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Immobile Robots

Posted by michael on from the what-you-get-when-the-servos-break-down dept.

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.

2 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. A machine? by gelfling · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    C'mon people...

  2. Immobots vs. Computers by creative_name · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    Posting as directed.