So, on the bus to UMass this morning I found myself trying to figure out the technicalities of a zombie-killing robot. Jason told me this would be my job in the zombie apocalypse, to make ‘a robot with chainsaws for arms to kill zombies’. But quickly I ran into issues. First: Is it remote controlled? If so, the hard part will be the building of it. If not, then not only do we get the hard part of building it, we also have to deal with computer vision, motion planning/obstacle detection, and teaching it the difference between zombies and humans (lest we unleash another menace onto the already apocalyptic world).

So okay, in both cases we still need to build it. How should it be built? The base would likely be wheels, not legs (because then we’d need to bring in how to walk, which is difficult, and honestly that’s not the important bit), then some kind of torso where all the computer bits would be, and some kind of power source (which I didn’t even get into). The arms, which were originally suggested to be chainsaws, would probably be better off as blades, I’m thinking circular saw type things. Well, maybe not. Admittedly, this is where I loose ground. Blades seemed lighter and easier to direct, but with enough power I suppose chainsaws would be too. Regardless, the robot would need to be made of some heavy duty materials, since I doubt the world will be nice to it. I mean, assuming a zombie hoard attacks it, it would probably be gnawed on.

But back to the controlling of it. As I said already, remote controlled would make the programming much easier, but I think would loose some of the functionality in that someone would need to be the one manning it. I also think that part of making this is so that we-the-survivors can just hide out in where ever and let it protect us. But to honestly get this working, we’d need a team. So, as I was conveniently on my way to robotics, I figured we can just take over the robotics lab and make the grad students do the programming. I’m sure my professor would find it an excellent learning experience.

That was way more entertaining than it should have been, but now my robotics hw won’t be nearly as painful. Practical applications!