Parrot Plots World Domination From Atop His Motorized Mech

Few things would be as horrific as a flock of parrots invading your hometown astride mechanized vehicles of death and cuteness. The good news is, they can't kill us all, someone has to be around to hand out crackers and change the newspaper. If you've ever been to home where someone owns a bird or if you've ever owned a bird yourself, you know they can be noisy creatures constantly shrieking. A man named Andrew Gray has an African Grey Parrot that was a noisy creature.

Apparently, Andrew tried all sorts of things to quiet the bird including an automated squirt gun that would spray the bird each time he squawked. However, as it turned out the parrot like to get wet. Plan foiled. So Andrew did what any bird owner would do, just prior to reaching for a BB gun, he built the parrot its own little parrot car.

Andrew's idea was to build a little car that his parrot could sit on that would allow the bird to follow his owner around the house. The wheeled vehicle has what appear to be a pair of remote-controlled monster truck tires in the front and freewheeling casters in the back. It has a perch for the bird to sit on and a joystick that the bird can grab with his beak to steer the vehicle around.

The entire works reminds me quite a bit of one of those robotic vacuum cleaners. The BirdBuggy, as the creator calls it, even has a robotic mode to allow the little vehicle to automatically seek out its charging station using a camera integrated into the design. The buggy also has bump sensors and an infrared collision avoidance system.

[via Jalopnik]