RoboBonobo: A Project To Outfit Apes With Tablets and Telepresence Bots 68
MrSeb writes "Ken Schweller, a computer scientist and psychologist, and also the chairman of the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, has a vision: He wants to put wireless Android tablets in the hands of bonobo apes. The Great Ape Trust Sanctuary is home to seven bonobos, including the world-famous Kanzi, and two orangutans. So far the Sanctuary has focused almost exclusively on language, with the bonobos and their keepers communicating through lexigrams on a touch-screen TV. Now Schweller wants to go one step further and outfit the bonobos with wireless tablets running custom Bonobo Chat software, allowing the apes to communicate with their keepers (and other bonobos!) from anywhere in the Sanctuary, and to remotely control devices such as vending machines, doors, and the RoboBonobo. If all this wasn't weird (cool?) enough, the RoboBonobo is even outfitted with a water cannon (so the telepresent apes can play "chase games" with humans) and Schweller is trying to fund the whole thing with Kickstarter. If you're a big fan of apes (or Darwinism), be sure to donate."
Planet of the Apes coming soon (Score:4, Funny)
iPad (Score:2, Funny)
Apple already tried this in USA. Even got the monosyllabic monkeys to pay for their own hardware.
Better to use GNOME 3 (Score:0, Funny)
because it's clearly designed for Apes and Monkeys.
Rise of the... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Planet of the Apes coming soon (Score:5, Funny)
More likely is that they'll learn to write and understand english and we'll see yet another wave of tech support outsourcing.
Advances in science! (Score:5, Funny)
Knowing Bonobos, this project will also have to involve some kind of teledildonics, right?
I'm all for this project.. you know.. for science!
Re:Planet of the Apes coming soon (Score:4, Funny)
And so the Uplift begins. (Score:5, Funny)
David Brin must be openly grinning over this.
Weird (Score:5, Funny)
If you replace 'the bonobos' with 'management' and make other, similar simple changes to the summary, you'd get a fairly accurate description of the office where I work.
It's uncanny, I tell you. I wonder if those security cameras are something other than what they seem?
Re:Planet of the Apes coming soon (Score:5, Funny)
*sunglasses*
yeeaaahhh!