Cisco Develops Mobile Robots for Wireless Nets

coondoggie writes "Cisco has developed a set of small smart robots, which can act as wireless communications relays, that sense when a mobile user is moving out of service range, and can follow the user to maintain connectivity. According to Dave Buster, product marketing manager for the Cisco Global Government Solutions Group, the robots can follow a user almost anywhere to maintain connectivity. Published reports said the robots were part of Cisco's "Information on the move" initiative — a wide ranging plan to secure all things wireless. Whether or not the systems has an enterprise application, it is of interest to the military and initiatives such as the Army's Future Combat Systems which uses a variety of advanced systems to achieve battleground superiority."

How about some privacy?

[HateBreeder]

I don't like the idea of cellular companies tracking my movement.

One step forward

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a neat step forward, but really only experimentally viable.

The real advacement will be when they can implement their mesh technology with a swam of airborne drones, which automatically place themselves for optimal coverage of a specified area based on throughput and interference avoidance.

I'd give it 10 year, TOPS.

(Cisco's current technologies already support this on a rudimentary level. If you don't know much about wireless mesh networking, here's a wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network [wikipedia.org] and Cisco: http://cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns703/netbr0900aecd8 0364a60.html [cisco.com])