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GUIs for Robots
kabir writes "OpenGL.org has a link to a fun article over at the Stanford Aerospace Robotics Laboratory. It seems an OpenGL-based GUI has been developed to enable the operation of multiple complex field robots by a single operator. The interaction mechanism was inspired by interface techniques refined in the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre of video games. Fifty years from now I expect all wars to be fought by giant robots controlled by teenagers."
Visit IBM's Robocode and program your own deathbot! If you are old school Mac, you might remember RoboWar. A favorite of mine when I had a PowerBook 140.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
You misinterpreted the meaning of "global" - they did not mean co-ordinate data, rather they meant the state of "the world".
In a game, the gameserver knows where everything is. In robotics, the control program doesn't know for certain that the blue cube is at 0.1x3.5y99.1z - it has to get that information by looking at what the sensors on the robots say, and those sensors lie. So the control program has to take all the data from all the robots and try to fuse it into something meaningful, all the while keeping in mind that "things are not what they seem".
That is why controlling a real-world robot is MUCH harder than controlling a player in a video game.
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