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| Aww, it's so cute, you almost don't want to crush it for stealing your livelihood. (Image courtesy engadget.com.) |
According to The Guardian, Australians have converted a military robot into the Domino's Robotic Unit (DRU.) This prototype pizza purveyor is a combination of military technology and science from Marathon Laboratories, who helped to develop the bot.
| There is serious technology involved here. They know your insatiable craving for delicious pizza is no joke. (Image courtesy dailydot.com.) |
DRU uses lasers (to dodge items in its way, not zap them) and GPS to navigate to its delivery destinations. The LIDAR lasers, according to Engadget, are the same sort that are used by self-driving cars. With four wheels and a top speed of 20 km/hr (a little over 12 m.p.h.), it's faster than your usual city cyclist, and is being tested to maneuver on sidewalks, bike paths, and trails.
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| No word on whether you can program a DRU to make you chase it for the pizza, thus burning calories. (Image courtesy telegraph.co.uk.) |
Upon reaching its destination, the pizza purchaser simply uses their phone to send DRU a security code that unlocks a special compartment containing its pizza payload. This compartment is insulated for heat, while another can be kept cold (so your soda stays chill.) Ah, future, you are delicious.
The DRUs will be appearing in stores over the next six months, and are intended to be cruising the streets of Queensland within the next two years. So you have until 2018 to get your coding skills down, either to build better robots that won't take your job, or to hack open DRU's pizza pod...because with all these non-humans stealing your work, you're probably starting to get really hungry.
| Whether DRU ends up beaten in an alleyway by a gang disenfranchised motorized bicycles remains to be seen. (Image courtesy phys.org.) |
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