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Remote Control Robotic Snakes 128

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-robotics dept.
0xdeaddeaf writes "Check out this site on remote controlled robtoic snakes from Dr. Gavin Miller. He's been working on a realistic moving robotic snake for a number of years and has posted several videos of his prototypes that span from S1 in 1987 to S5 in 1999. The snakes are self contained with onboard computer, battries, receiver, and locomotion system. The video of S3 shows they can move like sidewinders and S5 does indeed look extremely realistic. Put a skin on these things and there is no doubt you fool a lot of people if the motors are quiet. The New Scientist has an additional article that explains how their movement is performed. "
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Remote Control Robotic Snakes More

Remote Control Robotic Snakes

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  • Do I even *need* to make this reference?

    My .02
    Quux26
  • Those wern't mechnical. I thought they were GE'ed.

    No, wait...maybe they were mechanical...they had SN#s on em right?

    Could someone that doesn't have a cold clear this up for me?
  • A real snake applies force on the bumps and imperfections of the surface it's moving on. Except for sidewinders and large constrictors, most snakes can't progress at all on perfectly flat surfaces. They have to brace themselves in a couple different places then strategically apply shearing forces on these braces to move forward. Fortunatly for these snakes flat surfaces are extremely rare in nature (ice is the only one that comes to mind, and if a snake's on that it's got bigger problems).

    The only snakes that can move by gripping with their scales are the large constrictors. This is because those snakes are so big that for them there are more relatively flat surfaces than for smaller snakes.
  • flying cars? check this [aol.com] out!

    -Wolfgang Spangler
  • Are they REALLY advances in robotics? Or is it just that things that have been around for a long time are finally economical/desirable to sell to the public?

    "Electronic dog" is only a term, not a reflection of reality. Would you mistake AIBO for a real dog? Or a robotic snake for a real snake? (That one's more likely, since a snake mostly moves and slithers, but I bet it still couldn't survive like a real snake does.) Is it REALLY that sophisticated?

    Heck, maybe the answer to my question is "yes", but the importent point here is that there is a long, long way between robotic limbs directly interfacing with humans and a snake that moves (not breaths, not exists self-sufficiently, not thinks, just moves) in the same fashion as a real snake.

    So, to answer your questions, we are still a long way from prothetic limbs.

    (Unless you don't mind controlling a limb with three motors (manipulating each motor directly) and having no direct feedback, not to mention having the strength of a three-year old child and no reliability. What do you even mean by "prosthetic"? Indistinguishable replacement? Or does Captain Hook have a prosthetic? :-) )
  • Yeah...amazing tech. What the heck else would we do with "robtoic snakes"? (sic) I mean this took a lot of work, but do we really need robot forms of life? I think we should just be satisfied with natural animals. The quicker we build robot forms of it all, the sooner we all become satiated by the novelty of it, and take for granted all the complexity of actual snakes. I mean...Noah didn't nanoassemble 2 of each animal on the ark.
  • Snake movement is actually performed by a wide variety of motions, depending on terrain and speed requirements. The classical "winding" movement is accomplished with the shearing forces of angled coils, as you say. They also have the option of very slow movement on smooth, low-friction terrain by rippling the scales on the undersides of their bodies. Typically, though, snakes will use natural objects or deformations on tough terrain. The ability of the snake to focus tremendous strength and precision on a single loop of its body is amazing. Moreover, with a single strong hold the arboreal snake can typically extend more than 75% of its total length into mid-air in search of a second hold. The really critical thing, I think, is that its "limbs" aren't jointed; they're continuous articulated limbs that can put controlled pressure on every point of contact, and the snake makes full use of that fact. My 6-foot reticulated python can put 5 feet of its body into the air searching for an escape route, and with a minor purchase on the lid of her cage, can then proceed to lift her whole body up and out. I've frequently seen snakes use a form of movement that involves pinching a large coil between two obstacles and then flexing the muscles to form a chimney stop. Then it hoists the rest of its body over the stop and repeats the movement with another coil. Snake movement is absolutely remarkable. MJP

  • Robot wars (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Damn! I've been working on a snake robot for ages, to enter some time into the "Robot Wars" televised robotic battle tournament we have here in the UK.

    This guy's way further along than me, software and hardware wise. Although, the hardware is not the killer. It's the control software/firmware (I've been using PICs - I think I need to move onto something more powerful) that's the hard part. My approach has been to put a PIC in every second segment, and try to code in emergent whole-robot behaviour... Not a hope, I guess. NB. the robots in "Robot Wars" are still remote controlled, but controlling a snake body is nigh-on impossible without some autonomy in the robot, at least I think so. I'm also looking into a caltrop-robot made up of 4 short snakes that can lock rigid, and a dodecahedral design (both only on paper). I haven't put together a website yet, but I jsut thought that comment might make an interesting starting point for "alternative" i.e. not wheeled robot discussions.

  • Yeah, Blade Runner was the first thing i thought of when i saw this.

    I'm pretty sure that the snake (and the owl) in Blade Runner were genetically engineered "replicants" since it would make more sense dramatically; the serial number on the snake scale was probably more fiction than science. Then again, there were the "toys" in the apartment which presumably were mechanically engineered, not biologically.

    Oh, the horror if those little men were thinking biological creatures rather than mindless automitons ("Now, just sit very still when you're not needed to caper and entertain"). Shiver...

  • Lisa: Are those real cobras
    Bart: Not all of them. Some of them are just robots filled with venom.

    Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.

  • That's even better than my friend's wedding where I was best man. I held the bride's ring in my mouth until the minister asked for it. Wasn't as fun as I thought it would be though, I almost swallowed it several times while trying not to laugh at how clever I was.
  • ...get a login and start accumulating some moderator karma. Then you can be a moderator retard, instead of an AC retard.
  • who would win? AIBO or the snake? Guess now Sony will now have to build a robotic mongoose to complete the food chain.
  • I think people are associating snakes with being sneaky and therefore good for spying. This is completely wrong of course. Snakes are more evil than sneaky. You don't want everyone screaming and running away from your camera. When I was a kid here in Alabama, our favorite summer evening pastime (besides ****ing our sisters and cousins) was to drag an old bicycle inner tube across the road with fishing wire to make cars think it was a snake. Imagine the fun we could have had with this!

  • Many reasons why it's cool: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You didn't read the article, did you? Snake motion is vastly easier (and cheaper) to implement than walking. What does this have to do with anything? Answer: better robot explorers for other planets. Remeber how the Sojourner rover got stuck a few times? This type of robot would be very useful in space/inhospitable terrains.

    One of these would be especially nice to send into a damaged nuclear reactor to figure out what the hell went wrong. There are many more things I can think of, but I have to get back to work.
  • I would agree with you. There's a lot of discussion on here about the wheels, but that's not the point. The point is the software that is controlling the body is doing an excellent job. Regardless of whether it's RC or AI is not the point. The first step to making a robotic snake is a realistic chasis with proper locomotion, and S5 has that. Look at S2, it is always in an S shape with two curves. Snakes use more than 2 curves, usually 4 (double S) and that's what S5 has!
  • I'll bet that these will be used for survillence. Can you just see it?

    guard #1: Did you hear that?
    guard #2: Something over there I think.
    guard #1: Ah, I see it. Just a garter snake.

  • leave it out in the sun ....
  • It seems as though robotics are advancing REALLY fast right now. Electronic dogs, snakes, more on the way. With all of these advances, how far are we from having cybernetic limbs? Put together these robotics with the story of the brain interfacing computer, I don't see it far off before we see brain controlled robotic prosthetics (sp?). Anyone out there in slashdot know if these are being developed, and if so, how far off are they?
  • There's a mirror of two pictures and one of the MPEGs here:

    http://www.angelfire.com/sd/sdmirror/ [angelfire.com]



    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
  • Two possibilities for you:
    • Not Quite C [enteract.com], a subset of C for the Mindstorm system
    • l egOS [hu-berlin.de], an RTOS to replace the normal OS in the Mindstorm control brick. This uses friendly familiar Linux-ish development tools like the egcs compiler.
  • Don't get me wrong, I think this is really cool but I don't quite see how this would work on rough terrain because it uses the shearing forces on the wheels to push it forward(as I understand it). Snakes also move by sending ripples along their underside where special scales that are angled in a way such that they grip to the surface they are on thus moving them forward. If the wheels are free to move in either direction I can't see how the component of the shearing force that drives the snake forward would be larger that the force of gravity on the snake on a slope. Wouldn't there have to be some kind of friction present to hold the snake in place? I'm not expert, but scales for grip and ripples seem a better way to go to make it better for rough uneven terrain.

    Still cool though, I want one!
  • I think that the idea of building robots is a fasinating idea. I keep seeing people say that it would be cool to freak other people out with the robotic snake..but think...If I owned one of these, it would be cool to have and NO COST OF FOOD!! I love that idea! No clean up, no food, no upkeep, but if it acted like a real snake, then hey, I have an animal that requires nothing..just the enjoyment of having one! Me
  • I saw this about a decade ago in a Pop Sci (same company too) Moller International [moller.com]

    --Clay

  • I don't think this would be too useful. given the military histories, if the army found out about this form of surveillance, they'd have to react.

    how would they react? Why, by killing all of the REAL snakes off in the affected area. That way, all snakes must be spies, and can thus be detected. Foolproof. The environment, you say? Bah, we're fighting a war here, can't you see that?
  • My first question is... Why are wheels nessesary, really? Is it because the surface provides too much/not enough friction with the surface? The only other option is that the motion looks good, but it fails to emulate it to the degree nessesary for true-to-life locomotion.

    Perhaps this could be addressed.

    And how hard would it be to provide a micro GPS and transmitter? We do this with birds (the transmitter anyways), so it obviously isn't heavy or cumbersome. Snakes aren't exactly light either, so if you could get the locomotion correct then simply inserting substantial batteries in the "cells" (mold them around the drivetrain) could create an interesting self-supporting system, at least for a while.

    Imagine solar cells. Have it bask when the energy is low. Just think about what a skin made of solar cells would look like... [grin]

    God, this has made my whole day...

    My .02
    Quux26
  • Ever hear of swim bladders? Alot of aquatic things are equipped with them. Give the snake some balloons where real lungs would be and he'll float.
  • Although this is a pretty cool engineering feat and will probably eventually become useful, I don't consider it to be very meaningful in the Big Scheme of things. IMNSHO, biomimetics is the result of people getting what is essentially the wrong message from nature.

    What I mean is: people look at, e.g., a snake moving around gracefully, and they say "Let's replicate that kind of movement! It'll make for very useful robots!" So they go and study snake physiology for years on end, eventually mapping down the entire motion mechanism. Then comes the hard part: they try to build an artificial motion mechanism that works on the same principles. This proves incredibly frustrating, and it takes a Long Long Time and plenty of irritating compromises before someone comes out with a workable design - which will likely resemble the original in very few aspects. In effect, they're just trying to reverse-engineer a finished product [1], knowing only assembler code and nothing of high-level programming.

    Now, I think a much better way to do things is to notice, instead, how incredible it is that such a powerful and versatile, while buggy, mechanism has arisen from just a few organic molecules without external intervention [2], and to concentrate on learning how the evolutionary process works - and to try and mimick /that/. This may not (in fact, it probably will not) produce motion mechanisms that are identical to snakes', but it will at the very least produce systems that are equivalently adapt at moving in the same kind of environment. Not only that, it'll also provide us with an endless source of new ideas for systems and of insight as to how to design better ones. In effect, instead of copying nature's mechanisms, we are learning to program for ourselves.

    Of course, I'm aware that many steps have already been taken in this direction (the GA-designed Lego Bridge comes to mind), but GA-based tech is nowhere near as popular a research field as traditional biomimetics.


    [1] Yes, I know, nothing in nature is a "finished product". I just used the term for the purpose of analogy.

    [2] ... which is what is generally thought to be most likely to have happened. Before you try to assert that there was any kind of external (external to the environment - i.e., supernatural) intervention, let me tell you that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and until I see some of it, I'm sticking with the strictly-natural theory.
  • slap some real looking slimy skin onto it,

    Actually snakes do not have slimy skin. They have scales which are quite dry I assure you.

  • All the MPEGs, nice and fast. Slick stuff :)

    http://www.aontic.com/snake/ [aontic.com]

    Moderate up so people can take a quick look at this stuff...

  • e'cuse me lady would you like to see my snake?
  • I disagree. There's a lot to be learned from the biological nature of things. The most successful models and robots that have been developed so far mimic things found in the biological world. For example, distributed learning and mechanics is what ants [mit.edu] and bees [mit.edu] have learned to do. If a single ant or bee finds a source of food or pollen, chances are that in under half an hour, there will be a lot of its friends there. Big clunky walking machines are not the way to go: lightweight machines [mit.edu] which have a single joint like the human knee are what works. Or, make a robotic model like a cockroac h [mit.edu] and you'll find that you can move and get over obstacles better than anywhere else. And if you want to move in water, you should learn to swim like a tuna [web].

    This is all practical research done at MIT right now with proven results. It's far more promising than trying to engineer something from scratch. Nature has millions of years worth of R&D to develop its solutions. Why not tap it?

  • I disagree.

    I knew somebody would... :)

    There's a lot to be learned from the biological nature of things.

    Of course there is. I never disputed that.

    The most successful models and robots that have been developed so far mimic things found in the biological world. For example, distributed learning and mechanics is what ants and bees have learned to do. If a single ant or bee finds a source of food or pollen, chances are that in under half an hour, there will be a lot of its friends there. Big clunky walking machines are not the way to go: lightweight machines which have a single joint like the human knee are what works.

    I'm aware of all this research. But it all depends on your definition of "successful". So far you've missed my point.

    Or, make a robotic model like a cockroac h and you'll find that you can move and get over obstacles better than anywhere else. And if you want to move in water, you should learn to swim like a tuna.

    "Better than anywhere else" is subjective. It's good, yeah, but who says that there isn't a much better way to do it that no engineer has yet figured out, but that, say, a distributed computing effort applying an iterative recombination/mutation/selection algorithm over a design for a locomotion system might find really quickly?

    This is all practical research done at MIT right now with proven results.

    Yes, I'm aware of that.

    It's far more promising than trying to engineer something from scratch.

    Again, that's questionable.

    Nature has millions of years worth of R&D to develop its solutions. Why not tap it?

    I didn't say we shouldn't tap it. What I said is that, when designing technology in the future, we should not confine ourselves to the examples provided to us by nature - especially not if we ever intend to move out en masse towards new environments in which natural biological evolution hasn't produced useful design paradigms. Nature may have had millions of years, but nature's iterative cycles are slow, while ours needn't be. With increasing computing power, it's not inconceivable that in a short time we may be able to perfect GA-based systems that spew out completely innovative designs ready for incorporation into new technology - and why not, even entirely artificial machinery nanobuilt directly from computer-generated specs.

    So it's not a question of "what research path can produce results?", or of "what has produced the most useable results so far?". It's a question of "what is the most promising path in the long term?" For now, we're still playing catch-up, but eventually, we'll outrun the natural evolutive processes, and then there'll be nothing left to copy.
  • Very, very cool. I was also intrigued when I noticed a link to a poem he had written about a python. Sure enough, there was a poem dedicated to "the python grows, and thinks of you".

    Wow, can anyone say "obsessed"? :)

    I was also going to make some snide comment about the poem itself, but realised that my best effort was something like this:

    There one was a remote controlled snake,
    Who's appearance was so hard to take.
    The people, they'd scream
    "A Snake! How obsecene"
    Don't worry, it's only a fake.
  • If your point is that someday we'll be able to do better than nature, that's great! But I think for now, we have to adapt to what nature has already created and try to learn what we can from it. Then, at some point, we'll be able to go beyond it and control it. Eugenics is a great example of how nature has developed a wonderful means for reproduction, survival, and evolution. If we can control it, that's great. And if we can develop an even better model, that'd be truly amazing. Yes, we will definitely run out of things to copy. I think the difference between our points of view is that I believe that we have to use nature to get by it while your opinion is that we can blow right by it to something better. Do I sound about right?
  • I think the difference between our points of view is that I believe that we have to use nature to get by it while your opinion is that we can blow right by it to something better. Do I sound about right?

    The real difference is that I'm doing research in distributed computing, so to me anything is an excuse to push a distributed computing effort... :)

    Your points are valid, of course, and so is biomimetics-oriented research. My point is simply that, knowing that technological advances usually come much faster than you expect, it's imprudent not to start preparing already, at least in terms of infrastructure, to support future research on what seems to be a very promising field once we have the technology necessary to do it well (i.e., computing systems that are able to simulate real-world conditions with enough detail that it's possible to perform automated selection between different "individuals" based on their performance in the simulation).
  • it's bleeding deMISED. it's passed ON. it has ceased to BE. it's exPIRED and gone to meet it's maKAH. it's a STIFF. berift of life it rests in peace -- if you hadn't nailed it to the perch it'd be pushing up the DASIES!
  • I'm not just being hateful here. I really mean it, I can't take care of them. It's not that I don't like them or anything, it's that taking on a live animal is a responsibility I'm not up to. I never have enough time to play with it. And not enough regularity in my life to take proper care of it.

    I can't even feed myself properly most of the time (Bothering to order a salad along with my pizza is a highlight in my weekly nourishment). Having a live animal would mean I couldn't just take off and drive south for a couple of weeks anymore. A live pet is a commitment for something like 15 years (okay, maybe half, as I'd definitely go to the asylum to get an older abandoned one rather than a puppy/kitten/whatever). I guess I'm just immature. It's fine when you have parents to do the work, and you just get the fun. There were always pets around when I was younger.

    I tried Sea Monkeys [uniserve.com], the ultimate instant carefree pet, and highly disposable too, but they're just too damn small. I can't relate much with little white dots.

    Now I've seen this and it definitely looks promising. But I don't want to control it. What I'm really looking for is some random movement in the corner of my eye, that comes with an OFF button. I'd get an Aibo if they weren't so hard to come by. So I'm definitely keeping an eye out for someone to turn this into a product.

    Flo out
  • Fun! I'd love to play with one of these. Put a real looking skin on it, and have fun at the office...

  • Cool! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02, 1999 @06:48AM (#1486416)
    I hope they have made a Python interface for it...
  • Amazing technology, but all I can think of is evil thoughts of hiding it around the house to scare the hell out of my wife and cats. Damn I'm sick :)
  • This thing would make a really nice infiltration and surveillance system in some environments... snakes, at least the fleshy kind, can go ANYWHERE, climb posts, get under houses or underneath doors, go damn near any place they care to wriggle too... they can hide very easily... and people just naturally don't want to TOUCH one even if they find it (which would keep it from being detected).


    Dammit, I was already afraid of snakes, now I have to be worried that they're listening to me, too.
  • Very cool. I am wondering how well it handles any sort of realistic terrain. Works well on a nice piece of flat pavement but does it still work on ground with a few more bumps. If it could this would be the ultimate in surveillance. The go anywhere, do anything spy.

  • This demonstrates the breaking down of barriers between what is real in terms of physical existence in its traditional forms and what is virtual. The whole robotic snake concept is a metaphor of the state of modern technology. Here we have technology taking the form of a serpent and demonstrating the principle that technology may "bite back." This may even have religious connections to the original sin. Nobody tell Jon Katz about this, please.

  • ...do they eat mice?

    {ducks}

  • duh (Score:3)

    by mwalker ( 66677 ) on Thursday December 02, 1999 @06:58AM (#1486423) Homepage
    whatever. everyone knows dr. doom invented the robotic remote-controlled snake. it sucks though because spiderman figured out how to modify his webslinger to stick to the veno-bot's poisonous scales well before veno-bot could send the city into chaos.

    please do your research people.

  • /.ed (Score:1)

    by Girf ( 101378 )
    D'oh I missed my first post!

    But me's thinks the site has been /.ed or maybe it is the bad connection speeds from this crumby school.
  • this is the best way I have yet seen to get rid of annoying costumers.... also I'd like to see the reaction this gets up here in Iceland (we don't have any snakes around here)

    ---

  • Copper snake? (Score:3)

    by pnevares ( 96029 ) on Thursday December 02, 1999 @06:52AM (#1486426) Homepage
    I have my robot snake running on a Coppermine and it won't wake up. Any ideas? =)


    Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
  • How come there is no picture of S4?
  • I can already think of a number of applications that these could be easily tailored to:

    • Surveillance,
    • Collapsed Building Rescue,
    • Minimally Invasive Surgery,
    • Toys (the 'r'Us kind),
    • Toys (the He Who Dies With The Most kind),

      and...

    • Toys (the Sex kind)
    Sorry, had to go there. It was obligatory.
  • Ok, here's another case of art imitating life. Remember Blade Runner and the artificial snakes that the strippers used? This is too cool; I want one from my wife. And best of all they don't bite!

  • Re:What happen to S4? (Score:3)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Thursday December 02, 1999 @07:06AM (#1486433)
    They had an infinite loop in the control code, so it swallowed its tail and disappeared.

    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • and assume that 40% of these same Slashdot readers have paying jobs, and 40% of these live with their parents and have no expenses, and assume 40% of these have not already blown their money on an AIBO or 21" Nokia iMac, then there may be enough buyers to prolong the company another few weeks beofre the enevitable bankruptcy because the things will cost too damn much.

    save you money for Unreal Tournament ;-)

    gg
  • Ricki Tcl/Tk Tavi
    -Spazimodo

    Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
  • Just the thing to clean my drains...

    :)

  • I'm guessing the movement would actually be easier than on land, but our current technology has a major limitation -- it weighs 7 kg. That's as much as a real big house cat, but it's volume looks to be way to little to support that.

    I can't wait -- new from JPL -- robotic martian sidewinders that can't get stuck up against a rock.
  • Did anybody else think this was cool:

    S3 was first shown publicly when it served as the ring-bearer at my wedding on June 19th 1999

    I bet that caused quite a stir! To hell with doves at the wedding, robot snakes are just so much more fun.

    --JT

  • Last year a friend of mine did his thesis in robotics. He built an "amoebot", which was basically a hexagon with three motors which, by changing the shape of the hexagon could redistribute its weight and roll forward.


    He only had time to build a couple proof-of-concept prototypes, so they're not nearly as slick looking as S5, but still pretty nifty when you think about how it works. His second model would scan for a light source and move towards it. He's got some pics and movies on his homepage [simons-rock.edu].

  • This is really just an exercise in compact mechanical design and precision machining. It doesn't come anywhere close really simulating a snake. These 'mechanical snakes' move simply by orienting a long track of wheels in such a way that sheering forces are induced that propel the body forward.

    The resulting effect is something that only looks like a snake, but doesn't replicate any of the complex but subtle perceptions/decisions and movements required by real snakes. I'd be far more impressed if the snake instead moved by sliding it's body (not it's wheels) through a set of bumps. Such a machine could travel almost anywhere in the real world.
  • The pictures he has labeled as a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) are actually a Burmese python (Python molurus bivitattus). They are both large pythons in the same genus, and are found over much of the same places, so I suppose it is an easy mistake to make. I happen to have a reticulated python as a pet, and she is much prettier than that burmese.
  • and people just naturally don't want to TOUCH one even if they find it (which would keep it from being detected)

    Sorry to be so pedantic.
    detect (d-tkt) v. tr. detected, detecting, detects.
    1. To discover or ascertain the existence, presence, or fact of.
    2. To discern the true nature or character of: detected malice behind the smile.
    3. Electronics. To demodulate.

    If someone finds the snake, ergo it is detected (from defn.1). As to not wanting to touch it, use an object(s) long enough to keep the snake away from striking distance.

  • seriously, though... The processor is driven by a Basic Stamp II chip, so the interface is likely in BASIC.
  • slap some real looking slimy skin onto it,

    Damnit, snakes are not slimy. Their clean, dry scales just reflect light in a way similar to that of slime (mucous?).
    ---
  • He ment that if you think it's a real snake, the surveillance equipment inside would be undected.
  • Good for surveillance except most of us would smash it to bits with a big stick as soon as it appeared...a *worm* would be much better...are you listening, Dr. Gavin and NSA?
  • Could be crummy... But crumby works too. It's supposed to be a 10 megabit connection... But I have a hard time getting over 2000 cps loading /. whereas I can get 5000 cps on my 56k from home... And it's got a few bad routers somewhere that keep giving my HTTP 503 errors... Crumby, you guys get the peanut butter and jelly sandwichs, and I have to wait all day just for the crumbs...
  • That's the date it will be published and on the news stand, not the date it was written.

    Kintanon
  • It might be really cool to have a robotic snake prosthesis available!
  • Robotic snake, huh? Won't be long before we have flying cars, electric sheep that dream, and Atari making a surprise comeback.

  • Hit it twice!

    :-)

  • Robotics (Score:3)

    by Ex Machina ( 10710 ) <jonathan,williams&gmail,com> on Thursday December 02, 1999 @07:07AM (#1486464) Homepage
    Supposing I wanted to make some computer controlled robotics, what would be the best way to start? Has anyone found a Mindstorms (tm) like system but for controlling stuff hooked up to a computer through a C program. Like uhh
    #include

    int main() {

    robot arm(arm, 12, 120, 3, 2);
    /* 12 volts 120 hertz AC,
    3 axis of movement, 2 other motors
    */

    while (!arm.is_touching())
    arm.move(1,1);
    // (move the arm 1 degree
    // along the x axis until it touches)
    arm.motor(2, +32767);
    // crush it
    return 0;
    }
  • If they ever got this thing to move and act exactly like a snake with the toungue and everything , slap some real looking slimy skin onto it, then it would be a believable snake. Next put some cameras on the eyes.. maybe some other infra red lenses, some form of radar.. who knows, and they could send that thing out into jungle wars like in korea for instance, slithering around like that.. you could have it walk.. err slither right by enemy troops and they wouldnt have a clue.

    I think if this guy really got into it.. he could add a half decent processor to it and make it able to swim in water like rivers or swamps or even climb trees. The possibilities with this kind of thing in my opinion are endless.

  • Do you have python installed?

  • and guess what you get? :)

  • I know, it's a bit off-topic, but am I the only one who saw this note at the bottom of the New Scientist article [newscientist.com]?

    From New Scientist, 4 December 1999

    How did they manage to quote an article that will be written the day after tomorrow?

  • You forgot the most important--pulling Cat5 cable through wicked-tight places (uh, no the Sex kind.)
  • Are these things programmed with Asimov's 3 laws? ...and I can see Disney buyin this guy out in a hurry...can you see "Westworld" for real in the near future?
  • Check out www.parallaxinc.com. They make a chip called the Stamp II chip. It can be programmed with a Basic-like language.
  • Oh yeah, you are right. The serial numbers are what threw me off. How the hell would you genetically engineer a serial number on an animal??

    Are you absolutely sure though, because weren't they just like the robots that the Blade Runner was trying to kill; that is robots, and not simply genetically engineered humans.

    Now I'm thinking I was right initially. The snakes were robotic, same as the androids. If they were GE snakes, then why would they much such a big deal about the difference between these snakes and real ones (which were incredibly rare).

  • The site is currently being /.ed and I can't see the movies. I can't wait the day or so till it slows down, I need to see it now.

  • CSM101 (Score:1)

    by QZS4 ( 7063 )

    CyberSnake Model 101, anyone?

    "The 600-series had rubber skin, we spotted them easy ..."

    I say, these snakes need glowing red eyes! Don't use rubber skin, though, or they'll be spotted immediately. But they don't look like they'll ever be able to hold a plasma rifle, snakes typically have too few hands...

    (Apologies to James Cameron)

  • Dr. Dobbs had an intresting article on legOS in their November '99 issue.

    From what I remember, legOS was a replacement operating system from the MindStorms kit that let you program C applications for your robots.

    Check it out here [www.noga.de] for yourself.

  • Requirements for the designs included that they were to be untethered, which meant they had to carry their own computers and batteries. They were to be radio-controlled, to avoid the problem of artificial intelligence and sensing.

    Hmm...this thing would be awesome if it could sense stuff on it's own and had it's own intelligence. It would certainly give it more usefulness. At the very least it needs a camera mounted on the front so that the driver of it doesn't have to be able to see it at all times.

  • Without getting into too much...detail, I'd have to say that most of your ideas wouldn't work.

    Surveillance
    If I see a snake running around anywhere, especially where secret transactions are going on, I'm going to be suspicous.

    Collapsed Building Rescue
    Already been done, only better because it's too expensive to make a cool looking rescue tool.

    Minimally Invasive Surgery
    Cobra style, huh?

    Toys are the only application.

  • Do you think one of these could eat an AIBO? (Score:4)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Thursday December 02, 1999 @07:12AM (#1486484) Homepage
    "When robot snakes attack," tonight on FOX!

    A family of four lost their Aibo last night when, tragically, a loose robot snake ate it. Robot snakes typically need to eat only one Aibo a month to survive, and, once satiated, return to their nests.

  • When asked why he began work on the artificial snake, Dr. Miller replied, "If I could afford a real snake, do you think I'd be working in a place like this?"
  • Next from Sony: a robot mongoose

  • how bout an assination tool? Stick to big metal prongs and a poison bag in the thing, and yer ready to kill!

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