
Fluffy Little Rovers Are an Effective, Adorable Way of Monitoring Penguins - spectruman
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/fluffy-little-rovers-are-an-effective-adorable-way-of-monitoring-penguins#.VFemIk6WiSg.hackernews
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icehawk219
This is awesome but the pictures of the rover with the penguin chick on it got
me wandering. Do animals, in this case penguins specifically, have their own
version of the Uncanny Valley [0]? For an animal that does I'd imagine that
this could actually have a measurable negative impact on their mood. Based on
the information in the article it sounds like the penguins were OK with these
rovers running around. But I wonder if they'd be even calmer if they looked
just a tab bit more, or less, like another penguin to them.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)

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BrandonMarc
I suspect that's true. The article mentions the birds even tried talking to
one of the rovers ... I suspect the researchers want to ensure the rover
appears (visually and behaviorally) harmless, but at the same time also
doesn't appear to be something worth attacking.

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sjm-lbm
I couldn't find a mention of this in the IEEE article, but a story on NPR on
this topic this morning specifically mentioned that the penguins "sang to it
and seemed disappointed that the rover wouldn't peep."[1] So, yes, it looks
like the penguins did hit a level where they might have been (at least)
confused about what was happening.

[1]: [http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069792/scientists-find-
snea...](http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069792/scientists-find-sneaky-way-
to-check-penguins-vital-signs)

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btown
Love the story! Interestingly, the fragment identifier has .hackernews in
it... at first I thought that the poster was doing their analytics team a nice
favor by adding it in, but turns out spectruman is either a bot or a media
account for IEEE Spectrum (look at his post history). I know Reddit has rather
strict policies for this type of account, not sure what HN's policies are.
Either way, mods, please don't remove this story, or I'll just repost it as an
interested third party and the comments will be lost :(

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arthursilva
Wtf, the Penguin in the second photo has a wrist watch around his wing?

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taylorfausak
From the paragraph above the photo:

> The researchers went about this by sneaking up on a nesting penguin from
> behind, covering its eyes, and sticking a cardio-frequency monitor on its
> back and putting the receiver (a watch-like device) around its flipper.

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Kluny
Add that to the list of jobs no one told me about in grade 11 Careers class.

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jallmann
The PBS documentary series Nature has a really awesome episode about penguins
using this technology. Really amazing footage.

Not sure if the episode is streamable anywhere, but here is the site:
[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/category/episodes/by-
animal/p...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/category/episodes/by-
animal/penguin/)

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pj_mukh
This is amazing! I would love to see the rover just operate autonomously,
allowing the human to stay FAR away. It could seek out the tags and stamp the
data while not bumping into penguins or generally not annoying them!

