good choice.

don't fret.

just keep strumming.

and going fast.

blazingly fast.

For years I've sat in the computer lab at school reading the engadget live posts. Too bad this year: I've got an exam starting at the EXACT Same Time as the speech. The exam also goes for longer. ARRRG. I usually love these notifications.... :(

I guess you guys are just sore that you have to miss out.

I was reading this at 8:50, and there were allready comments in. And posted. This guy can't count ones that allready are there.


SEVENTH!

where do his feet go?

I don't go to MIT, but I think that I have some logic-based answers:

"but why have multiple autonomous robots?"

When you would increase the size of the greenhouse from 4 plants to 4000, it's now just a function of adding more bots.

"Wouldn't it be better to have one giant super robot that encompasses the size of the entire greenhouse and reacts to all the plant's needs?"

If you have one giant super robot, you'll need a tech guy to maintain it the tech side of it, as well as a guy to do physical labour to fix it. This way, you need to train only one guy how to fix machines. There is also the idea of mass production. If you can mass produce the bots, it's much cheaper to mass produce them than to make custom bots.

"Like I'm imagining underground piping for watering, some kind of long rotary drill system for ground irrigation and fertilizer distribution, along with other permanently stationed workers."

Well, that would be an amazing idea, but if you have the bots giving them nutrient enriched water (I hope that that's what they're doing that now), the bots individually measure each plant, and water each plant exactly the amount of water/nutrients that it needs. The amount of water/nutrients that each plant needs differs according to probably 100s of variables, so to attain perfect efficiency making food, each plant needs to be individually cared for, and nurtured.

Programming one "thread" of a robot, and just duplicating the robot multiple times is also much easier than writing a 100 thread+ program that pays attention to every plant by itself. It would also be an extremely clumsy and costly machine (to build and maintain...)

It would be much better if they did this in livestock. Cattle in "slop pits" today are placed in troughs that are barely large enough for their bodies, constantly being fattened up for slaughter. These cattle are constantly being given medication that is normally used as perscriped medication as preventitive, causing many strains of viruses to evolve that would normally have perished. These strains of otherwise invisble viruses, trickle down to the end consumer who may become infected, and possibly die because of this.

But that's just my guess of an answer... I'm a 17 y.o. kid, and these guys are at MIT.

first!

I wonder how long it can run with 400 pounds of solar panels...

Yeah... it'd definitely go faster with him on it *rolls eyes...*

It'd probably break.

SSD? It looks like an SD [until you see the stuff beside it]

I thought that it was the XCSD... I guess that XDSD [or whatever it's called] is only at 32gb, not 512...

Why don't people just work on XDSD cards with raid, housed in a HD enclosure???

[it would make EVERYTHING develop faster...]

A definite fake, look at the miniDV port at the back... isn't apple touting it's new proprietary display port that comes with the new macbook/macbook pro/iMac?

If they're trying to make a standard (they are), this would seem inconsistent with the other stuff that they've been doing.

Verdict: It's someone's (very nicely done) mod, possibly even just a case...