"Tweenbots" Test NYC Pedestrian-Robot Relations 197
MBCook recommends Kacie Kinzer's tweenbots page, which documents some of her experiments with small, anthropomorphized robots that need help. Kinzer is writing a thesis (at the Center for the Recently Possible) centered around investigating whether people in New York City will help a cute little robot to get where it's going. "Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal."
first dismiss (Score:0, Funny)
The bad thing about Tweenbots... (Score:5, Funny)
Constantly text messaging other tweenbots.
I am AWESOM-O (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The bad thing about Tweenbots... (Score:4, Funny)
Tweenbots: easily the most annoying robot ever.
Re:Anyone else surprised... (Score:5, Funny)
There's a reason they're doing this in New York, and not Boston, there. Keep in mind that those things were in other major cites, and Boston is the only major city in the world to order evacuations over LED animated cartoon characters.
There's a reason that Boston isn't known for anything except baked beans and New York is a center for culture, art, music, and science.
Re:steal it? (Score:2, Funny)
And my first reaction would be to set its flag on fire.
Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.
Re:steal it? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm obviously too easily manipulated by adorable tiny things. Oh, the cats are saying it's dinner time...
Re:Would it work elsewhere? (Score:5, Funny)
If I had to guess, in Paris it would depend on the language the directions were written in:
English - it'd be damaged and tossed in the garbage
French - it'd arrive at its destination with a baguette, cigarette in its mouth, and have lipstick in interesting areas
German - it'd arrive along with a letter of French surrender
Am I the only one (Score:3, Funny)
"In 1999 the average age of a Windows hacker was 19, in 2009 it's 9."
So what happens (Score:3, Funny)
...if you put a squeegee and a tin can in its claw?
12.7 Seconds (Score:4, Funny)
Oblig... (Score:5, Funny)
1. Make a sad-faced robot carrying a coin jar.
2. Give it a sign saying "Brother, can you spare a quarter so I can buy a new battery?"
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
Re:Anyone else surprised... (Score:1, Funny)
Not being able to pronounce the name must help.
Re:steal it? (Score:5, Funny)
Showing weakness to the machines is the first step towards your annihilation. First they help the "adorable robot", and next thing you know they're equipping it with firearms, you know, for "self defense".
Oddly this sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
any number of software releases. Thrown to the publics' mercy, unready for the real world, totally dependent on someone else's goodwill to succeed.
Re:Anyone else surprised... (Score:5, Funny)
It must be fun to live there. In my city (Bydgoszcz, Poland), the most interesting random thing I recently saw happening on a street was a bunch of cats sitting together with pidgeons:
there's a joke in there about polish cats, but I can't quite figure it out.
New Term (Score:4, Funny)
I predict a new term will raise to popularity from this: eRoadKill
Re:Anyone else surprised... (Score:3, Funny)
Idunno... there's still Jersey.
Re:Anyone else surprised... (Score:5, Funny)
rot # cat is now facing a pigeon
dup
dup2 # there are now 5 pigeons
pounce # takes 5 pigeons and a cat on the stack, returns 4 pigeons
# saved in temporary variables with high velocities and an incremented cat