PETA Wants To Replace Punxsutawney Phil With A Robot Groundhog
January 29th, 2010
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals always have a weird way of going about their cause. Now they have their sites on Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog. You know, the whole deal about if a groundhog sees its shadow, we get more winter, but if it doesn’t see its shadow, spring will come sooner. Phil is the animal that lets us know.
PETA now says that it’s unfair to keep the world’s most famous groundhog in captivity and subject him to the horrors of huge crowds. PETAs solution is a robotic groundhog to replace Phil. The keepers of Phil say he is treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania is and I don’t doubt it. Sadly for PETA we just don’t have the cutting edge groundhog/robot technology yet.
February 1st, 2010 at 9:06 pm
“Sadly for PETA we just don’t have the cutting edge groundhog/robot technology yet.”
Actually, we do, a little.
See Carnegie Mellon’s Groundhog robot, used for mine inspection while not predicting spring.
‘On October 27, 2002, the Groundhog robot was deployed in an abandoned coal mine, too toxic for people to enter (oxygen levels were too low for people to remain conscious). The previously flooded mine had been partially drained in the days before the experiment. Though the ground was still covered with toxic mud. the robot advanced more than 30 meters into the mine when the computer box flooded. A second experiment on October 29 led to an even deeper penetration, now with a water-sealed computer box. The robot was more than 50% submersed while a live video feed was broadcasted via satellites to a mine safety conference.’
Comfortable on camera! That’s a bonus.
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/research_project_detail.html?project_id=509&menu_id=261