DailyDirt: My Robot Lies Over The Ocean...

Michael Ho — Wed, 3 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT

Autonomous robots are popping up everywhere. Some can fly, and some can drive. Others can swim across the ocean. Considering that there are still a lot of places in the oceans not yet explored, fish-like robots could gather amazing amounts of data and help us keep an eye on 70% of the Earth's (water-covered) surface. Here are just a few projects that are working on ocean-faring bots.

Robot fish can mimic how real fish look and move -- and even be accepted into schools of real fish. If these robot fish can figure out how to become fish leaders, they could navigate large numbers of fish directly into fishing nets or away from man-made pollution. [url]
A Raspberry Pi might be the brains of one of the first autonomous robot boats to cross the Atlantic Ocean without human intervention. This FishPi bot will be solar powered, propelled by a small motor (no sailing!) -- and hopefully it won't get eaten by anything on its trip. [url]
Underwater gliders have already crossed the Atlantic and are being put to use for scientific, military and commercial applications. These robots are relatively cheap to make and could be produced by the thousands to monitor the oceans. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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UK Couple Pressure McDonalds To Remove Their Boat From TV Ad

Mike Masnick — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 13:16:30 PST

In the continuing saga of people thinking they have a right to what other people see, a British couple has pressured McDonalds into removing their boat from its TV commercials. Adweek dug up the ad itself, which you can see below, along with a still image of the boat from the ad:

As you can see, the boat is way off in the background. And the boat is seen for a grand total of 3 seconds. Yet, the couple got very upset:

"We didn't see the advert ourselves at first, but lots of people kept saying to us: 'Oh, we saw the Badger on the McDonald's advert.' It was quite irritating, especially as we are not fond of fast food and the Badger has a beautiful galley where we cook everything from scratch. We even make our own bread," said Gloria Parsons, 63, who owns the boat with her husband Alan, 72.

"Then one night we were watching something and the advert was on every break, right across about two hours of the programme. Lots of people were very excited to see the Badger on screen, but we weren't. She is very precious and very special to us, and we felt upset that this large corporation would just ride roughshod over our feelings. It wouldn't be acceptable to go into someone's garden and just take a shot of their house, so why use the Badger?

A radio station heard about them being upset and called McDonald's, who agreed to re-edit the commercial without the boat and issued an apology. Of course, in the end, the joke may be on the couple, as their efforts have brought a ton of attention to the original ad and just by judging from the comments on YouTube, people really like the commercial.

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DailyDirt: My Robot Lies Over The Ocean...

UK Couple Pressure McDonalds To Remove Their Boat From TV Ad