Immobile Robots

Roland Piquepaille writes "Wade Roush wrote a long and well-documented article for the Technology Review about this new concept, the immobot, short for "immobile robot." He gives different industrial examples, from NASA to the water utility in Porto Alegre, and from Toyota cars to some new Xerox photocopiers. And he looks at the programming model behind the immobots. No "heuristic" programs here, but model-based programs instead. Check this column for details." The original article has more information.

Comments

A machine?

[gelfling]

What was Gutenberg's press? A presentient nonmobile robot?

C'mon people...

Immobots vs. Computers

[creative_name]

I think most of the posters so far are missing the big point. Even having a computer control a function at a water plant still requires a fairly large degree of human supervision. Someone has to make sure the computer is working properly, make sure the control programs don't screw up, and if the programs do screw up, they must fix them. The idea behind immobots seems to take it a bit further than that by actually reducing the amount of control neccessary. I suppose you could say it's just a computer, but then couldn't all things effectivly be reduced to computers (our brains, for exmaple) which certain things in common and certain things different.

The point of this article was that the immobots require almost no human control, whereas a computer still requires a human. Or something like that. Just my 1/2000000000000th of Bill's (estimated) fortune worth.

A little outdated?

[Devil's BSD]

Well, I think ever since the integration of microchips into home appliances, they have become 'immobots'. Take for example:

• Your coffee pot brewing some hot stuff every morning at 6 AM
• The dishwasher going through its cycles automatically
• The office copier making 300 copies without you having to push copy 300 times
• The thermostat regulating the temperature of your house, and supposedly regulating it at your workplace
• The robotic arms on an automobile assembly line (well, that might be streching it)

As you can probably see, a lot of these things don't even need IC's to do their job. This article, IMHO, is like saying the wheel was a great invention.