Robot Killing Dogs
So, I'm interested in advancements in robotics, especially those with nifty practical uses, like the Roboking robotic vacuum cleaner and the Banryu guard robot
But today, I was looking at pictures of these things and thinking about them zipping around my house vacuuming and guarding and I thought, John Henry and Charming Billie would just kill those things dead.
Comments
We have some little mechanical robot-ish toys, and the cats are singularly uninterested. One is a mouse programmed to behave in a teasing manner to get the cats to chase it. They won't be suckered.
It goes off when you nudge it, rolling in circles, stopstarting, and then laughing maniacally. You do not want to leave it out and "on" overnight, to be stumbled over on a trip to the bathroom.
Posted by: TM(tm) | May 20, 2003 07:54 AM
If the robot vacuums weren't, like, expensive, I'd love to bring one home and film the confrontation.
John Henry would bark and spin in circles and then ignore it for a week or so at which time it would suddenly occur to him that 1) it existed and 2) it was acting like prey and then he'd jump on it, whip it into a wall (thereby demonstrating why I have plaster and not drywall) and kill it.
Billie would jump on me, jump on John Henry (at which point he would growl very loudly and there would be a huge fiercely noisy fight while doing no actual damage to each other). Then, she would jump on it, climb on it, fall off it, run into the other room, hitting John Henry as she did so, resulting in another huge noisy fight. Then she'd come running back, shove it into a corner, and look at me to kill it. Finally at last, killing it herself, but really kind of ticked off that she, the Princess, has to kill her own prey.
Riley, of course, would have killed it dead immediately just for looking at her, but since she's no longer here things have gone sadlly to pot.... :-)
Posted by: debco | May 20, 2003 08:11 PM