Wonders if the Portal jokes will EVER get old, goes to play for 5 minutes, cracks up and determines it can never get old hahaha.
These things had better come with a free weighted companion cube and some cake (chocolate cake, to be precise)
Something about having allergy sufferers going to check on allergy monitors in allergy prone areas strikes me as being somewhat odd.
This was a triumph...
to: whowhatme
no. your japanese is fucked, mate. what youve written isnt correct or natural. i appreciate the fact youre learning another language, but dont get all grammar-boy on a fellow learner, tossing out terms like 'conditional' to sound authoritative when it is obvious that you dont know your 穴 from your 肘.
aside from that, like they need robots to tell you that there is pollen in japan. year-round it is sniff sniff sniff. i hate sugi. what makes it worse is that they plant it for the timber industry's sake and everyone runs around with those michael jackson sneeze gauze pads. then they try and talk and all i hear is mmph mmmph mmmphhhh...eeeeh.
Cybernetics model T-10.
Is it me or do these things seem a bit unacurate... I count 11 that show red and 6 that show green... and they are all in the same room.
This Engadget post should have been titled, "BREAKING NEWS: GLaDOS is Still Alive, Photo Proof!"
Use of the word "condition" isn't so much authoritative as it is accurate. That guy had it pretty much on the mark. But the person who seemed to thing -tara=-te kara may need a little more study. But I wouldn't expect anyone from a prison colony to understand any of this anyways. Incidentally, I only stumbled on this at all looking up semete usage, lol. Why would you pick this forum of all places to argue about Japanese...?