The benefits of living with an engineer

This African gray parrot named Pepper can not fly, since his wings are clipped. But he can drive a little buggy designed by his owner, Andrew Gray, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student at the University of Florida. So that pretty much makes Pepper the Mario Andretti of birds.

Here's a video showing how the buggy works. Looks like fun! And the song is fun until (spoiler alert) the robot gains sentience. Anyway, enjoy!

[The Guardian]

9 Comments

The interesting thing is he might be doing it for fun. Because it looks to me that he could get wherever he's going faster by simply walking.

I enjoyed the parrot and I enjoy the parrot go cart\simple robot. This article is cute and enjoyable! Kudos to the student!!!

Curious. We suspect the National Instruments LabView was used to program the car to be manually controlled or self-operated and the CompactRIO is the device that controls the car.

Cute, but are the bird's action purposeful or is he just playing with a toy the why that parrots do without any regard to what the cart is doing?

I am reminded of the attempt to use pigeons to guide missiles.

Mary replied I didn't even know that some people able to get paid $4253 in 1 month on the internet did you read this page http://www.bit90.com

an excellent alternative to the horror of trying to diaper a parrot.

bombastinator,
Mmmm, maybe use 'fly paper', lol..... snort.

Now all we need to do is get this person together with the folks at iRobot and we can train parrots to vacuum and mop. And mow the lawn.

this was a creative way for allowing his pet to get around:
true or not true?


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April 2013: How It Works

For our annual How It Works issue, we break down everything from the massive Falcon Heavy rocket to a tiny DNA sequencer that connects to a USB port. We also take a look at an ambitious plan for faster-than-light travel and dive into the billion-dollar science of dog food.

Plus the latest Legos, Cadillac's plug-in hybrid, a tractor built for the apocalypse, and more.


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