This robot, designed by University of Illinois engineering student Lei Tian, doesn’t seem to have a name. So I’m going to give it one: weedbot. Weedbot is the ultimate in solar powered weed destruction machines. GPS guided and totally autonomous, weedbot uses stereo cameras to locate and identify weeds for extermination based on image characteristics stored in an 80gb onboard database. If a weed is found, weedbot not only chops it down, he also applies herbicide to the spot ensuring that the weed will not rise again. You know, like cutting the head off a zombie. Or something. Weedbot is 2 feet tall, 5 feet long, and can travel about 3 miles an hour on wheels or little tank treads. Since he applies herbicide so precisely, weedbot is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than typical agricultural weed management techniques that involve spraying an entire field.

Weedbot is currently confined to experimental fields at the University of Illinois, but I’m hoping he breaks out and finds his way over to my back yard.

[ U. Illinois ] VIA [ Robot Living ]

As soon as the world runs out of oil, suburbia is going to be obsolete and people are going to flock to compact developments along major transit lines. When that time comes, Australia’s Andrew Maynard Architects thinks that the best thing to do is build a fleet of giant robots to transform all those superfluous McMansions and lazy fat people into virgin wilderness and skinny bike riders. Here’s how it’s gonna work:

-The CV08 units will be deployed in suburban environments. Using a heat sensor, the CV08s zero in on groups of “chubbies,” the overweight residents of suburbia. The back legs have pictures of donuts on them to attract the chubbies. When they get close enough, the legs suck all the chubbies up into a liposuction chamber, where they’ll be stripped of their excess fat and injected with nanobots to increase their fitness and strength. The fat is used to fuel the CV08, and the new “thinny” is fitted with a parachute and shot out the back of the CV08.

-Meanwhile, cars and houses and stuff are sucked up by the front legs, leaving only the foundation (for future archaeologists to puzzle over). All of the man-made objects are separated, crushed, and sent to recycling chambers. The recycled materials are compacted into rocket shapes, loaded into launch tubes on the head of the CV08, and fired off to a recycling plant a few kilometers away. A small portion of the recycled materials are formed into bikes, which are equipped with parachutes and ejected for the use of the thinnies.

-Finally, the middle legs of the CV08 contain storage tanks full of native flora and fauna (koalas, wallabies, etc.) which have been frozen in carbonite. The plants and animals are thawed out and carefully placed into their new post-suburban habitat. Many of the plants will have been genetically modified to smell like donuts, attracting any stray chubbies to be captured by one of the hind legs.

This is such an obviously brilliant idea that I, for one, cannot wait until our oil reserves are gone and I have the pleasure of getting my fat sucked out by one of these machines. Be sure to check out the PDF describing the process with an awesome diagram, here.

[ CV08 ] VIA [ Robots.net ]

By Evan Ackerman

I think most people have some general idea of how polluted the Hudson River is… After all, 200 miles worth of the 315 mile long Hudson (from Hudson Falls to New York City) have been designated a Superfund site by the EPA due to PCB contamination. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes the Hudson an ideal testbed for an interconnected network of sensors to monitor the biology and chemistry of the river. The centerpiece of the system (in my opinion, anyway) are the autonomous, solar-powered AUVs that float along the river. They wirelessly relay measurements of temperature, pressure, salinity, dissolved oxygen content and pH back to a central base station, where the data are combined with readings from hundreds of other mobile and stationary sensors to help monitor the flow of pollution. The bots are being built by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and the whole project is being coordinated by the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. Their long term plan is to bring this concept to rivers in developing countries around the world.

VIA [ TreeHugger ]

Here is a story that is sure to make robots everywhere itch.

This bot has the ability to leap like a flea in it’s quest to cover vast areas of ground as it sniffs for pollution. Developed to detect mercury poisoning in the ground, it leaps about the way a flea would.(But looks much cooler. And doesn’t bite.)

The little palm sized creature measures about 10cm long and weighs in at 80g. Researchers at the University of Lucca debuted it in Switzerland during a symposium.

It’s creators believe that tiny robots like this are far more efficient than the larger variety at searching huge areas of land in a shorter time. This is just the latest in a long line of robots that mimic real life, animal behavior. Efficiency is just one way in which it is paying off.

Many of the nature documentaries that we watch are filmed with the help of small robots like this, enabling them to get up close and personal.

Try to watch your step while out and about. These bots are expensive!

[Axcess News]