Have you ever read Dune? You know, the Frank Herbert classic that was awfully remade into a dreadful film starring Sting (the musician)?
Hopefully you have, because I certainly have. I love a bit of Dune. Hence, when I saw this story I couldn’t help feel automatically attached to the robot in question.
Tumbleweed Desert, designed by Israeli inventor Shlomi Mir, is a kind of autonomous robot that roams the desert like Paul Muad’Dib, only using the wind, and of course bad jokes, to propel itself.
(You see, right there I just gave it a little push).
What’s it for? Well, creator Mir says: "The Tumbleweed Desert is a platform designed to operate autonomously for years traveling distances of thousands of kilometers using only the power of the wind. Its mission: to hold back the spreading desert.
"Desertification is a serious and irreversible state of land degradation, particularly evident in drylands. It is mainly caused by land use changes from population pressures, agricultural expansion, deforestation, and over use.
"By alternately collecting data, communicating together, and traveling to disperse seeds, a group of Tumbleweeds can slowly create a barrier to defend against the advancing desert."
Cool, huh?
Check out Mir’s website for other ingenius and quirky projects that I’d love to get my mitts on.
