BP Australia has commissioned an online game where you get to drive robots around an obstacle course. Make no mistake, these are real robots. Actually they are modified versions of the Surveyor SRV-1 vehicles that are popular with research labs, and schools everywhere.
Go to the website, get in queue and pray for no clouds. These babies are solar powered, so you’ll have to try to get in while its day time in Australia. The entire set is built in miniature, so you feel like you’re driving a tank around a city.
[via Robots Dreams]
Omg I totally want to do thisâ¦. There was a Clemson University student by the name David Shelato. Who designed a wifi robot ..:virtually:.. the very same concept here. Every since I found out about Industrial Micro Controller/PLC “Cubloc I wanted to get one.. like most things that are sweet they cost a lot of money, yata yata yata.
http://www.shelato.com/SecurityRobot/
Why would a gas company want to invest in solar panels.
IT MAKES NO SENSE!?
@epicelite easy, tehy are becoming a energy company
Why is this a “daily” featured hack?!?!
This is a BP ad campaign.
A side from that… where is the hack of some thing in to some thing else? The added solar panel, made by BP, or the BP sticker on the units?
*crying*
;-(
-Louis II
Also… what happened to capital letters on the internet… they die or something?
;-p
Says the person that uses no capitals in their posts.
the comments section on this replaces upper case characters with lower for that cyberpunk feel.
He actually did use a capital ‘a’ in ‘also’, the first word of his post. The site, ‘multiple-crappy-news-items-and-a-single-good-hack-a-day’ uses a script that forces all letters to display lowercase. Copy and paste a post to notepad to see it in all it’s proper case glory.
Ironically my post is more of a hack than this article.
My local BP station has solar panels on its roof, enough to power unto 14 homes from memory.
Dude, that is pretty sweet. BTW, I went to Clemson as well – go Tigers!
Mmm, 2 1/2 hr wait. Fun!
WTF, it took out my capitals!
What the heck? I waited 2 hours and 45 minutes+ only to receive a connection error and be put in the back of the line.. What gives!??!
I got control, but my cam was black yet I could supposedly “drive” the car.
And the billboards I’ve seen online in the course are WTFing me out.
Anyone got a code yet?
got two codes, but could not use them the second time, btw, it is very cool, very innovative, and makes you feel a bit like guys that are playing with mars pathfinder, or whatever they have on mars atm. Hardly a hack, but also have not seen anyone else with RC vehicle with web control panel.
javascript:var s=document.stylesheets;if(s[0].addrule)s[0].addrule(“*”,”text-transform: none !important”,0);else s[0].insertrule(“* {text-transform: none !important}”, s.length);void(0);
Yep, throw that into your URL and hit go and your lowercase site woes have met their end. I suggest adding it as a bookmark so you just have to click to fix hackaday’s stubbornness.
The trick to the script I just posted is this: They decapitolized my script and broke it. View source or capitolize the following:
– style_s_heets
– add_r_ule
– insert_r_ule
_letter_ = capitalize the letter
Flash games?
Just piss off hackaday…. you’re dead to me now. :(
It seems that *any* blog that lasts more than a year or so suddenly fills up with whiners who complain about how shitty the site has become. Geez, grow up guys – go somewhere else, or only read the entries you’re interested in.
As for this entry… well, I was waiting until the buzz had died down so I wouldn’t have to suffer a huge queue, and now I have to wait even longer. :p
G’day,
Being from Australia I can tell you this ploy from BP is a complete fraud!.
At the time of writing this it is night time Australia wide and I am 112 in line and watching a live feed of the robot in “daylight”… it will still be cool to drive a little robot though
Cheers,
Pete
And what the hell is going on with capitols??
I had a similar idea some time ago, making a real-life racing game between two or more RC cars. Trouble is the upstream speed on ADSL is too slow to send multiple video streams.
I had a go on this, was brill! Reaper it is real, it’s set inside a big warehouse or something, you can see the sky is just painted on sheets or whatever because there are creases in it. It’s set indoors, with huge lights over it, for obvious reasons. Why would they advertise solar energy at night? :D I didnt bother getting any codes, just had fun making an ass of myself and running into as many other rovers as possible for a couple of minutes. Had about a 4 hour wait in the queue, just minimized it and went on with my work, kinda like ebay auctions! :P Btw, everyone who complains about hackaday: shush.
I’m glad that they posted this. This is very interesting (from a robot controls viewpoint) and I’m glad I didn’t need to scour the net for it.
This thing is pretty lame, I sat and waited for 2+ hours like most others, only to get huge lag for four minutes, and thats it… Plus if you look at the live feeds the sky is totally faked.
Good day.
I’m confused — the robots are currently unavailable because they are being recharged by solar panels — at night. Is BP also the world’s leading provider of screen doors for submarines?
Yeah, bp has solar panels on their roof which charge big batteries.
Then they use those big batteries to charge the robot’s smaller batteries.
(Ever seen a solar powered torch? It’s just recharging a battery)
Anyone know if it’s outdoors? I presumed it was in a dome or something…
Tried queueing for 2.5 hours once and got to 5 mins then bumped to 1.5 hours, then finally when time was up I got told the ‘show’ was closed for the day. Damn other-side-of-world-ers.
Its indeed some plastic foil dome. I saw it clearly driving onto one of the bridges
I’ve driven these now a few times, there was a while when one of the cars had a blacked out screen due to a broken video camera, i also managed to make the camera freeze after ramming it off the bridge,
I took a run-up at one of the rock walls:
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/6915/bpexplorer21331hz0.jpg
I live in Australia, and I didn’t have to wait at all it’s
quite a fun little experience.