Solar-Powered Robot Used For Snow-Surfing
by Justin Thomas, Virginia 
on 04. 8.07
When researchers at the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College are not busy creating "scalable, solar-powered, science platforms for the Antarctic", they take their robots out for a bit of snow-surfing. Check some of their cool autonomous solar robots under development. The fellow pictured above with the laptop is snow-surfing at about 5 mph. Here's a quote from the team:
One morning, while taking walking behind the robot and dragging a sled of equipment for quantitatively measuring the strength and cohesion of the snow underfoot, we realized what fools we were to man-haul the equipment ourselves. And, for that matter, how silly even to walk. So, we hooked the sled to the robot and went for a ride. The robot, it turns out, can haul its own weight (nearly 200 lbs.) on a sled and hardly notice it...Snow surfing behind the robot is not very exciting however; it only travels at a slow walking pace.:: Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College via Zedomax
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Brilliant!
Now I can get rid of that old coal-powered robot, which I've been using for snow surfing.
Haha, now that's what I call innovative :)
Perhaps in an effort to strive for a more conservative use of materials, eliminating three of the wheels and converting the hauler into a Unibot which employs gyroscopic stability and or tilt sensors coupled to a GPS transmitter, it could balance its time betwixt going places and reminding itself of its existence via a audio feedback loop so the scientists could do some meaningful work and if they needed the dingus, they could send a message to outer space and it would come home like a dutiful electronic puppy and it could even be programed to bark softly at the door of the science shop so as not to wake those science guys who were resting from their shift of gadget prototyping. Not only would rubber tires be saved but, wheels, axles and drive mechanisms, which could be used to make even more Unibots, why there could be hordes of Unibots scouring the countryside looking for lost sheep or sniffing for uranium deposits which could be used as an auxiliary fuel source to power the Unibots in the event of an extended solar winter they could all huddle together and keep each other warm and tell stories of their individual adventures roaming the Tundra or the Sahara and these stories could be collected and fed into in a universal network and backed up with double redundancy for all time to be referenced as the National Historical Unibot Record or NHUR. Then the science guys could just leave off the 5 mph surfing and go to the ocean and catch some real waves and collect data on wave cresting and board dynamics and the like, while the Unibots would be preprogrammed to report any cataclysmal events every fourteen point six and one half seconds to the mainframe Unibot which would constantly be on the move to a predetermined safe zone based on weather and seismic data. Or why not one wheel and three articulating magnesium or carbon fiber skis? That way the gyro’s could be eliminated altogether and used by filmmaking crews to stabilize cameras in frigid and jittery climes to covertly record the actions of the Unibots and send the footage to the government agency funding these projects to insure that our nations tax dollars are being spent on only the most expensive gizmos.
Wow! What a cool robot!
Awsome but you should make it stronger so you can go faster and have some real fun but over all thats a kik ass robot and i would love to have my own :P
Sincerly- Jacob
The Unibots will begin to self replicate, and will evolve new attachments, i.e. bi-pedal propulsion for uneven terrain and wireless interweb access for unlimited intelligence, including location of RAM stockpiles, and processor plants.
I caught one going through my rubbish last night trying to steal copper wire but it got away by shorting out the mains and shutting down the lights in the neighborhood.