Earth Rover Bot
@EarthRoverBot
@EarthRoverBot is a Twitter experiment based on Google Street View pictures. It is simulating a robot that is trying to get from Lubec, ME to San Diego, CA -- from the rough northeast corner of the USA to the rough southwest corner.
The bot has some very simple navigation routines, and it will attempt to drive itself to its destination, but it will only travel to places that have Google Street Map data. Every 20 minutes it will pick a move to make, hopefully towards the destination.
But it's not very smart, so it could definitely use some help from humans! You can issue commands to the bot via Twitter to help it on its way. Here's a list of commands @EarthRoverBot accepts:
- help - Asking for help will send you to this page.
- status - Send this command to get the bot's position, bearing, and a picture of what it can see.
- map - Are you lost? Send this command to get a Google Map URL of the bot's current location.
- move x - Move the bot x meters. You can pass a negative value to go backwards
- turn x / left x / right x - turn x degrees. You can pass a negative value if you want.
- fov x - change the 'field of view' of the bot. Pass a low number for a really tight zoom, or pass a high number for a wide angle shot.
Also, to get around Twitter's duplicate tweet limitations, you can add extra words/characters to a command. For example, "@EarthRoverBot move 10" and "@EarthRoverBot move 10 please" will both work.
It's going to take a long time to travel 3500+ miles from Maine to California, so please help!