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an asymmetric situation like we're facing in Iraq, it's all about picking out the enemy (in) a sea of noncombatants and then getting results of that interpretation back down to give better instruction to the people on the ground.
How would a system like that work? Would it take a video feed and then scan it through an artificial intelligence system?
Angle: Could be. You could have large numbers of nodes gathering data and feeding that into the network.
What sort of research are you doing on swarming robots?
Angle: Once you make it cheap to have nodes, then the question becomes how many can you control with how many people. Swarming technology is all about unattended control of large numbers of things. We did a demo where we started with 128 robots in the corner, hit a button, and they rapidly diffused throughout the entire floor, creating (something) almost like a grid, so that you're able to download the physical plan of the place based on them talking to each other.
If you had a robot that needed to go and recharge, it would go ask its neighbor, "Hey, where's the recharger?" and the message would propagate the network until it got to a robot near a recharger who'd yell, "Over here." The robot needing the charge would then proceed toward where its neighbor thought that the rechargers were, and another robot (would) just similarly fill the empty space.
We did some other silly things. All the robots had really good, sound systems, so...we did self-organizing orchestration. The tenors and the sopranos would randomly give themselves a part.
What is the military's goal for robots?
Angle: The robots are about giving our soldiers new and important ways of doing dangerous missions. In Afghanistan, many of the caves had booby traps. Many of the caves contained unstable weapons caches, so (investigating those areas) was a lousy job. The idea of having a robot able to go in first made all the sense in the world. It was a better way.
We've evolved beyond Vietnam, where they would tie a rope around someone and lower them in a cave so if they got shot they (could) pull them out. Clearing buildings is almost worse than caves. Every time you go in a door you have to make a decision. Do you jump in? You could get shot. Do you throw a grenade in? It could blow up an innocent person in the room. The robot's true value is...decreasing the battlefield fog.
The other thing that robots actually allow for is the deployment (of) nonlethal technology: flash grenades, goop guns, things (like) that. The reason why today they are not in use widely is because an M16 works better (and seems the wiser choice for a soldier who's life is on the line). There is a different list profile associated with the application of robot technology.
Switching back to consumers again, in Korea and Japan, you see a lot of humanoid robots. Is there much of an opportunity there?
Angle: I think humanoid robots are interesting and economically irrelevant for the foreseeable future. The PackBot will climb stairs wildly faster and wildly more robustly than a humanoid robot, and you can take PackBot, you can throw it off of the second-story building and it will keep going. What do you think would happen if we did the same thing with a humanoid robot? It would be mangled, twisted steel.
On the entertainment side, I think there are some situations where humanoid robots have shown to be economically viable. The Robosapien was very cool, and it came at a great price point. You got more than $100 worth of fun out of the Robosapien.
Will it take time for people to acclimate to robots in the home?
Angle: Anecdotally, once you buy a Roomba, you're pretty happy. It's a better way of...handling the routine floor maintenance. If you have shag carpets all over your floor, you probably don't like Roomba because Roomba doesn't work well on shags, but if you have medium pile carpets and hardwood floors, and area rugs, you'll love it.
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I'm thrilled about this company and what they have done in making
robotics accessable to households.
Imagine the future. This could be the Microsoft of robotics.
Cyberdyne Systems!
"human" and consumer applications robotics for years.
The market for consumer-electronics-household robotics will get
much, much bigger.
Do a Google on "Japanese Robotics".
BMR777
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The real development of robots depends on the software needed for the device to accomplish it's job. In the future there will be extremely mechanically sophisticated devices whose "software" will be the human brain guiding the object by remote control, maybe with an MRI type device "reading" the orders of the "driver."
But some mechanically sophisticated devices will be autonomous through the operation of the self-contained, somewhat AI software; an "if this, then that" program, even software which allows for unanticipated circumstances and makes appropriate "decisions" by choosing from commands in it's program(s).
I can't wait for more and better. So much of human existance could be radically improved with robotics; for menial chores, for crop harvesting, for street sweeping, for AI medical expertise through "learning" we can improve our diagnostic and treatment capability ten-fold. Through robot nanotechnology we can clean arteries, repair, organs, clean dendrites from alzheimers patients; the future is limitless!
Let's roll!
gleened from science fiction rather than science
fact.