[extropy-chat] Insect AI (was Wetware vs. Hardware)

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:

> --- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > There was a mower-bot design in Popular Mechanics or Popular
> Science
> > in
> > the early 90's which used a weed whacker head powered by an
> electric
> > moter, guided by off the shelf parts: pc board, leds and
> > photosensors,
> > etc. which could find the edge of a lawn, mow along it and follow
> the
> > edge of its own previous path to mow the lawn in a conventional
> > spiral
> > or back and forth pattern, avoiding obstacles, etc.
> 
> Hmm.  If it was available from kit, I wonder why no one's made a
> business out of pre-assembling & selling them?  Too expensive, or is
> there some hidden performance flaw?

Investors generally shy away from investing in manufacturing anything
which is public domain. However, Husqvarna does offer at robot mower:

http://www.gizmag.com/go/1275/
one problem is the price of over $3,000 is extremely expensive compared
to push mowers for a few hundred bucks or riding lawn mowers for
$800-$1,500.
Here is the owners manual for the solar powered model:
http://weborder.husqvarna.com/order_static/doc/HOEN/HOEN2002/HOEN2002_1140043-26.pdf
(try downloading it first, as their server seems to have problems
triggering a browser display of the pdf) Finding this on their site is
very tough and it appears that it is either not a main line product or
is discontinued.

Dyson has a robot vacuum cleaner, btw:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/1282/

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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