One of the things that I really want to do is to make robots that live in the wild. We don’t yet have technology that’s cheap enough, but you can bet we will soon — and when that happens you’ll find me releasing hordes of intelligent machines into the wild.

Imagine you’re out camping in the woods. The sun is up, rays breaking through the thick treetops, racing to highlight the stray leaves blowing on the ground. Life is good. The squirrels agree, jumping from branch to branch. So do the artificial creatures — robots you can spot high up in the trees, keeping an eye out for fires and recording weather condititons. The occasional whirr of a motor has you turning your head to try and spot the Jumpers, a particular breed of artificial creatures used for observing the wildlife. Like natural animals, they feed on insects, and even heal after suffering damage.

My descriptions don’t do the concept justice; when artificial beings stop having to depend on constant human maintenance, thousands of practical applications open up. Nature would become twice as interesting from my perspective. Nature 2.0.

Modern Applications and Ideas

Let me take my head from the clouds and talk about something closer to reality. The Offroad Löscheinheit (OLE) beetle is a robot being developed by the German University of Magdeburg-Stendal, intended to monitor and exstinguish forest fires. Having these around would make camping a lot more interesting (and safer!).

The OLE is biologically inspired, like so many other robots, modeled after the pill millipede — beetles with several body segments that make them capable of rolling into a ball. Similarly, when the OLE detects danger — such as too much heat — it can roll into a ball. Its shell then protects the delicate electronic innards from heat ranging to 1,300 degrees celsius. When it’s not balled up, it’s six legs can move it at around 10-20km per hour, depending on environmental conditions. And according to its makers, 30 OLE robots could patrol a 7,000 square kilometer area.

According to staff at the University of Magdeburg, the cost of an OLE unit is between 100,000 and 250,000 euros; but annual forest fire damage in Europe alone is around 2.5 billion euros.

Semi-wild Robots are Viable

Robots in the wild aren’t just conceptually appealing for the AI & science-fiction enthusiasts like myself. They’re on the verge of being practical and commercially viable. It doesn’t take much browsing to find several ideas in addition to wildfire patrol that are only a few years away from being deployed. Even if the OLE’s sole function would be reporting to base that they’ve detected a fire (there’s no mention of how much fire-extinguishing liquid they can currently haul), it’d probably still be cheaper than keeping human patrol.

So the future is bright for artificial creature lovers. I’ve had several ideas that I’d love to implement one day. They’re artistically focused; ie. have no immediate practical value except to extend people’s horizon on what the future holds. One revolves around having a robot wildlife area in the lava-ridden outskirts of Reykjavik. A pack of robots, say 10-20 would “live” there, hiding in shadowy places, but regularly come out to absorb energy from the sun, explore and be seen.

Of course, this idea poses a barrel full of problems. The sun wouldn’t be enough to propel them and lava is extremely difficult terrain to traverse. Not to mention that they’d probably get stolen (did somebody say ‘embedded taser’?). Still, the idea of driving into the countryside at nighttime and suddenly seeing the glowing eyes of a “wild robot” hopping, running or flying around autonomously is a fascinating one.

Links and References

• Flensburg-online (Main OLE source, translated from German)
• Coolest Gadgets OLE coverage
• Slipperybrick OLE coverage
• Pill millipede on the Wikipedia
• Icelandic Lava picture (CC)Blue Eyes (Flickr)
• Fly-Eating Robot Powers Itself, CNN article
• Robot Crossing, Drive Carefully - A roadsign like that doesn’t sound too far off now, does it?