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  Back in 1979, there was Newton... the land drone and faithful companion!  Invented by Steve Hodges, a serial entrepeneur here in Boise, Idaho (where I live).  Steve just recently sold M2M, an irriga

Posted by Lew Payne on January 27, 2011 at 8:06am

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Back in 1979, there was Newton... the land drone and faithful companion!  Invented by Steve Hodges, a serial entrepeneur here in Boise, Idaho (where I live).  Steve just recently sold M2M, an irrigation communications company for $33.3 Mil.

 

Now all we need to do is get him interested in flying robots!

 

Check out the youtube video of Newton from 1979... it's super cheesy yet admittedly ahead of its time!

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Comments

  • Developer
    Jason Short January 27, 2011 at 6:59pm
    Perhaps a potential Sparkfun Autonomous race entry...
  • Christopher Cooper January 27, 2011 at 4:32pm

    The video's dated 1989. Still pretty impressive for the time. A 20Mb hard disk must have been cutting edge for 1989, our first PC in 1993 only had a 400Mb disk!

    I had a chuckle at Newton "waking you up on time". I can't think of a more terrifying way to be woken up than a robotic voice yelling "RISE AND SHINE!" at me.

  • Albert Augustine January 27, 2011 at 3:50pm

    what the they made this in 1979!!?? I like the part about its 20 megabyte hard disk drive

    and its 720K floppy disk drive lol if steve hodges got that far imagine what he could do with todays technolegy

    considering my smart phone makes newton look like an oversize can opener

    oh and I also like there fancy talk for a microphone "digital voice procesor"

     

  • Lew Payne January 27, 2011 at 3:36pm
    Papero cannot climb stairs, fetch the morning paper, prepare meals (operate a kitchen), or diagnose illnesses.  Neither can Newton, of course... but when you first started reading this comment, I bet you were thinking I was going to claim it could!  Man, I'm in a jovial mood today!
  • Sebastian Gralla January 27, 2011 at 2:39pm
    reminds me somehow on Papero a small personal robot, capable of doing everything newton can do (just much smaller)
  • I.S. January 27, 2011 at 2:14pm

    wtf?!!

    1979?!! are you kidding me?! This looks rocket science to me for that time.

    I don't know if even more recent robo-pets like Sony's Aibo is as capable as this drone.

    I'm afraid to imagine what Steve Hodges would have by now, if he kept developing this kind of stuff.

This reply was deleted.