Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
He demonstrated the chair by climbing the stairs to the top of the Eifel tower in one. Now if we need to retrofit houses to look like French landmarks....
The man is making science sexy. He flies his own helicopter. He made his money from nothing but his science. He STARTED the 'bot battle program. He has lobbied major funding from corporate America to support student science. I love the guy. Him and Richard Feynman make me wish I could do math.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
"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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People tend to talk down to people shorter than them. Hence people in wheelchairs often get treated like children. High-up wheelchairs solve this problem at a huge cost in stability. It looks like Kamen might have solved that problem, too.
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E_NOSIG
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.
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?
What if the Daleks get hold of this technology? We 're doomed!!!
Matt Leese
For all of those OH SO IGNORANT people out there, take a test, it will take one week out of your year but give you a new perspective on life.
Day 1) Don't use anything that requires electricity, gas, etc (utilities). No phone, microwave, lights, t.v., radio, car, no hot water, no refrigerated foods, use bottled water or better yet go down to your local river and get a bottle of water. No utilities for 24hours.
Day 2) Blindfold yourself. You can't use your eyes for anything for 24hours. No cheating.
Day 3) Stuff cotton in your ears and put on some ear muffs. You can't use your ears for anything for 24hours. (you can still hear but it's much harder than your normal hearing.)
Day 4) Rent a wheelchair, have a seat and go to it. Go to the grocery store, the mall, the bookstore, the movies. No legs for 24hours.
Day 5) Same as day 4 but now you are not allowed to use your arms either. Have fun finding someone to help you go to the bathroom.
Day 6) Same as day 4 and 5 but now you can no longer speak to request help, grunts and groans are the only acceptable forms of communication. No "voice" for 24hours.
Day 7) Fasting. No food, only the bottled water from day one is allowed (and this is a gift). No food 24hours
One week of walking in a other people's "shoes" as it were. While none of these exercises will give you the full impact of what it is like to be a person afflicted with the real issues, even 24hours will give most people enough of a taste that they will sympathize with those who have to live their life in such conditions. After one week you will no longer make ignorant assumptions like "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...".
I think the one take away that I learned from the things that Kamen has done is that people should use their brains and not just coast through life. Take nothing forgranted, make no assumptions, if you don't know - go find out!
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
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
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?
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
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!
Destroying other robots? No, I'm talking about destroying the corporate sponsors. Are there specific rules against rising up against humanity?
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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
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 ;)
Yes, but only because they aren't on the official parts list.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.