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Inventive Genius Dean Kamen Profiled
Matt Leese writes: "Wired has a great article about Dean Kamen online. Information is available on the iBot by Deka Research, which was founded by Kamen. The iBot can go up and down curbs, climb stairs, and balance on a single set of wheels. There is also discussion of FIRST Robotics, an organization founded by Kamen for the advancement of science and technology in youth." Kamen is an interesting fellow, to put it lightly. Reading about his house and habits reminds me of my childhood-favorite biography of Thomas Edison.
"a six-wheeled robotic "mobility system" that can climb stairs, traverse sandy and rocky terrain, and raise its user to eye-level with a standing person
All we have to do now is retrofit homes with sand pits and rocky terrain. And the only reason I can find where I'd want to be at eye-level with someone is if I'm in a fight with them..
so smart when is he gonna come up with the ibattle-bot (thursdays on comedy central)? --
It walks down stairs
Alone or in pairs
It makes a roboty sound
It springs! It springs!
A mobility thing!
Everyone knows it's iBot...
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Private Essayist
I can't think of any audience better suited for plugging the FIRST competition to. It is a robotics competition that teams high schools with corporate sponsors. The teams build a robot in about 6 weeks from the time that they get the rules for the year's competition. My wife participated for two years and my own company sponsored a team for the first time last year. This could probably be called the Geek Olympics. It is intense and fun. If you get a chance to do it, grab on with both hands. And if you are on a first time team, find an older team that will mentor you. I know of at least one which has done exactly that.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
at http://www.indetech.com/a log.class/news/20000407-INN-NEWCHAIR-IBO T.html
and http://www.accesslife.com/scripts/saisapi.dll/cat
amongst other places
I think it's refreshing to see that it is still possible for individuals to come up with useful ideas and inventions without being part of a corporate research facility. In an age where the big money of corporations is used to hire all of the best people, we are seeing an increasing amount of projects which are merely refinements of past ideas rather than true new ideas.
People like Kamen and Dyson are often better at providing something that people want than corporations, especially when it's a product that according to accepted wisdom there isn't a market for. And it's also nice to see that Kamen isn't just out for himself, but is instead funding programs like First which are designed to get children interested in science and technology. After all, anyone who doesn't find the following quote disturbing needs to worry:
Kamen launched First several years ago when he realized that many American teenagers were unable to name a single living scientist.
AAH! Don't let Jon Katz know we're doing geek profiling, he'll write another article!
Given that Edison was the one-man MPAA of his time, I'm not sure whether comparing anyone to him is such a great compliment.
Good old American ingenuity, putting together mechanical things and breaking them!
Vlad the Impaler last night was so awesome!!!
"A governemnt which puts into place laws like statutes of limitations preventing people which get screwed by big companies from seeking damages, also refuses to help those same people. (FYI: my wife's disabilities were caused by the drug Thalitimide, for which the distributors can no longer be sued, even though they hid evidence of distribution on medical records.)
Sorry for the rant, but as much as I hate democrats the republicans are responsible this kind of sh*t."
Your frustration is understandable. Still, I don't know that you can put the blame on either democrat or republican. Both parties seem beholden to the corporations, and your experience is yet another in a long line of examples.
Liability laws too dangerous to the bottom line? Let's get our good buddies in government to fix that problem.
It's the stereotypical HMO problem again. The doctor knows of a treatment (or in your case, a device) that would improve the quality of life of a patient. The bean-counters back at the main office, however, say no. Can't have quality of life come ahead of profits and shareholder value.
Rant on...
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Posted by timothy on Thursday September 14,...
Reading about his house and habits reminds me of my childhood-favorite biography of Thomas Edison.
I should have expected that from 'timothy'. Try reading more history and you'll find that Edison's biographies are often inflated ego trips for the man, and mysteriously choose to avoid talking about Nikolai Tesla. Check out this, this, and this to understand why. If it were up to Edison we'd have *no* electricity because he wanted us to use a DC system simply because it was his idea. 'NIH' (Not Invented Here) syndrome is a bad thing.
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
I'd make two points in response to this thread. Please forgive me if I've flouted any of the conventions of posting to Slashdot; while I'm a regular reader, this is my first response.
I wrote the Dean Kamen profile in the September issue of Wired, for what that's worth.
First, to Hates, who writes, "...the only reason I can find where I'd want to be at eye-level with someone is if I'm in a fight with them." From what I understand, most people who are confined to wheelchairs quickly tire of looking other people in the belt-buckle, as opposed to looking them in the eye. Think about all the associations we have about looking down at someone, or looking up to someone. It's actually pretty important to bring wheelchair users up to eye level with the able-bodied. There's a Dateline video that you may be able to track down on the Web that shows how an iBot tester responds to this particular feature. As I recall it, she cries, because it has been so long since she was able to look her mother in the eye, on the same level.
Second, FIRST competitions are nothing like the robot wars on Comedy Central. They're not about professional engineers building destructive robots (which I agree can be fun.) They're about high school students who are having their first experience with engineering. Some of them are having their first experience with any kind of successful creative project. I had to tone down some of the uplifting aspects of my Kamen profile because Wired likes to be at least somewhat skeptical, but if you ever have a chance to see your local FIRST competition (usually in March or April), do it. It's one of those things that will restore your faith in human potential, etc. If you're an engineer and you can spare the time to work with a team - or get your company to sponsor a team - then do that. Info at www.usfirst.org.
I was gonna say it.. but... you did it nicely.
'Tis true. Edison *did* do some things, but is not the great, wonderful person everyone makes him out to be, and much of what he did was done for greed and power, not for inventing.
ie: Edison invented the electric chair so he could show how AC Electricity was BAD, and tried to get congress to outlaw it (Tesla & Westinghouse were going to use AC to transmit power, which as we all know, is FAR more efficient). Edison was hung on DC.
Edison electrocuted an elephant to death at the world's fair in NY to show how AC was bad.
Tesla was a true genius, and the smithsonian won't even recognize him.
yeah, but i`ve heard of tesla, but not of the smithsonian, so its all swings and roundabouts.
Is your first reaction to all stories on /. that mention robots, "Yeah, but can you mount a death laser on it to destroy your enemies?" I know mine is...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I must say that Dean Kamen and Woody Flowers are some great people. My high school (Lakewood High School) has done FIRST since 1995. Tried to get my university to sponsor a team when I was a freshmen, but that didn't fly. Like previous people have said, if you get a chance to do this, do it.
What if the Daleks get hold of this technology? We 're doomed!!!
Really, I just breathed in and then breathed out. Thought everyone might like to share.
Argh, I saw footage of that on TV this week. It was in a documentary about Fred Leuchter, a electric chair engineer turned Holocaust revisionist.
It really disgusted me. Those were other times, but I can't suppress the feeling that Edison must have been a cruel man.
Jacco /var/log
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# cd
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Think you'd be disqualified if you programmed your robot to destroy your corporate sponsors?
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Tesla was a true genius, and the smithsonian won't even recognize him.
Then, in protest, I won't recognize the Smithsonian! Something like this:
Fred: "Hey, what's that big building over there?"
Me: "Why, I don't know. I don't recognize it!"
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
For years I have been sailing in Fischer's Island sound, and there were stories told of a kooky inventor who was worth millions who bought the place. The old lighthouse topped home looks like it has been renovated, there is an old Navy tender tied up to the dock (in Battleship Grey of course), the wind turbine is occasionally turning, and once in a while you will see this really freaky looking amphibious army truck roaming the beach.
:-) Too bad very few of them know the real story behind the man on the island -- most propbably assume it is old money or some .com investor. Nice to see someone who has earned money the hard way --> risk == return.
It is really a very cool looking place, and you can just *feel* the jealousy on all the boaters floating by.
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It's the stereotypical HMO problem again. The doctor knows of a treatment (or in your case, a device) that would improve the quality of life of a patient. The bean-counters back at the main office, however, say no. Can't have quality of life come ahead of profits and shareholder value.
You have no idea how wrong this is. Two points:
#1: The people making the decisions to deny care are medical professionals, just like your GP. In most cases, if challenges on the medical efficacy of a procedure the Medical director and person's physician will confer and agree on a recommended treatment.
#2: If you know this to be true about HMOs, then don't enroll in one. You are welcome to fund your own health care. Just don't expect Uncle Sam or anyone else to bail you out when you get nailed with sickness. For your information, many HMOs cover a whole lot of stuff that didn't use to be covered at all and started the trend towards comprehensive medical insurance... Infertility treatment, Prescription drugs, chiropractic care, preventative care etc.
Anyway, if you *are* a member of an HMO, relax in the knowledge that you are far more likely to be killed in a hospital by accident than you are by an HMO denying you care.
stuart
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"Inventive Genius Dean Kamen Profiled"
;-)
I thought you activists were against online profiling?
And of anybody, Tesla was a true "hacker". Although many companies wanted to buy his patents for large sums of money, he refused. I think in many cases he refused to even patent ideas because he thought they should be for the good of all. So companies took advantage of his ideas, appropriated them, got rich off them, and erased Tesla from the history books. Tesla, one of the greatest scientists and inventors to ever live, died alone, penniless, and forgotten. It is really a shame and a disgrace. There are still devices and towers built by Tesla that we haven't fully figured out. He was truly an amazing man.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
...that a competent personal injury lawyer can't completely destroy.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I have also had the opportunity to meet Kamen. He struck me as incredibly down to earth for someone who has done so much and who is reaching for so much more. Perhaps the thing about him that impresses me the most is that his wealth has come from him constantly seeking to make things better for other people. In this internet age where people have been celebrated (including in Wired) for making money out of essentially vapor, it is nice to see tribute paid to someone who has truly achieved something concrete and lasting.
He has a pretty cool house, too. :-)
bun-fhuinneog agam!
>Once again, my friend, he STARTED the >competition for students to make robots and >battle them. Clarification: Battlebots is a completely different entity from the FIRST competition that Dean founded. While Battlebots and FIRST have similar goals, as is mentioned in pcwhalen's post, their approaches are very different. In FIRST, rather than the goal being to destroy another team's machine, the goal is to design a machine that can outperform the competition, with the only damage caused by normal robot interaction. Nate
I wanted to see what it looked like; didn't notice any pictures in the Wired article (not unusual, since it was about the man, not his inventions per se). I found these, and it doesn't look awkward at all, it actually looks very agile, this thing is amazing.
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Communication is only possible between equals
Yeah but how well will it do in Battlebots!??!!?
rhino
Because it feels like something I've done before, yeah I could fake it but I'd still want more...
For those of you that have the bandwidth, you can check out the Dateline piece about the iBot here: Dateline
I also found the "jobs" email address for His company for those of you who read the story and thought, I want to work with him! (Like me) You can send your resume to: DEKA Jobs
bun-fhuinneog agam!
So was I making up accusations? No, everything I said about HMOs came directly from physicians complaining about the way HMOs have treated them. You say that the HMO decision-makers are medical professionals. The physicians I have spoken with say the opposite. The reality probably is that both are true in some cases. You are presenting the best-case scenario, and I was presenting the worst-case scenario.
Although I thank you for setting a more balanced tone to my comments, it wasn't my intent to talk about HMOs as such. Rather, I was using that as a common example of the attitude of profits-over-people. If my example painted with too broad a stroke, my original point still stands -- there are numerous examples where corporations cause human suffering in the name of profits.
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If you'd go to a corner in some crowded street in, say, L.A., and said those exact words: "Really, I just breathed in and then breathed out. Thought everyone might like to share.", I guess they'd probably share a few bucks with you.
Here on Slashdot, that'll only get you moderated down. Goes to show which crowd is the wiser, huh.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Tesla was a true genius, and the smithsonian won't even recognize him.
Hell, he's been dead for a long time. I doubt I'd recognize him either.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
Will I learn more about blindness if I close my eyes or wear a blindfold?
No, it is not a good idea to try to pretend to be blind. As a matter of fact, you could get just the opposite impression about what it is like to be blind. You might have a hard time finding things, you might bump into things, you might knock something over, or you might hurt yourself. You might feel frightened, frustrated or confused; then you might think this is what it is like for blind people. But it is not like that for us. Blind people (depending on how long they've been blind) have training and experience that you do not have, and we know how to do things (sometimes differently) that you do not. It is easier for us than it would be for you. If you want to learn more about blindness, instead of pretending to be blind, you might want to ask a blind person to talk with you. Perhaps you will want to contact a local chapter of the National Federation of the Blind.
It's kind of a personal matter for me, as I've worked with a blind person once, (are you reading this, Eddy?), and that experience helped me understand blindness much better than I could have otherwise.
The cure for 1933 is 1917.
E. E. 'Doc' Smith wrote some of the finest early 'space opera' science fiction. It's easily scorned by modernists as there's no fashionable cynicism in it, plus it's good and cheesy and totally overblown- but there's one point that's very important, in 'Doc' Smith novels the super-hero is always an _engineer_, often a complete scientist- yet still with a movie-star 'cool' that would look good on Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's like Arnold delivering an erudite and brilliant dissertation on how he's managed to enhance the beam intensity of his laser weapon into the terawatts- and then promptly turning around and using it in the classic tradition of the action hero. It's wildly overglamorous _science_ and _intelligence_. Contrast that, and the deification of scientists in the 40s and 50s, to the current (corporate-directed?) demonization of 'hacker' types, and the glorification of _dumb_ violence. "The Matrix" was a nice change from this (I particularly liked one small, 'Doc' Smithian detail- "Mouse", the ultra-geeky, scrawny little hacker type, is killed in a plot twist, but rather than have him perish cringing and wishing for pr0n, Mouse goes out in a blaze of glory with two blazing Thompson machine guns in his hands, veritably 'dies like a Klingon'. 'Doc' Smith would have understood that.)
The interesting part is that people of this type are not just fiction- 'Doc' Smith was real, he existed. Dean Kamen exists. And you don't have to be a Dean Kamen with zillions of dollars and machine shops and helicopters- I do this stuff, too. I am convinced that _lots_ of Slashdotters do, that there are countless geeky-type people out there who have weird ducting fan systems pointed into their overclocked computers and have oddly bent pieces of wire in their cupboards for making taco shells stand up straight and not fold up when you bake them (truth! I'm eating tacos right now made using such a bent piece of wire). When you get right down to it, LOTS OF THINGS need to exist, on a day-to-day basis, whether it's objects, devices, processes (I recently invented a workflow for scanning pictures at a print shop that goes more than six times faster than the previous top speed) and there's a type of person who'll invent them and a type of person who'll do what they're told and wait to see if anyone thinks of something.
The only thing that kinda saddens me is that this article gets between a quarter to a tenth of the attention people will give to making fun of Jon Katz :P I hope people are at least reading this stuff! Scientist hip is a quality that needs to be accepted. It _is_ cool. It sets the tone for what people are willing to aspire to. We geeky types are not simply a bunch of whiners looking to pirate mp3s from legitimate businessmen or to get script-kiddie exploits to DDS some law-abiding website. We, at our best, have the capacity to change the very terrain right out from under those record company execs and businessmens so none of the old rules apply anymore- but to really put the rubber to the road, it's gotta be _chic_. It has to be _cooler_ to look up a scrap of indie music online and be directed magically to the guy's website than it is to march off to Sam Goody's and buy what you're told to. It's got to be _hip_ to put together your own desktop movie and release it as VideoCD or DVD (no region) rather than sit there like a lump waiting on Hollywood to do something that isn't really stupid and calculating. In the 50s science was seen as _cool_ and lots of stuff ended up happening- do we really dare allow it to seem both lame and dangerous, do we dare to let it be seen as that stuff that 'evil hackers' do, creating nothing and causing destruction and damage?
Dean Kamen, for one, isn't about to let that happen without a fight. I'm with him ;)