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Science

SlugBot, the Slug-Powered Slug-Hunting Robot 166

Posted by Roblimo from the gross-but-true dept.
Adam Foster writes "SlugBot is no ordinary robot. SlugBot hunts down slugs, and is powered by fermenting the slugs' corpses, producing biogas fuel. Find out more from the BBC."
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SlugBot, the Slug-Powered Slug-Hunting Robot More

SlugBot, the Slug-Powered Slug-Hunting Robot

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  • Coming soon to a NOC near you... the all new and improved LuserBot!!! Never worry about Lusers upgrading to Win98 and sucking up your corporate bandwidth again. Don't fear the evil "what kind of click?" question anymore. The LuserBot will handle them all. Every new LuserBot comes with these great features:

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    Call 1-888-55-LUSER or check out http://www.operationsrocks.com/LuserBot for more details.
  • I suggest mating the Slugbot with the Flybot [sfgate.com]
    --

  • (assuming that noone for a while will be able to feed on the SlubBots)

    Interesting idea... The robot is probably not tasty, but perhaps creatures that don't mind eating dead slugs will learn to raid the slugbot hopper? Could be dangerous if they hide in the hopper and don't escape before the return to base, though.

    Anyway, the slugs have the most to gain through adaptation here. If the thing is efficient, perhaps slugs in the area will learn to "hide" from it by standing in an unusual posture, or near a bright light or something. Or, since the thing uses a red filter to help identification, gaining any kind of red pigmentation would be very useful.

    Any adaptation that successfully defeats the machine for a year would be highly advantageous, since the gardens would be filled with nice, juicy wheat, and no competition from other slugs.

  • H.G. Wells did that a century ago, minus the Swastika, of course.
  • So that's what you've been doing in the wheat field.
    --
  • The Luser-Powered Luser-Hunting Robot.
    --
  • er ... "Beoslug"

  • I just keep Emperor Scorpions and let them roam around my apartment, hunting roaches...


    Of course, there were a few problems in the past, such as always having to shake out my shoes before I go to work in the morning; being able to track them; and preventing them from uncontrolled reproducing. Controlling breeding is accomplished by keeping only one male in a tank - all the hunters in home are female(you learn to identify the gender pretty quick). Every now and then, you pop a female in the tank and see if they'll go at it (it looks more like a fight than mating). Tracking is still a problem though. I used to glue keychains to their backs, the kind that beep when you whistle, but well, um, those things fall off after the scorpion molts. I'm thinking of switching to a transmitter to relay to position of each scorpion, so when my database tells me it's time for one of them to molt, I can just find her and keep her in a tank until she's done - the transmitter can then be reglued and she can be released back into my kitchen. The database is already set up; it uses the MSDE, which is simply the engine behind MS-SQL Server. If you want to see the front end (written in VB) I'll be happy to send it to you, but I don't yet have routines to account for input from a receiver - but my current plans call for using two or more to accurately gauge the position of any specific scorpion. Source code available on request.


    While on the topic of a Roachbot, you should check out this story [nando.net], where a Japanese company attached electrodes to a roach's brain and take full control of its motor functions. I can just see the implications: you release your robo-roaches armed with extra electronics and assembly instructions into a new slum and within minutes, they have taken new "converts". [Insert evil smirk here]


    Skevin
    MCSE/MCDBA (Slashdot is also read by us Evil Empire people too)
    malusdei@pacbell.net


  • What if someone made a robot that could feed on larger things? Mice? Cats? HUMANS?


    Such a robot would require an advanced neural network for its intelligence. I wonder if a cluster of slug brains would work.

    Now THAT would rock!


  • Well, so far slugs are fermented in a station,
    but what if bots could do this themselves? And
    what if they have a positive feedback that makes
    them treating slugs as _food_? Ie, the more slugs
    a bot picks, the more powerful it is....
    On the other hand, slugs can evolute, can't they?
    And change their behaviour to fool the bot, eg
    learn to crawl faster or to change the form of
    the body to look like something else....
    I'm not sure about practical usefullness, but by all means it's very interesting to set a series of experiments.
  • BTW, there's a superstition that human hair is
    to be burned, because if it's not and if a bird
    makes a nest of it, hair's `ex-owner' will feel
    a huge headache while the bird is in the nest.
    However, nothing is said about the beard :)
  • What we have here is actually pretty radical. This is more or less a fully autonomous, self-powered robot that could continue to do it's job (albeit a very simple one) indefinitely. It can't repair itself, but otherwise will keep going until you stop it. Not to mention that it has the ability to identify targets in an area with plenty of interference (plants and other critters).

    This could be a harbinger of significantly more useful stuff to come. Slus are slow, and easy targets, but what about other pests? Another possibility is search and recovery missions. Imagine robots with similar logic looking for, say, the debris from the EgyptAir crash the other day.

    Now, a scary thought - Imagine your AIBO hunting slugs. Brrr.....

    - -Josh Turiel

  • Terminator IV - The slugger (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In the year 2030 almost all slugs have been exterminated by artificial SlugBots but thanks to one brave Slug, who has learned how to fight back, the tide is turning and it seems that slugs everywhere has a chance of winning.

    As a final desperate attempt the Bots have sent back one of their Terminators to the year 1999 to slay that brave Slugs father/mother, one ordinary garden slug living in a suburb of .....

    Cut to a parking place. Suddenly the air starts to shimmer and in a blue light a frightening machine appears (built from Lego Mindstorms (TM))

    /Laglorden

  • Giant slugs are a possibility, but they will still need to live on the run while teenagers. I think a leaner, meaner slug would be a better adaptation. An area could support many more slugs of small size, making Slugbot work harder for less food. Also, the natural bias in the slug detection routine will strongly favor finding large slugs. It may be worthwhile to bias slugbot to go after smaller slugs first, to avoid pushing selection in a direction helpful to the slugs. This may avoid the problems encountered by the farmers who used larger potatoes for food and smaller ones for seed.
  • Maby they should also come with a sign that says:

    STEAL ME

  • This is the first predator robot of the world. Where did the robot laws not to harm anyone go?

    The End is near.
  • well, slugs are nice and slow and easy pickings for a small 'bot - make something that'll patrol my kitchen and snap up La Cocka Roachas all night and I'll be impressed - that would take some sensor-actuator coordination :))

    The digester is a neat idea, but since it has to 'return to base' to ferment the biomass is it really more effecient that just tapping into the mains to recharge? Then there's the post-ferment waste to deal with - fertilizer?

    Chuck
  • The fourth law of robotics is actually the first amendment; it specifically lets robots squash slugs, lawyers, insects and some species of arachnids.
  • There are also repair costs, And having to get out of bed at 2 in the morning to retrive a 'stuck' SlugBot is not going to apeal to many farmers.

  • It's interresting that we - the humans - now introduce another race to be preadetors.

    The Slugbots don't reproduce, so that's not really true.

  • Well, I'm not sure about the Europe and slugs,
    but definately, the European part of the former
    SU, especially in the South (Ukraine, Moldova),
    every summer is screwed with Colorado bugs,
    little pests, of sand colour with black stripes
    along the body and orange heads that eat potato
    leaves like hell.
    The only sure way to get rid of such a bug is to
    burn it because even if it's smashed, eggs it
    carries develop within days....
  • Also, if the SlugBot were to be carried out of GPS range


    You mean off of the planet? Ouch.

  • I have that comic. (Score:3)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @11:50PM (#1567806)
    Saltman versus the slugbots #1 ; great comic. The slugbots never had a chance.

    Seriously, though. A robot that draws its power from the decomposing bodies of its victims. How cool is that?
  • It's not baloney. They're going to use decomposing human bodies, not slugs. We have lots of untapped power in our bodies.

    The plan is to combine the robots with the software detection program that screens out potentially-dangerous students. All the people who have violent tendencies will be taken on a "special" field trip out to the wheat fields. Then it's a free-for-all with the SlugBots and their surgical-blade equipped mechanical hands.

    Personally, I see this as a good use of otherwise wasted resources, plus society avoids all the potential harm of these mal-developed individuals.
  • First RoboFly [sfgate.com] and now SlugBot.

    Ugh. If they are going to be this lazy, the least they can do is put out a call for name suggestions. I'm sure slashdotters could think up something better.

    - JoeShmoe

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
  • Whatever next, you ask?

    Why, adapting these robots to ferment cane toads, of course! Just make them bigger, with a stronger gripping claw so the beasties don't escape, and we have a potent weapon to fight these environmental pests.

    If all the cane toads in Queensland got fermented, the roads in Queensland will be safer. All the cars will stay on the correct side of the road, instead of veering across the centre line at random to run over cane toads. (The generally accepted correct technique of running over cane toads is to run over the heads first, so the air inside the cane toad escapes with a pleasing pop.)

    --

  • Salt Shaker (Score:3)

    by Maniacal ( 12626 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @11:54PM (#1567810)
    They should just equip the end of it with a salt shaker. That'll take care of the slugs. Double it as a margarita maker and I'm sold.

    Mike

    Like Grandpa always said, "It's mine, I can wash it as long as I want to."
  • Does this reasoning apply to fishing? I don't fish, but I thought most fishing laws made you throw back the small ones.
  • Is this another one of those inventions that will lead to greater innovations in the field of robotics and miniaturization?

    I guess this is much preffered to pesticide. How many of these SlugBots(tm) to you need for a huge field?

    --
  • Are you sure that they are slugs? There are a lot of other slimy things in that area...

  • Actually, 1,500 was the cost of the prototype. They went on to say that a mass-produced version would cost a lot less.

  • I remember reading in one of Asimov's robot short stories about a small robot that was built like a bird and that was designed to hunt down fruit flies. This robot sounds similar to that :)
    --

  • What I'd like to see is something useful in my area (Texas). We need something to take care of our little fire ant problem. Maybe a robo-anteater or a miniature bug-like critter that could run around invading ant mounds and assassinating the queen ants. The fire ant problem has spread from Texas to halfway up California and everywhere in between in the west. It's gone all the way to Florida and as far north as South Carolina (IIRC) in the east. There are some patches where they haven't gotten to yet, but it's not looking good.

    I'd love to see a robo-critter created to help fight these nasty imported bugs. At least those bullet ants haven't made it here yet. If they ever do, I think I'll be moving farther north.

  • I know what I want for christmas now :) Of course, there's always the problem of finding enough slugs for my sadistic appetite.
  • Here in the land of Oz we have a problem with Cain Toad that were introduced to eat the Cain beatle, but didn't. Now they are a big pest and have adapted well and breed like rabbits. Now if we could build a robot like this we could aviod introducing another speices to control the cain toad, and when they are all gone we can just turn turn them off or get them to target other introduced speicies. The only problem would be getting the robot only to target Cain Toads and not our native frogs and toads. I can really see a use for this and would like to see some more research on devices like this. Craig.
  • ...if the SlugBot's control logic was an artificial neural network made from slug neurons.
  • > Imagine robots with similar logic looking for,
    > say, the debris from the EgyptAir crash the
    > other day.

    Similiar logic? So they would feed on the passengers to keep on going until they find the black box?

    (OK, so thats a bit disgusting)
  • Actually this robot seems as though it may be the first to qualify as a real new animal as it converts what it hunts into energy - now all you have to do is get them to reproduce :-)

    Personally though, I think it would be cheaper to build a birdbox in your back garden in order to encourage a slug eating avian robot to nest near to a good local food supply.

    Of course, a Slugbot has no natural predators, yet.
  • Now, obviously, we all realize what a slugbot means.

    First, it means a new linux port.

    Secondly, it means thousands of linuxheads will anxiously be checking John Romero's .plan to find out when the new slugQ3test will be released.

    Third, it means a new O'Reilly book. But what will be on the cover? A slug or a salt shaker?

    Four: General Media will recognize value of slugbot, then say it is overhyped. Doc Martens launches a FUD campaign. Sadly, nobody seems to understand slugbot, except for readers of slashslug.org, and they inevitably come into conflict with readers of rival site slugdot.org.

    Five: the subject for the first /. action movie:

    They were ordinary slug-hunting robots. He was a mild-mannered garden hamster. But when they killed his partner, they made him mad. This Christmas, are you the slugbot? Or are you the slugbotbot? 'Hemos Thunder'."

  • The huge brownish slug (commonly known as the Spanish murder slug here in Sweden) is very successful in eating other types of slugs, keeping those populations at bay. It is really gross to see a run-over or stepped-on slug being eaten by a group of his formed pals.

    Unfortunately almost every type of animal finds the brown slugs inedible due to their (supposedly) foul taste. Result: the slug population is rampant in urban backyards. People are resorting to methods such as the aforementioned beer, or pouring salt / cutting in half individual slugs. This is really considered a large problem, with sometimes up to a thousand slugs in just a single backyard!

    There is one animal that will eat the slugs : an obscure type of duck. Enterprising farmers are renting these ducks to people on a daily basis. It will be interesting to see what the introduction of slugbots will do to this market.

  • Waiting for a dog-manure bot..
  • I seem to recall that there's a slug (quite a small one) that behaves in a rather Exocet-tastic manner - following the slime trail of the victim slug at high (for a slug) speed until it reaches its prey.

    A robot clone of this might be a good project for the nanotech bods.

    Steff
  • No, not at all. Stealing the slugbot isn't as useful as it sounds. Leave it unatended for a moment and it will start to wander home, thanks to its GPS. If you combine this with, say, encription protected home-base altering procedures, and a lack of an on/off switch, and all a stolen slugbot will be good for is scrap.

    And in light of all the similaritys being drawn with The Matrix, I only have one thing to say. "Salt. Lots of salt"

  • Don't waste the beer on slugs!!!
    Buy one of these machines, and rent it to your neighbours in exchange for the beer they would have used catching slugs in their own backyards!
    Isn't this part of the OSS creed - free beer from technology! :)
  • Well, we use the oxidation of dead botanical material as fuel, or else how would we toast our marshmellows? Is it not plausible that we couldn't supplement solar power with slug power as well?

    PanDuh!

  • Hang on a second. Are you serious? If so, that's pretty f'ing cool, no matter what the backend is.
  • How do we control the slugbots? Could get messy with slugbot-bot and maybe slugbot-bot-bot
  • Well something has to fuel the next two movies...

  • > And there should be no
    > shortage of prey. Up to 200 slugs per square > metre are found in fields of winter wheat.

    doesn't that seem a bit much? Can you even walk without squashing a slug?



  • It should be possible to create a bunch of slugbots that harvest whatever they need to make a slugbot. They can live from the slugs that other slugbots catch. Another group can then build new brothers :) Off course another group is needed that can build new bases.
  • Now if they just made a PoliticianBot, we'd all be in business.
    --------------------------
  • Sure, the slugbot can catch slugs, it can see them, it can catch them, but can it get to them? Does it have a GPS to help get over a rock? Isn't this the same problem we had with the Mars Pathfinder mission. Just wait till these things start get caught on dandelions. But what if these we're made bigger and were designed for humans? Scary thought. Well, it would be nice to talk about while Hemos, Rob and I are sitting in a collection chamber slowly decomposing into gas. --Never do it. Unless its tomorrow.--
  • I wonder if the exhaust smeels like slug farts.
  • Well, what else are you going to do with them?

    (/me ducks)

    I was actually referring to the way it can independently aquire targets and bring them in. It could collect aircraft pieces, and return them to base whenever it's full - a lot cheaper and safer than sending divers 200+ feet down.

    As for power, it's more realistic to think that it would use seawater than dead humans.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • Um, people?

    Imagine you're driving along a road in a country town, through a wheat field, and there's NOBODY around for MILES - and you see this little square aluminium box on wheels, with a big arm moving slowly along the edge of the wheat field - wouldn't you be even SLIGHTLY inclined to stop, and since there's no-one around, pinch the thing?

    I know most people wouldn't actually do so, but I don't think it wouldn't got through anyone's mind - but some people would take them, and I'm not sure that I know of a farmer who could afford to lose a $1,500 tool that easily, especially not several of them.....
  • somehow this reminds me of watching the movie "The Matrix"

    I thought the exact same thing! Imagine if the SlugBots get artificial intelligence! I can see it now. Little cocoons with slugs inside, and hooked up to a machine so that the slugs are in an imaginary world, believing that they are eating real leaves. And the agents will be supper powered snails. Until one day the slug "Noa" gets in contact with the slug "Trinity" and wakes up to find the truth behind the SlugMatrix. The slugs overcome the AI and come back to the real world just to be eaten by birds.

    Just a thought! ;)

    Steven Rostedt
  • >>well, slugs are nice and slow and easy pickings for a small 'bot - make something that'll patrol my kitchen and snap up La Cocka Roachas all night and I'll be impressed - that would take some sensor-actuator coordination :))


    "Here kitty, kitty, kitty..."

  • Wrong thread - that bird robot was built to catch spy flies ...
  • Want a better nightmare..
    Make the thing severel times bigger....give it claws to hold its prey while it struggles. Place a large syringe on it to take a blood sample. Do genetic testing on the sample. Sample does not meet genetic standards, throw them in fuel tank. Now put a large swastika on the beast and you get the idea.
  • OK, this thread is scaring me. I just started playing Alpha Centauri last night and my first official act was to be destroyed by mind worms.

    --
  • hehe.. it is going to be Field Tested :)
  • I'm glad Tom Selleck is still around to hunt these things down when they go haywire. I sure hope he brings along his babe of a partner.
  • >Interesting idea... The robot is probably not
    >tasty, but perhaps creatures that don't mind
    >eating dead slugs will learn to raid the slugbot
    >hopper?

    Yes, why eat a tin can, when you can munch on a nice, tasty, juicy, slugbot?

    :)
  • Back in the day, Hüsker Dü had a song called "How to Skin a Cat", some spoken-word nonsense about figuring out a way to get rich by selling cat skins. The punchline, following a "Hey! I've got it!":

    We'll feed the cats to the rats
    And the rats to the cats
    And get the cat skins for nothing!


  • A buddy of mine is named "Noa" and I keep confusing his name instead of the name for the character in "The Matrix".

    Steven Rostedt
  • ...who built the ark and took aboard 2 of every variety of slug to save them from the great irrigation that wiped out all life in the field.

    BTW, I'm not interested in getting into another religious debate on slashdot so don't flame me.

    Mike

    As Grandpa always said, "It's mine, I can wash it as long as I want to."
  • A mosquito-hinting robot has been my long-time idea/vision. I imagined it would be equipped with a tiny laser (maybe a bit more powerful than the ones used in the presentations) and would have very sophysticated object recognition, but it would not need to be particularly movable. The problem, though, is that the laser beam is dangerous for your eyes. The solution would be that these bots would fire only agains a mosquito that is on or against a very light surface (wall, fridge, washing machine, my white shirts.. etc). That could be a discriminator-the bot would not fire against a human figure. Or at least not at the head.
    Maybe one day I will really create such a gadget. You bet I am not friend of mosquitos.
  • True, Screamers didn't recycle their targets into fuel but they were fission powered I believe.
  • Slugs are peeps too!! oh wait...
  • Actually, you could protectively armour the SlugBot with sharp protrusions, so anyone who decides at the spur of the moment to steal the bot is going to have to get pretty inventive. Also, if the SlugBot were to be carried out of GPS range, it could discharge an exploding pink ink carridge, like used in hoity-toity clothing stores and banks. Better yet, just explode the decomposing slugs all over its assailant. Mmmm...fun with SlugBot theives.
  • Today SONY released the newest device in the competitive portable MP3 player market, a slug bio-mass powered device called Slug3. Sony expects their device to be a hit, because users will never need batteries - they simply pluck slugs, crickets, snails, mice, roaches and other garden pests off the ground and place them in the cold fusion chamber of the player.

  • Ironic (Score:1)

    by Nass ( 96235 )
    ... Whilst the idea of "fermenting" animals for use as a power source seems ethically revolting, smacking of uber-speciesism (I can think of any number of tyrants, dictators and maniacs that would love the potential of this technology) the ironic fact remains that it's a lot more ecologically sound that using pesticides or messing up ecologies by adding predators like our Australian cousins with their introduction of the particularly hidious Cane Toad [rosh.com.au] which has now become a pest in its own right.

    Whatever next?

  • ... tender and juicy on the inside.
  • or, possibly

    Get armour (snail)

  • This is amazing (if a little disgusting in the details), and I really do mean that. But just think how this technology could be applied to other fields.

    We could have vending machines that really do use slugs.
  • Actually, a farmer won't put salt on his field because that poisons the dirt and eventually nothing would grow. On the bright side, there won't be any slugs in that desert either.
  • Dracula wrote: Maby they should also come with a sign that says: STEAL ME

    Maybe they should equip them with GPS tracking systems... wait, they already have!

    All it takes is the addition of a 50-quid GSM modem and hey presto, it 'phones home when it's been nicked- complete with the longitude, lattitude and elevation of the theif's abode.

    You could even set parameters so that you could tell the robot the layout of the field, or maybe your entire farm- and if it breaks down, 'phone home with it's exact location.

    --

  • Lord what we who fear & have fought with termites would give for a bugbot that ate the little homewreckers!
  • Screamers were supposed to collect raw materials in order to reproduce - they were true self evolving von neumann machines, with the directive for terminating the enemy and gathering raw materials in that order.
  • If slugbot was actually using neurons from the slugs it kills to regenerate its dead neurons and increase its intelligence!!!!

    nahh.... too scary :-)

    ---

  • I can't believe I don't see this in the posts yet, but isn't this the same idea as the Star Trek (original - and BEST) episode about the planet killer machine, powering itself on the digested remains of the planets it destroys?
  • It's a great solution. Unfortunately my dog LOVES beer, so the glass would always be empty :)

    Matt.
  • You forgot the inevitable Slug-Eating Robots for Dummies book and the speculation as to how to make them into a Beowulf cluster.

    There have been some interesting recent experiments [ornl.gov] in cooperative robotics; maybe extending the slug-eater model to incorporate slug-herders and zone-quartering isn't such a bad idea...

    --

  • we're already spread all over the earth, so it ain't so long a trip for anyone to check out the situation in their own backyard.
  • whats next....??? How about the Politician_Bot that fuels its self by sucking the life force (that is lies and greed) from dirty politicains and producing Processed Cheese (in a can of course) for us! Maybe even some snack crackers. Now THAT is aboundant resource!!

  • First RoboFly and now SlugBot.

    Ugh. If they are going to be this lazy, the least they can do is put out a call for name suggestions. I'm sure slashdotters could think up something better.


    SlugDot!
  • I am an American and may have missed something - is there a massive slug problem in Europe? I know that the US has a few slug hot-spots (Oregon, etc) but I was not aware that Europe had any issues with the little beasties.

    --
    I live in the ocean
  • Obviously the bin which the slugs are dropped into should be at ground level, with beer in it. Not only will the charger attract slugs in the vicinity, this also is a way to gather more slugs to charge the robot when the robot can't be charged due to a slug shortage. Okay, so there usually would be an external electrical feed to the charger..but may as well design it to have feedback which tends to increase the charge when there are more slugs.

    Now what's needed is a recipe for beer made from slugs which also attracts slugs...and you thought the slug fermentation was only to generate gas.

  • No more beer (Score:3)

    by derwisch ( 65084 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:01AM (#1567892)
    I immediately sent the link to my mother, who has
    for long times trapped slugs with glasses of beer embedded in the ground. Unfortunately these traps attracted loads of slugs from neighbours. Of course, for 1,5kQ you can buy quite a couple of crates of beer instead.

  • This is kind of scary. (Score:3)

    by Lonesmurf ( 88531 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:05AM (#1567894) Homepage
    Let's give this some thought: A robot that feeds and recharges itself from it.

    Very quickly we can make the connection that this is a possibility for a very frightening future.. or a really bad B-rated sci-fi flick.

    --

  • Re:Salt Shaker (Score:5)

    by Gid1 ( 23642 ) <tom@@@gidden...net> on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:18AM (#1567896)
    Fields of slugs being bred purely for electrical supply, harvested by robots.

    I can just imagine a little slug-hovercraft searching for the little slug known as "Neo".

  • Evolutionary pressure... (Score:4)

    by chazR ( 41002 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:20AM (#1567898) Homepage
    If you deploy something like this on a large scale, you are adding an evolutionary pressure to the slug's environment. Speculating idly on how the slug's genome may respond:

    Lower their metabolic rate so they show up less well on IR, or change shape so they don't look like slugs to the robot (stealth slugs).

    Become too large for the thing to pick up (yuck)

    Develop a mechanism so their exothermic decomposition becomes *much* faster. Exploding slugs (ultra-yuck)

    There is at least one species of slug (huge brownish ones - too lazy to look up classification) that feeds primarily on other slugs. It would be interesting to do a trial to see if these could be used effectively for slug control. I'm not doing it though. Watching one slug eat another is easily the grossest thing I have ever seen.

  • The slugbot should be able to make more slugbots as long as it has a wealth of prey. In times of prey shortages, some slugbots should power down and die... or find other prey. Like those little mexican rat dogs... or poodles...

  • How about the old boxing term, "Slugnutty"?

  • Re:Heaven forbid... (Score:4)

    by webslacker ( 15723 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:30AM (#1567923)
    If they ever made a powered snotbot.
  • This is truly Unique..

    A slug terminator! And the thing comes with a GPS and costs less than one! ha, this is one gadget to have.

    On slug temrinations, I've found that if you mix some salt in water and pour over them, a really weird thing happesn to their bodies (ahem. they dissolve.. this has something to do with Osmosis.. very neat experiment).. Try it.. but be ready to watch solid ooze into slime real quick..

    Slug Feast!
    --

  • Re:Salt Shaker (Score:4)

    by Mithy ( 30439 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:53AM (#1567928) Homepage
    "I bet you wish you'd eaten the blue leaf."

    :)

    --
    "This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
  • and one big slug chasing one small slug is easily the most boring thing I've ever seen =]

    heh now thats a dull chase scene.

    -Ecc
  • (PrezRelease)

    IDOT softarware, annoucned today that they have ported their higly acclaimed game to the Slugbot hardware. This port was done with the help of the Linux kernel and AC's including AC. Quake for Slugbot features among other things (to help censors) gore levels, ability to switch weapons to salt sprinker and the mega salt water spourt .. affactionaly called BFG31337. Quake for Slugbot is also modular and users could make their own modules to compliment all that which was included in QFS.

    In other news, Microsoft decided to enter the Slugbot OS market and would unveil a new OS entitled Slugggin-dos. With the slogan, "The only Microsoft Product that Lives up to it's name".

    {end}
    --
  • Hum, I guess this will mean farmers also gotta buy huge electric-hazard fences to put along their property.
    It would be highly profitable and easy for theives just to steel such devices found on the fields.
    I wonder what's next.... robotic dogs feeding emselfs with theives? :-)

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