Thursday, March 15, 2007

Terranaut

This blog is mainly about sailing, a form of transportation where animals that breathe in the atmosphere (humans) transport themselves on water. But what if animals who breathe in the water (fish) wanted a vehicle that would transport them in the atmosphere. Would it look something like this?

The goldfish - sorry Terranaut - steers the vehicle by its movements in the bowl - sorry cockpit. The camera tracks the fish's movements and, through some electronic jiggery-pokery, commands are sent to the motors driving the wheels.

Left a bit Goldie.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Training wheels for fish???

Carol Anne said...

This looks a lot like some strange engineering thing from the folks at MIT, except it also seems to be in an art gallery with a sailing tapestry on the wall.

The thing it reminded me most of was the plastic balls that some people have for gerbils and hamsters, to let them roam far beyond their cages. When I was growing up, we had a cat who had fits when she saw the gerbil charging at her. I wonder what a cat would do with a goldfish, complete with water (aka cat solvent) coming her way?

Tillerman said...

Yeah, as far as I can tell this device was originally part of an art exhibition. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the folks at MIT had devised something similar.

I like your idea of a goldfish chasing a cat. Or perhaps if you had a few of these you could organize goldfish races, or perhaps even goldfish soccer? Come on MIT geeks, what are you waiting for. This sounds like a perfect IAP activity to me.

Anonymous said...

If I can remember correctly, goldfish have a memory of only 10 seconds. Would it even know what it was doing? Or does it just swim around and randomly bang into walls?

Tillerman said...

10 second memory? Swims around randomly? Sounds like some Tacticat sailors to me.

Carol Anne said...

I believe the folks at MythBusters disproved the one about the 10-second memory. But it is true that goldfish aren't all that bright. We once had one that, when the cat dabbled her claws in the water, would actually go and nibble at them.

That fish is no more.

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