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Seems to me that we've been reading about robots for years and years now and the news reports always say what robots will be able to do in The Future.
Of course, there are already some robots used in manufacturing and bomb disposal and there's loads of automatic devices, like the driverless DLR trains or autopilots on planes.
But this thread is for ideas for robots that could be made with bits bought right now from Maplins and actually be put to good and interesting use immediately.
Apparently, in America there are people who travel around with their own swarms of bees and get paid by farmers to get the bees to pollinate their crops. So, losing the bees is the big worry, because bees do this very important job all round the world and we'd all be stuffed without them.
But just think, all you need is a small, solar-powered flying robot thing which can recognise colours and flower shapes and has a little trailing brush thing which can pick up the male pollen and dump it on the female flower. Job done. How difficult can it be(e) to knock up a few million of those?
You could set them to only travel in a specific circle at a specific distance and return home each evening. More evilly-inclined scientists could make the beebot stings deadly poisonous instead of just a bit painful, thus discouraging theft or vandalism.
But what other robots should be helping us humans in interesting ways at this time instead of just languishing blandly in factories?Posts: 8467
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How can it take mankind so long to continue to fuck hair up? Hairdressers are like a game of Russian Roulette or fucking Forrest Gump and his chocolates and no matter how much you want your hair cut exactly like the person in the magazine, you still feel like your mum did it. For me, being able to show a robot a picture of how you want your hair to look would be the ultimate dream. I don't even care if the robot had a built in FolliclePhysix™ device that can decide whether the haircut is even feasible. I wouldn't care if I took in a picture that I drew with a biro on a napkin and the robot says *ZHAH HAH HAHZ*! in my face and gives me the next approximation. I just know a robot could at least be told how you want your haircut instead of walking out of there with some kind of rockabilly quif. In addition, maybe if robots could do haircuts, all those shitty barbers with the black and white pictures of fancy haircuts would go out of business. Robots programmed with 10,000 more styles than the standard human 'Lionel Blair cut' I know that there exists a world of fancy salons but this joy has always been denied to me the minute I step through the door. Maybe I have some kind of onion head or whatnot.
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You know how alternative sources of energy are all about harnessing the kinetic power of stuff? Wind moves turbine, generates electricity. Water falls downstream, moves turbine, generates electricity. And so on. Why can't we have technology that harnesses our own movements? I'm moving all the time, my rams, legs, fingers, head, up and down, sit down, stand up, go to the loo, pick my nose (having washed me hands from going to the loo), make a cup of tea (having washed my hands from picking my nose), and so on. I must generate a good somethingwatt of electricity every day. Enough to power a small thing that requires electricity, at least. Maybe, er, I dunno, an electric toothbrush?
Anyway this harnessing power thing then extends to everything else. I jump in my car, I clip the dynamo thingie onto one of the wheels, and suddenly I'm really generating power. And imagine the power of masturbation! Or even real shagging! (lol at me not even thinking about that one first)
Wouldn't it be great to watch a lightbulb glow brighter and brighter the harder and faster you worked.
I bet somebody's already done that as a Physics experiment at school, though.
Also, none of that had anything to do with robots, did it. So all that energy I just wasted, typing, would at least have gone to some good use.
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No, wait you're on to something Mart. Much like the Matrix using humans as batteries we could take the worlds mentally handicapped and attach Energy-Capture-Suits onto them and let them crawl, kick and belm their days away whilst generating energy. They would be given a stronger sense of purpose and worth in society that they deserve. If the PC Brigade deem it a bit immoral we could round up epileptics into the suits and put on a disco instead.
quote:Originally posted by mart: You know how alternative sources of energy are all about harnessing the kinetic power of stuff? Wind moves turbine, generates electricity. Water falls downstream, moves turbine, generates electricity. And so on. Why can't we have technology that harnesses our own movements?
This kind of thing does happen, though it's usually in the form of pedal power rather than micro-movements which would only power tiny things like LEDs or digital watches anyway, and those things use such tiny amounts of power that it hardly seems worth worrying about.
I've been trying to get my head around hydrogen power recently, but I'm really useless at science and that so I tend to drift off halfway through articles. But it looks to me as if you could create human powered electrolysis to split water into hydrogen using one of those pedal generators. But then you need to store the hydrogen safely etc, which I haven't got round to yet.
And I don't know how much hydrogen you'd get from pedalling for, say, 30 minutes. Would that give you enough (if you could store it) for 30 minutes on a hydrogen powered bicycle in return for your effort, for example?
(Apologies to any actual scientists that might be reading.)
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
Ha, yeah. I've read that, and it was actually quite chilling. But bee-bots will be friendly, slightly gay little fellows who will only be interested in pretty flowers, rather than in gathering together into an intelligent killing machine.
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