Who knew a machine with razor-sharp blades spinning at 200RPM you’re supposed to sit on top of might cause injury or death? Here are gruesome tales of mowing mishaps—from this past month alone!
As you can see in the video above, Nissan’s Biomimetric Car Robot Drive, or BR23C, was designed to avoid collisions by steering clear of oncoming objects, even if, as in this case, the object is a slender, particularly leggy Japanese woman. The science involved in this brand of collision avoidance was derived from bees, which steer away from anything that intersects an oval-like safety zone in front of them. Bees use 300º field of vision; the BR23C uses laser range finders. Though Nissan hopes to implement this in cars sometime soon, the slow-moving tech still has a ways to go. [CNet; Motor Trend]
I don’t know what’s going on over the pond, but it appears that September is robot spider month in the UK. First we saw the 50 foot robot spider that terrorised Liverpool, and now researchers from Queen Mary, University of London have developed a spider attack simulator that helps determine how bees avoid camouflaged predators. Although, I think its real purpose is to satisfy a juvenile urge to screw with their tiny little minds.
If you were concerned that you had cancer, would you go to see a doctor or would you consult some bees? I bet you said doctor, didn’t you? No fun! If you used one of Susana Soares “alternative diagnosis tools” you’d be relying on bees instead for some goddamned insane reason.
A company named Inscentinel Ltd. has developed Vapour Detection Instrumentation with the promise of detecting explosives, cancer, drugs and basically anything you’d like to smell. And for this advanced olfactory detection, Inscentinel is deploying the world’s most advanced techniques—trained bee tongue.
The company literally trains bees as a police force might train dogs. Using Pavlovian principles, the bees are given a food reward when they sniff, let’s say, cocaine. Over time, the bees are conditioned to stick out their tongues in hunger over the smell of this substance.
No need to jump off of your phone call the next time you see a bee buzzing by. Phone use, or more specifically, cell towers are not what is decimating the US bee population. According to a new study, the cause is a disease called Israeli acute paralysis virus. The bug bug didn’t come from Israel though—and its cause is pretty damn ironic.
The virus is believed to have come from US agricultural firms importing bees from Australia to beef up pollination efforts in America. According to Canada’s Globe & Mail: The discovery of the virus has raised speculation that the United States inadvertently allowed it into the country through the import of Australian bees. This was allowed in 2004, at the urging of the agricultural industry, to boost the number of hives available for pollinating high-value crops such as almonds…The import of the bees coincided with the first reports of unusual problems in bee colonies.
It is clear that the bee importers never saw the Australian vacation episode of The Simpsons.
As tragic as the problem is, it’s good news for gadget lovers: our beloved phones are, well, off the hook. [Globe & Mail]
