Introducing Shady, or, how to get a robot to do what a blind can

The last couple of days have felt particularly roboty.

Why, you ask? Well, I shall be posting one some of the things that came across my tech-strewn desk, and I'll introduce the mini-topic with this one. Shady.

Cast your mind back to a hot, sunny day. For those of you living in Wellington, I might suggest a quick video search on teh intertubes, just to refresh your memory.

Right, now add to that image an image of you, sitting in a chair somewhere indoors (where exactly I shall leave up to you), with the sun blazing in through the window. Does the glare bounce irritatingly off your screen? Can you feel asymmetric bits of yourself burning?

Ok, now, what would your solution be? A blind, or possible a curtain? Moving said chair/screen? Leaving the indoors to go frolick in the outdoors (particularly given that vitamin d is apparently good for mood, and might also fight diabetes and food allergies)? To scream 'aarg, I'm melting'?

Well, some very clever lads at MIT (of course) have come up with an alternate solution. One that probably makes sense if you're robot mad, but otherwise tends to hike the eyebrow somewhat heavenward. Yes, they have built a robot, called Shady.

Basiacally, if someone is feeling a little over-exposed sunwise, they simply tell the little robot where to go, and it potters to that point and then unfurls a very solar wind sail-looking fan. Which shades said controller.

Credit: Shady's website

What makes it interesting, though, is the way that it does this. It really is actually quite clever, all comments aside. Basically, it pulls itself along trusses (reminding me in the process of some strange toy from my childhood, of which I have only the dimmest of memories, except this is obviously much more clever). It's very clever robotics, in fact. Now, why would we car about something that can haul itself around trusses? Well, because they form the skeleton of large proportions of the built environment, is why, and so there are applications for construction sites, inspections of sites, and perhaps even building or forming a truss itself.

Interestingly, I just started having flashbacks of a graphic novel read many years ago (Tom Strong Issue 2, by genius and hairy-guy Alan Moore, in fact) where small, modular machines gained sentience, got their act together (literally), and had to be defeated by superheroes because they were eating the city in their quest to make more of themselves.



For those of you interested in more details, have a look here. And see here for a vid of it being cute and useful and stuff.

To anyone who builds one: I shall be most impressed, and might send you a virtual beer or something :)

Lunar billboards

Ah yes, science and marketing have come together yet again, in pursuit of selling things to us.



According to this, Moon Publicity has a patent pending for a new robot which will, wait for it, get sent to the moon, and have fun with its friends building mini sand ridges. Of course, said ridges cast shadows, and will therefore form (if properly planned) giant line drawings.

This revolutionary technology is up for sale, and the starting bid for one of the 44 lunar regions is, well, really low at some US$46,000, although I have no doubt that this will skyrocket. Literally.

But still: is this cool? Inevitable? A mockery of all that makes us human? A travesty, even?

I don't know. I do have a strong 'geek' element which, having read too much Transmetropolitan, thinks this is great.

On the other hand - we have been defined, for countless centuries, by our ability to look up at the moon and stars and use them as a launchpad for our imagination and desire for exploration. How might this change when, upon gazing skywards, we are greeted with a giant 'I'm loving it'? Will we really?

On a more pragmatic note: how is anyone actually going to achieve this? Firstly, you have to get the robots, intact, to the moon's surface. This is not, to date, something which we've had oodles of success. Certainly not regularly.

Also, and as a friend pointed out while I was leaping around exclaiming at the hilarity of it, are the logos meant to be seen with the naked eye? That's going to require an amalgamation of some of those 44 lunar regions, and if that's the case, then a lot of ground has to be transformed. It sounds like one of those school maths problems:
A giant logo measuring ([insert silly number]km2 has to be constructed. Assuming each robot can cover [y]km2 per day, calculate how many robots, and how much money will be burned on, potentially, creating logos only people with telescopes can see.

Finally, they claim that this would spur space travel, but I battle to see how. Robots trundling around in the sand aren't sufficiently interesting for a thriving tourist industry.