Currently sitting through a privacy rant at the ACM Reflections & Projections conference. Prior to that? An awesome presentation by the Institute for Applied Autonomy. Check these guys out.
Some of their projects:
- Little Brother. A robot to distribute subversive literature.
- iSee. Think google maps, only intesad of plotting the shortest path, it plots the path of least surveilance.
- txtMob - The txt message rebroadcaster used to share info between protesters at the RNC in New York, and protesters in the Orange Revolution.
- Graffiti Writer. A robot model car that paints messages on the ground it passes over while running at full speed. (Also: Its big brother, StreetWriter, which writes messages a lane of traffic wide while moving at highway speeds.)
The results:
- People were 23% more likely to accept subversive pamphlets from a robot rather than a human. The people reached were the opposite demographics from the kinds that would be willing to approach a human pamphleteer.
- GraffitWriter vandalized the parking lot of the U.S. Capitol Building, only to get the IAA operatives caught when they reunited with the robot. The police officer let them go, apparently not having a criminal category to classify them as.
- StreetWriter was waved past two security checkpoints into the staging area of DARPA's Grand Challenge. It was later used to spraypaint an abbreviated form of Asimov's First Law of Robotics at the destination of the Challenge.
Some of their projects:
- Little Brother. A robot to distribute subversive literature.
- iSee. Think google maps, only intesad of plotting the shortest path, it plots the path of least surveilance.
- txtMob - The txt message rebroadcaster used to share info between protesters at the RNC in New York, and protesters in the Orange Revolution.
- Graffiti Writer. A robot model car that paints messages on the ground it passes over while running at full speed. (Also: Its big brother, StreetWriter, which writes messages a lane of traffic wide while moving at highway speeds.)
The results:
- People were 23% more likely to accept subversive pamphlets from a robot rather than a human. The people reached were the opposite demographics from the kinds that would be willing to approach a human pamphleteer.
- GraffitWriter vandalized the parking lot of the U.S. Capitol Building, only to get the IAA operatives caught when they reunited with the robot. The police officer let them go, apparently not having a criminal category to classify them as.
- StreetWriter was waved past two security checkpoints into the staging area of DARPA's Grand Challenge. It was later used to spraypaint an abbreviated form of Asimov's First Law of Robotics at the destination of the Challenge.
zaksmith:
wow
dogslife:
^^^ seconded.