Institute for Applied Autonomy
A couple of weeks ago I made it out to a conference in which a few members of the Institute for Applied Autonomy got a chance to speak.
There basic concept is they are trying to be the DARPA equivalent for the common protestor and activist.
They are friendly to the RTMark method of viewing the world.
They were sparked in particular by attending a DARPA conference in which they viewed such excellent military technologies like “Self Healing Minefields”
What dear reader asks, is a self healing minefield? This excellent description explains. Or perhaps the simple explanation would be better. What exactly is a wounded mindfield? A wounded mindfield is one in which sections of the mindfield have been disrupted and no longer act as a working “area denial munition.”
Translation: Some poor sap got his leg blown off trying to walk through the mindfield, and now the military needs to fix the resulting gap in the mindfield.
What then does a “self-healing mindfield” do? Short answer? The mines talk to each other and can move. So when a mine blows up the other mines shuffle in closer to the area that was “wounded.” Actually they probably don’t shuffle, they hop.
… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about my opinion on this …
So what did the Institute of Applied Autonomy do with this information? They made txtMob to enable the common protestor with the tools to communicate, coordinate and intelligently respond in hostile environments.
Translation: It lets protestors be as coordinated as the police.
Anyway, watch the video, it’s amusing. Some of the other applications are pretty entertaining/interesting as well. A robot for distributing subversive literature, a robot for writing political graffiti, a camera mapping system to allow for travel in cities following a route with minimal camera coverage. I recommend the videos for each of the projects, they are pretty entertaining.
