I don’t know if and when water pollution monitors States-side might start using this Swiss invention, but it would certainly be startling to see it snaking by when one was out paddling. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/the-envirobot-robo-eel-slithers-along-the-shore-for-science/
When I think of robotic water snakes it’s not science the little boy inside thinks about.
I have seen a robotic kayak, though. The Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University here in Pittsburgh has an “open house” every year and one of the teams displayed a robotically controlled, self-propelled rec boat that they had outfitted to gather water samples for pollution monitoring At that same exposition that year there was also a segmented “snake” robot like the one used for the “robotic eel”. The controllers were able to make it climb up and over a chair. I wonder if the two technologies met there.
Drones flying overhead,
they film me by the lake.
Neurotic me to pee now flees
robotic sampling water snakes.
I went out to the lake and woods
to shake clutches of big brother,
My mistake as behind pine I shake
to life motion-activated shutter.
Next thing ya know, I’ll be getting chased back to the put-in by Patrick McGoohan’s nemesis orb! Paddle Faster! I hear stern Brittish accents!
@canoeswithduckheads said:
Next thing ya know, I’ll be getting chased back to the put-in by Patrick McGoohan’s nemesis orb! Paddle Faster! I hear stern Brittish accents!
You are too funny! I haven’t thought about The Prisoner in years!
Snakes don’t bother me. Like most beings, they just want to be left alone. I’d like to see that robotic one though.
Did you know that snakes have two penises with barbs? Come in handy with no arms. One of the facts I learned in college.
I’ve seen some fantastic snakes in recent years, including a strikingly patterned large Northern Watersnake that was plastered, almost vertically, on a rough ashlar stone bridge abutment in the Monongahela river, just hangin’ out in the sun. Wished I had a camera with me because he/she was a real beauty.
And there was this 3’ timber rattler that we spotted in a meadow during a hike in Clearfield County:
I have a photo of a 5’ diamondback that my sister in law almost stepped on at the Suwannee River. Luckily it was a cold day and the snake could barely move.