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there is no conclusive proof either way, because we don't know squat about the brain yet

A hundred years ago all we knew is that it was a spongy tissue. Then scientists discovered neurons and their connections. They studied the results of lesions in different regions of the brain and learned something about its macro structure. Scientists studied the chemistry of the brain and invented drugs to treat some brain disorders. Other scientists have simulated small neural networks in computers obtaining behavior that emulates primitive animals.

We may not know everything about the brain yet, but our knowledge improves all the time. Compare this to the claims about paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognition, just to name a few. What progress have we had in these areas in the last hundred years? Nothing. People who make claims about these phenomena make exactly the same claims they made a hundred years ago, and present exactly the same arguments.

As a counter example, look at the history of aviation, that I mentioned in my other post. In 1900 people had been flying balloons for over a hundred years, and many had tried heavier than air machines without success. Because of this, many people were naturally biased against the idea of airplanes, there seemed to exist no progress in the field. But scientists were working on heavier than air machines, and progress existed even if most people weren't aware of it. The first successful airplane made everyone abandon their former bias.

It would take just one simple successful paranormal experiment to make every scientist in the world change their mind. But before that successful experiment is performed, every scientist is justified in having a strong bias against all sorts of paranormal claims. And before any scientist would even consider performing the simplest experiment, some progress must be shown. If the arguments presented now are the same that we have seen for a hundred years, it's understandable that scientists will be reluctant to waste their time.

BEAM bots are cheap, relatively easy to make, and provide a great introduction to both electronics and basic robotics. They aren't the most sophisticated bots in the world, but they are a great place to start. And, because they use analog electronics instead of microprocessors, they require no programming skills (if that matters to you).

http://www.solarbotics.net/

In the professional sense, many engineering schools have faculty specializing in robotics. They tend to dwell in CS, EE, or MechE departments. The CS deparment I got my degree in had courses in robotics and plenty of opportunities for students to work with bots.

The other word used is BEAM (Biology Electronics Aesthetics Mechanics) from Mark Tilden's early efforts (circa 1990-4) from isn't explicited junk / recycled focused.

Overclock your TI calculator
http://richfiles.solarbotics.net/Turbo.html

I'm not sure you'd want to overclock your watch...

Did you try overclocking your TI? :)

Well, the progress can go in 2 distinct directions. The calculators could be 50 times faster while eating up batteries in 5 minutes. Or to remain at the same speed, but have the batteries hold 50 times longer. Or have the progress ballanced, and be 5 times faster, with 130% of the original battery life.
It seems nothing of this is happening though.
I use accumulators so I don't really care about the battery life that much (as long as it's >1week) but when you write a program to draw fractals and wait 6 hours for the result to display, or struggle to get below 3FPS while writing a game, or brute force some solution of some algorithm, or draw a graph of a second integral of a function (1px=5sec), speed becomes an important factor.

I'd rather them learn how to overlock their TI-89's for college. God knows any engineering student will appreciate it, most intimately. Mods are also available for 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, and 92's. Many professors still will not allow the 92 on tests, which still makes the 89 your best buy.

Burn down your TI-89 with some fairly minor soldering skillz!

You can even use a little arctic silver and a couple drops of superglue, and attach a flat heatsink (it doesn't really need it, though). You'll want rechargable batteries, and I always carried around an extra set with me.

The parent is suggesting that artificial selection is proof against natural selection.

And you can't breed dogs or horses or humans or anything else to enhance a specific trait can you?

The fact of the matter is that we are fundamentally no different from the amoeboid life we evolved from, and the rest of the life that evolved from it, just more complicated. If simple insectoid neuro circuitry can be approximated with simple neural nets (read this for more info on this highly debated subject) it could easily be argued that it is not the distinction between artificial and "natural" intelligence that should be question/examined but the existence and definition intelligence itself, and quite possibly life for that matter. These are concepts as arbitrary and ill-defined as the spirituality that their nay-sayers flaunt so wantonly in protest.

For christ's sake (pun and capitalization intended), think before you flap your rot. (There's just no escaping them on this subject)

Wow, the TI-89 uses an RC oscillator for its clock! That kind of clock is one of the cheapest and least accurate, so I wouldn't want to run a real-time-clock off of it. I wonder if they have some sort of calibration mechanism on the production line, or if the processors are so underclocked already that they will surely work with a large variation of clock speeds. Even after leaving the production line, RC clocks drift and are more sensitive to temperature, so TI must always leave plenty of speed margin.

This external power source for iPod music players uses three nine-volt batteries to provide up to ten hours of play time.

Also, judging from the picture, it looks like two 9v batteries and two AA batteries. (If you need two different voltages, then you use a voltage regulator -- not rocket science here.)

As for the Altoids tins, Altoids tins are used in lots of home electronic projects. Here's another one. (And google will find you even more.)

All in all it's a really crappy article.

How about that? Cheap, hackable, ugly and fun...
See http://www.solarbotics.net/library.html
Perfect!

Mark Tilden, the designer of Robosapien (and of BEAM robotics for any of you who have heard of it) purposely left the Robosapien open for modification (god bless his soul ^_^) More people/companies should do this! =)

I'm actually quite interested in this, as I'm in the Australian Robocup Junior atm (Year 9) and this is a great platform to begin experimenting in bipedal robots. Heck, it could even begin it's own competition section (the robotic AIBO dogs have their own soccer competition)

Mark Tilden is also heavy researcher in the biomorphic robotics field, and through his experiments he has essentially created the BEAM robotics field.

Solarbotics, one of the best resources for BEAM robots I know of

Robocup Official Website

Mark Tilden at WIKI

Mark Tilden, the designer of Robosapien (and of BEAM robotics for any of you who have heard of it) purposely left the Robosapien open for modification (god bless his soul ^_^) More people/companies should do this! =)

I'm actually quite interested in this, as I'm in the Australian Robocup Junior atm (Year 9) and this is a great platform to begin experimenting in bipedal robots. Heck, it could even begin it's own competition section (the robotic AIBO dogs have their own soccer competition)

Mark Tilden is also heavy researcher in the biomorphic robotics field, and through his experiments he has essentially created the BEAM robotics field.

Solarbotics, one of the best resources for BEAM robots I know of

Robocup Official Website

Mark Tilden at WIKI

Some more information

Thats got to be the worst dragon I have ever seen. and for 18k? I would hardly say that people don't know what a dragon 'looks' like. There are many pictures/representations of what people perceive dragons to look like, and I would hazard a guess that a class of 5year olds could come up with a more 'realistic' design. The Mark Tilden guy that had the $100 dollar robots, now they were good. and they could run and wouldnt fall over etc. Now get a few of them hooked up with sensors and you would have a decent house guard, and I bet it would come under $200

The US already has this... The Robo Sapien ...Japan is sooo behind the US in technology...they need to catch up(sarcasm)...The robosapien is much better...well atleast it looks alot better...

TICalc.org has several articles on things like that. My favorites are Overclocking and Battery Expander.

Just in case someone wants to do it the hand-soldered way:
SMT assembly techniques

Well - If you live in the uk, and have old computer gear - with the exception of CRT's I can use it. Rip it to peices and use teh components to build robots.

Especially BEAM robots.

Of course the cases are then usable in the scrapheap for larger projects. Anyone here watch scrapheap challenge?

There are people I know to whom anything above a 100mhz p1 with 12mb is an upgrade....

Also you should check how much even older gear sells for on ebay. Theres always another use for stuff if you look hard enough.... I agree that one way or another, the manufacturer, and the consumer should share the cost and responsibility of recylcling the stuff.

Mindstorms? Java? He's describing exactly what BEAM robotics sets out to do, build processorless robots. Why model with a processor? Check out Solarbotics for working models of these things, with no computers, and usually costing a few dollars.

...requires 4 AA batteries though. these aren't the tiny (size of a deck of cards0 solarbotics you've seen before, they're closer in footprint size comparable to that of a sheet of paper.

would it be possible to get a solar panel from radio-shack (~6$) to trickle charge the bug while it's active, thus increasing battery life? 2 solar cells?

a nice vivisection of the BIO Bugs:

http://www.solarbotics.net/biobugs/default.htm

Check out http://www.solarbotics.net/biobugs/default.htm by the makers of some beam robot kits- they took apart a bio bug and it looks easy to hack, there is plenty of room left over in the shell and Mark Tilden made it to be hackable.