Japanese invent new floating ball

[cric]

The radio-controlled sphere, roughly the size of a basketball, was built for search and rescue operations: to fly in and out of buildings weakened by earthquakes or other natural disasters, using its onboard camera to transmit live images of whatever it sees.

The black, open-work ball looks like a futuristic work of art, but it can hover for up to eight minutes and fly at 60 km (37 miles) an hour -- although it does slow down for open windows.

Fumiyuki Sato, at the Japanese Defense Ministry's Technical Research and Development Institute, invented and built the vehicle for roughly 110,000 yen($1,390) with parts purchased off the shelf at consumer electronics stores.

http://sync.sympatico.ca/news/flying_sphere_goes_where_humans_fear_to_tread/d3ceb779

Dem Japanese and their crazy/cool inventions.

 

[Pharaoh Llandy]

http://satwcomic.com/robots

 

[Mage246]

Great, another way to cheat at sports!

 

[Ebin]

That's so ****ing awesome.

 

[Dodes]

why doesn't it have a cool codenamed yet? Right now it's simply called "Futuristic flying sphere" geh

 

[Mage246]

Bah! Silly Japanese. If this had been made in the US, we would have already found a way to mount some missiles on that sucker and have it out hunting terrorists.

 

[Devercia]

Why is the fact that it is spheroid make it more cool than those quadrotor thingies?

Probubly becuase "Balls are Best"



Ball is my surname.

 

[Schemer]

Now we just need them to make a working ED-E out of it.

隐藏: ED-E

 

[AWdeV]

That's pretty cool, although it almost looks as if it's pulled along by a string.

Groundbot is cool too.

 

[Captain Pyjama Shark]

That thing totally looks like some Airhogs RC toy.

 

[RalliX]

I've actually gotten to drive one of those remote bomb-defusal robots, the kind with caterpillar tracks.
I got to dispose of a mock bomb. 

 

[Scully]

http://satwcomic.com/robots

Heh, china giving me the evil eye.

 

[Buxton]

Just looks like a toy helicopter...

 

[Oyipggy]

Why are there no guns on it yet? C'mon Japan.

 

[Mage246]

Beat you to it!

 

[Magorian Aximand]

Why is the fact that it is spheroid make it more cool than those quadrotor thingies?

Probubly becuase "Balls are Best"



Ball is my surname.

Those are so cool!

 

[MadocComadrin]

Ball is my surname.

Luucyyyyyyyy! You got some 'splanin' to do!

 

[Captain_Octavius]

8 minutes and the power source is dead? Then it has pretty limited usefulness.

 

[Mage246]

Not really. It would be deployed by emergency crews when they are already on site and trying to figure out where to concentrate their efforts.

There's a UAV used by the US military that only flies as far as you can throw it. It's meant to help soldiers see what is over the nezxt hill. It's not necessary to design everything to be able to operate entirely autonomous of humans.

Also, given that it is Japanese I'm surprised they didn't put tentacles on it and have it doing porn.

 

[Temuzu]

It begins.