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When Los Alamos Scientists Make Toys
redpop350 writes: "Mark Tilden of Los Alamos National Labs {I had the privilege once of waiting on him in the local hardware store} has apparently come up with a new diversion. Here's the link to the story. Cool Toys! His earlier creations bore a lot of resemblance to these, and I am sure they will be fun." We've mentioned B.I.O. Bugs before, but this is some cool background to go along with them.
"When Los Alamos Scientists Make Toys"
:D
ok. Now I won't be so bashful about submitting:
"Humans reported to breathe oxygen"
"Cats enjoy strings"
"x86 is the devil"
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
I read the article and thought pretty cool. But and this is kind of funny. Consider the following comment.
>Tilden has created an army of lifelike robotic bugs that use transistors, rather than computers, to control their actions.
If I am not mistaken a computer is nothing more than a bunch of transistors put together. Hence this is not that amazing (interesting yes).
I thought actually these bugs were the ones that were built using analog technologies. I do not know who, but there is a scientist that uses no transistors, just analog circuits.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Its actually quite interesting.
Being a big kid, I personally would love to have a few of those bug things. Imagine putting your pet hamster in the hallway with a few of them. The hamster would probably end up ignoring them, but if the bugs can be programmed to follow the hamster everywhere it goes, what would its reaction be?
Further down in the article it says that if the toys are a success as a a toy, then we could end up with robot vacuum cleaners some time next year. Nice idea, but are we only going to see automated household servants if some kids toys are sold first?
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
The article does bring up the following mental picture:
"What do you think would happen if we could build cheap little credit card floor cleaners that match your linoleum? You could toss them on the floor and all you notice is that your floor is always clean and the cockroaches are nervous,"
I just can't help but laugh out loud at the thought of cockroaches developing a complex because of the moving floor. lol!
I read somewhere (Slashdot?) NASA was on the same strategy of sending small independent solar powered spider-like autonomous robots to futher explore the surface of mars beyond what was done by the pathfinder. The good thing is that they can stay alive of a very long time and need zero human surveillance, as long as there are solarpower and all parts like legs, electronics, cameras and other sensors are operational (make them in a strong material like titanium).
...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
moox. for a new generation.
but if you were skimming, you may have missed it:
"...The fact is kids need to build things. They need to find out just what firecrackers will do to the insides of a dead frog..."
Interesting idea, I think I shall have to find out what does happen.
(ducks)
:)
I figure I'm getting one of these for Christmas, because I put it on the list and my parents said "What the hell is a BIO Bug and where would we get one?" I figure it will be a neat conversation piece at work (hey, I'm 32 :)). But I need more local geek friends to get these things so we can battle them. I hope I can get some fun out of it by itself, butI'm not sure. The article gives me hope, though.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
He says that using just 12 transistors he can create alsorts of charicteristics such as fear of other bugs and then goes on to say they learn and develop dynamicaly.... antyhing like this is gonna need a darn site more than 12 transistors
Tilden ..[snip].. says he loves living in New Mexico."I can't think of a better place to release large herds of autonomous robots," he joked.
You know, New Mexicans should stop worrying about
UFOs, and start worrying about scientists
I'd like to know how he could have programmed responses like "fear of light" with a handful of discrete transistors.
Use two light sensors (such as light dependant resistors) to measure how much light the bug is in and to help guide the bug away from the light. When one sensor reaches a certain threshold, I imagine "move away from light" circuitry takes over and guides the bug towards darker areas with the light intensity information from the two light sensors - if the right sensor is darker, move right, if the left sensor is darker, move left.
What I'd like to know is, how they are implementing the downloadable transistor patterns. I know that reconfigurable digital logic can come in the form of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) so I wondered if there was such a thing as Field Programmable Transistor Arrays (FPTA). Punched it into Google and hey presto NASA has a paper on an FPTA that JPL has developed!
I wonder how one of these little suckers will react with my Rottweiler?
Could be a bad idea, plus it may breed with the other bugs and rodents around my house creating some form of cyborg highbred bug with AI!
All speling, factual, tact, and/or grametical errers be the result of netwerk interpherance or# transmition ererrs.
Yipeee
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Where as with a simple analog computing model, balancing circuit levels allows the component level to be far less dense and the design far more efficient.This leads us to the conclusion that analog design are far more efficient, But this is natural in specialized machines of any type.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Braitenberg, Valentino: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology.
The game MindRover is also based on this.
Many others have built similar toys using these concepts.
Disposable batteries are terrible for the environment, but people seem to be buying more all the time. With the motors in this bug, it'll eat batteries like roach food.
I'd like to see a story on Slashdot about using rechargables instead - and how can we spread the meme to get others to use them? I like the NiMH batteries I get from Thomas Distributing - I've used two sets I bought for my digital camera for over two years and over 14,000 pictures - and they recharge in two hours!
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273 ,4 321358,00.htmlis the head line of the article, in it some japanese scientist has created a real BioBug they implanted a chip on the back of the roach which allows them to control it. sounds neat. i wonder when i can implant a chip in my girl friend's mouth. just a thought.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
... next year's toys will have 24 transitors (cost less and require 2 fans).
This is a great idea for kids to learn about neural networks. It's simple enough that a child (and adult) can understand but complex enough to be challenging.
The best part is the ability to "rewire" the BIOBugs neural network. The process of trying to figure out why the toy responds to stimulae, or how to get it to respond another way would encourage children to learn about a science that doesn't get much attention right now.
If the toy sells well, we may have a generation of people who can produce new and useful neural networks, for AI and other purposes. Robot Wars will become very interesting!
"Some of the great minds of the 130s and 140s actually were working with cybernetics like these," Tilden said.
130? 140?
Wow! These robots are older than the catholic church!
You can't take the sky from me...
Tilden has created an army of lifelike robotic bugs that use transistors, rather than computers, to control their actions."
Transistors, and than computers...anyone else find something oddly funny there.
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"liberty and justice for all those who can afford it"
I belive a lot of people missed an IMPORTANT aspect of this story!
that is that these little bugs are a BASIC form of AI!. think about it a bug that interacts with its environment the way a little bug works and this is simulating a type of intelligence.
Just another bug report on Slashdot, only this time it doesn't involve MS...
One BIO-Bug by itself is pretty dull. At $40 a pop, buying several ranks somewhere below buying a console game, which is fun by itself at about the same cost. They also turn worse than the Titanic on shag carpet, but seem to do better on linolium or hardwood.
I guess if you have a Garage, and can afford to blow $80+ on a few of these guys, they could be highly amusing. Maybe they're also good for the office, if your coworkers aren't annoyed by the constant "chirp-chirp-chirp-ANNNHHHHH-ANNNNHHHH!" sound that they emit...
Just my NSHO, after buying one a month ago and turning it on exactly three times.
This guy has been doing the same thing for 10 years. I wish he'd stop getting press for it. Mostly I wish the press would understand how extremely limited his approach is and how it will likely never do anything very interesting.
Lets see here, 12 transistors? That comes out to 479,001,600 possible combinations. Now you throw 4 of these things into the same environment and you get 11,496,038,400 possible combinations of interaction (all things being equal, as if that were possible). Hmmm, somewhere in there there's gotta be a monkey banging on a typewriter. Wonder what kind of Shakespeare you could get...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
This is a great comment. Read what he says:
And just imagine that - a kid opening up it's dog's head to change its behaviour. "Fetch! Oh alright then, I'll make you fetch!"
You know we were all supposed to have robots helping around the house by the 90s? And our own airplanes?
Riiiight ...
Does anyone here have any idea how it is possible to make something this complex with 12 transistors? Supposedly it can react to light/other objects, and most importantly, it can learn? Wouldn't just the memory required to remember things and learn take up far more than 12 transistors, let alone the logic needed to process sensory input? And simple enough for a child to reprogram? I could be wrong, but these claims seem a bit suspicious to me...
The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
I would like a robot toy that can communicate with a regular desktop computer via standard walky-talky-like frequencies (or whatever they use now), and be programmed and controlled from the **desk-top**. You get more computing power and a bigger screen that way.
It would have wheels, a digital eye, microphone, speaker (to remotely yell at the kids), and an arm with a pressure-measuring claw.
Also, couldn't 12 transister reactions be simulated with a low-end on-board computer chip? Why not use the full power of a computer rather than just transisters. The are other ways to program things that just neural nets. We could write something as single as:
if image_change > 20% then bark and move forward (assuming the camera is facing forward.)
Make something to fetch beer, and you will be a millionare.
Table-ized A.I.
Now, the lead-acid battery is a collection of cells, so there's no telling what the regular "rated" voltage is without knowing the number of cells involved, and the sepecific chemistry (some of the new gel-batteries are slightly different). It would seem that it was measured under certain nominal load conditions. This is often true for large batteries that must supply current under heavy load (car batteries come to mind). In this case, they may stack more cells than would seem appropriate.
The simplest way to explain this would be to connect a certain resistor (the load resistor) across the battery and measure the voltage across the resistor. It will be quite a bit lower than the maximum (unloaded) voltage.
To deliver power to a heavy load at a certain voltage, the internal resistance must be taken into consideration (it acts as a voltage divider, further elaboration can be found in any basic electronics text). So to achieve a certain voltage under load, it must actually deliver a higher potential unloaded.
An interesting one is that, as a cell/battery is discharged, the unloaded voltage stays roughly the same, while the loaded voltage drops. (Which is where the so-called "internal resistance" of the battery comes from. The voltage essentially stays the same, but the ability to supply current drops, hence a higher "internal resistance").
In any situation where the voltage really matters, a solid-state regulator should be used, since the actual voltage from most power sources is uncertain.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Legos don't stay together that well if you try to move fairly heavy things, like a full beer/soda can I hear.
The guy who built the Rubix Cube solver had to do a lot of funky stuff to keep it together.
Perhaps if the Eractor Set company made something similar. Are they still in business? Eractor Set never had the instant gratification of Legos, but it was much more sturdy.
Table-ized A.I.
and a kwazy kwanzaa to you too!
(* Please keep in mind there is power in analog technology that has been ignored or lost totally in our total digital absorption. Consider if each of the million little transistors in that chip you mention had infinite states -- rather than just on-off. *)
In practice, a set of descrete states can emulate analog devices pretty well. If the *practical* granularity was truly as minute as you suggest, then such a toy would be quite fragile to things like temperature change, and so on. Same with the human brain: a little coffee or minor bump on the head does not completely cause us to reboot.
Thus, there is plenty of evidence that such "infinitity" cannot truely be obsorbed or used by analogy machines.
Table-ized A.I.