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Swarm Intelligence
This interdisciplinary book places particle swarms within the larger context of intelligent adaptive behavior and evolutionary computation.
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Happy Cows
Robotics at its Best
 
Happy Cows

I posted a story on this a few months back (related thread), and it seems things have changed for the better. IC Wales discusses the use of robotic cow milkers in farms, Robotic-Milking Proves Popular with the Cows. I think this is the perfect example of an early 21st century robotic system; it's not ground-breaking work, but made some clever assumptions about the context, and they pay off.

For example, at the very worse case, the human farmer would be there to assist the robotic milker (since he would have been around in the first place). But by developing technology that can automatically fit the vacuum milking claw over the udder with laser guidance, the cows have adapted to it and come to milk themselves! The system can detect cows, and send them straight back out if they try to sneak in too often. But on average, they turn up 3 times a day -- which is close to being the ideal amount. Modern day robotics systems need to rely on cooperation from the users / environment, but this one does it with style. Two thumbs up!

934 posts.
Wednesday 17 April, 06:13
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