Duck Goes Moo!

I saw this on Slashdot:

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.

tweenbots.com

These things are absolutely adorable, but I think they need some googly eyes, personally.

Still, it is a really neat idea… at least for areas that are heavily trafficked with helpful humans who aren’t too busy to or annoyed with the thing to help it along its merry way.

Speaking of which, I wonder how changing the expression on the robot’s face would affect how much people would help it, or if there was no face on it at all.  They should make several of these, each with a different expression on its face to see which ones are more likely to get to its destination the fastest and most reliably.

Also, what about audio?  What if it was preprogrammed with a series of friendly requests for help whenever it got near someone or something… eh, maybe that’s putting too much thought into it.

Makes me wish I had remained in acedemia and had grant money to do cool things like this.

>> read more here