Cardboard Hexapod

(via)

Ok – probably won’t win any beauty contests… or any type of contest at all in fact, but it is pretty cool in that it’s… made out of stuff that’s kindof just lying about.

Obviously in the future there will be an entire class of robots/virii… that are basically just software, or software and some motors… that basically just “take over” a machine… or move into it like a hermit crab moves into a shell. It’d have to be some sort of AI of course… but that’s not impossible, surely. Bit of trial-and-error, innit.

The idea that intelligence must be locked inside a single body is hopelessly anthropomorphic… this is about as likely to wind up being the rule as the likelihood of software being limited to certain machines. Sure it happens at the level of drivers etc, but there are layers abstracted on top of that that are entirely free to be moved from host to host, and in some instances, move by themselves.

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I’m must confess to being a bit disappointed by hexapods – I thought they were going to take over the world at one point – mainly because of the hexapod router from about 3 years back

– and there was a minor rash of impressive debuts etc… but since then, they seem to have devolved into… “things that participate in dance competitions”.

Sign of the times I guess – that 3 years should be enough to get me all impatient etc. I mean I didn’t invent the wheel until I was about 6.

I think it might be an environmental thing though – although hexapods have the same number of legs as insects, they’re kindof facimilies, rather than being adaptations to a specific environment… so “the floor” is better suited to wheels… “outdoors, walls, trees” etc while suited to autonomous sets of legs, tends to favour legs that are in configurations where they’re not constantly getting tangled up in things.

There was a biomimetic video about the way robot hexapod legs should work a while back – TED I think… Can’t find it now, obviously – I think it was this one.

And speaking of which, you can now get kits for turning real live cockroaches into robots (ish)

Which personally, I think is cruel and insane – like remote-control via temporary lobotomy, but what do I know.

You can actually buy the cockroaches themselves via the link above, and there is a limit of two sets per order because they’re having trouble keeping up with demand. I do have a grudging kind of awe for what they’ve managed to do here – but I can’t be dealing with being cruel to animals – even if they are deadly enemies. If I saw this happening, the only thing I’d be able to think about would be “Get that thing off it, and let it go”

Because to me, everything in the whole world is basically a little person. Even rocks and stones are little people. They deserve respect etc.