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Imagine a collection of about 100 plastic balls, each about
the size of a soccer ball -- a bit smaller.
Imagine they were bright red, blue, green, yellow.
Imagine there was an electric car inside each. (You know,
those ones with six wheels larger than the body so that
there is no such thing
as 'flipped on it back, unable to
move'.)
Imagine if the cars inside these balls had wifi and in-built
swarm intelligence, so that at a trade show, park or
technology fair they could swarm in an open space creating
interesting patterns that attract attention. Imagine if a
nearby touch display allowed you to choose from 5-6 interesting swarm behaviours, including one that occasionally spells out 'Google' in the right colours.
Imagine selling this idea to Google as a marketing toy for
a gazzillion Halfbaker Credits!
Independent Autonomous Balls
[pocmloc, May 17 2012]
[link]
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I remember a robot in an early episode of Robot Wars called
Psychosprout which was a remote controlled car inside a
papier-mâché sprout. It made a nice change from all the
wedge-shaped-plus-flipping-arm robots and managed to get
to the final, before getting stuck down a hole due to
basically no steering control. |
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Imagine being at a trade show, park, or technology fair and
having your legs taken out from under you as about a
hundred red, blue, green, and yellow soccer balls come
rampaging around the corner. |
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Now imagine 1 x 10^100 of these things, cluttering up
toy stores next Christmas. |
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Though that would be a Googol swarm. |
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Imagine if the balls were programmed to aggressively herd
a crowd to the nearest Russian Literature section at the
Library. That would be a Gogol Swarm |
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