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May
3

Robotic squirrel used to study real-life squirrel behavior, steal nuts

Posted by Nilay Patel in BLOGROLL, MEDIA

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Most of the squirrels our college campus were massive, hyper-intelligent little beasts that were best dealt with by vigilant avoidance, but it looks like Hampshire College professor Sarah Partan is taking the opposite approach, using a robotic squirrel named “Rocky” to interact with the local rodents up close. Rocky is controlled wirelessly from a laptop, and can realistically move his tail and body to communicate with other squirrels, as well as play pre-recorded squirrel noises from built-in speakers. The goal is to study how animals communicate, and it looks like Rocky’s doing a good job — the local squirrels seem to respond to him just like any other. That’s pretty impressive for a bot (or pretty weak for the squirrels, depending on your point of view), but we’re just waiting for Partan and her team to discover the shocking truth: that the squirrels are really studying them.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under BLOGROLL, MEDIA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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