We have no idea what the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, George Foreman, or the
American Ornithopter Society are up to these days, but a couple of guys from
Latvia have designed, built and flown a robot that looks like a bird and flies
like one.
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| Not a bird, not a plane. Just run for your life. |
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| Tirebiter |
Apparently, the birds eat Duracell batteries, which they
prefer over Eveready batteries.
The bird is bigger than an eagle, closer in size to a juvenile pterodactyl.
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| Junior |
Recently, Vasily Vasolinovich and Boris Terodactilinski,
the inventors, demonstrated “Baldy”, one of the robotic birds, to a throng of
geeky kids at the recent Latvian Dumpling Convention.
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| Baldy |
Baldy took off and was immediately attacked by a gang of angry swallows.
Instructional Video Here: http://on.fb.me/1U1XTbE
We asked Vasolinovich what kind of technology is involved.
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| Vasolinovich |
“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” laughed Vasolinovich, “Only
kidding!! But seriously, it’s a bunch of
things that crank really hard.”
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| Terodactilinski |
Terodactilinski offered more
perspective.
“We’ve made significant mechanical breakthroughs, but I
think it’s the artificial intelligence (AI) that we built into Baldy and all
the rest of them. That means they are
capable of independent thinking, and we’ve
programmed it to think like a bird. Bird brain!!!
Do you get the joke?” laughed Terodactilinski until his sides split.
"The idea of building in bird behavior through AI is quite a
bold move,” said Vigo Budgy, Professor of
Bird Brain Studies at the Woodpecker Technical University in the Canary Islands. “This means they may try to mate with small
private aircraft, nest in abandoned car lots, and my guess is that when
enough of these are launched, they’ll
exhibit flocking behavior.”
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| Budgy |
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| Albatross |
“The flocking
instinct in these birds has me worried, “said Brenda Albatross, Assistant Professor of Avian Bowling at Flycatcher Community College, Pink
Flamingo, Florida. "Because they’re programmed to do it and you can't control them. I’m terrified
actually.”
Hideki Rodan, aeronautical inventor and 10th grader at Mitsubishi Egret High School, in Mothra, Japan. “If I were those guys, I’d take the second version right into production and produce thousands, maybe tens of thousands.”
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| Rodan |
Why the second
version?
“I can’t reveal my sources, but it is safe to say that V2
will have laser targeting for pinpoint accuracy,”
said Rodan.
Buzzard "Buzz" Aldrin, second man to walk on the Moon and the first stoned astronaut in line to go to Mars said, "It will make things a lot more homey if they send a bunch of these things to Mars before I get there and I can watch these things wheeling about the carbon dioxide as the sun goes down."
Buzzard "Buzz" Aldrin, second man to walk on the Moon and the first stoned astronaut in line to go to Mars said, "It will make things a lot more homey if they send a bunch of these things to Mars before I get there and I can watch these things wheeling about the carbon dioxide as the sun goes down."
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| Buzz |
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| Meanwhile, back in Peoria |
