From: phil osborn (philosborn@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 23:18:34 MDT
Actually, I just remembered one of the best examples of teleoperation, which
was written up in the Orange County Register a few years ago. Locally, Loma
Linda University worked with a quadrapleagic kid to give him mobility via a
4X4 battery-operated model, on which they mounted a camera, microphone and
speaker. The kid could follow his mother around the house or neighborhood,
listening and carrying on a conversation, or play soccer with his buddies
outside, all while confined to his wheelchair. Unfortunately, they ran out
of funding and had to discontinue the project.
It occurred to me years before that that you could mount a camera on one of
those trained helper dogs, and do the same thing. As I recall, the Germans
tried that in WWI in trench warfare, with radio-controlled dogs carrying
bombs. Unfortunately for the controllers, however, they had not trained the
dogs to ignore shells bursting around them at close range, so the dogs fled
back to the controllers. The bombs were apparently on timers....
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