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Open Robotics Debuts at Penguicon 3.0
thgreatoz writes "While attending Penguicon 3.0 in Novi, MI, I came across an interesting project. Matt Switlik of Swittech aims to do for robotics what the GPL did for Open Source Software - a completely open robotics platform. Dubbed the Open Robotics Peripheral Platform, or O.R.P.P, Switlik and his partner Jason Hunt have taken a completely modular approach to robotics, with the goal of making robot development as easy as homegrowing a PC. Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?"
Someone please make sure they read Asimov first!!
http://nerdfortress.com/
Will the USA become a place where the only jobs needed will be thought based. No more jobs where a person is needed to do a repetitious task over and over? Will the next outsorcing be not out of the USA, but from human labour to robots?
I see so many problems here. What will people do for a living??
I don't want this to sound like trolling, but it will. There are enough people out there who are not made for work which requires too much thought. Not everyone can pass Chemistry 101. Some people require the factory jobs to make enough money to buy a house, and live a life. If we start lowering the value of those jobs, we will be shoving a whole class of people into poverty.
I also can't help but think of the horror of the next war we face. No more "human life lost", instead we'll send drone airplanes and robots to do the fighting. Mr and Mrs Redstate will no longer have to reconsider if a war is just when their child is killed ("Was it worth it?"). I wonder if we would have burned all of Vietnam down if we did not have to send any Americans, if we only had to send robots. We could declare the area too unsafe and keep the reporters out.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?"
No, you won't.
Unless you manage to provide the $5K+ (each) sensors needed to detect all exceptional cases, you have any breakthroughs.
Detecting a pedestrian in the street with 99.999% reliability needed is HARD. Not mowing over a golf club in you back yard is HARD. Not falling over or running into things is HARD.
As soon as people realize that autonomous hardware needs to react in real time to a dynamic, complex real world, the efforts to compare PCs to robots will stop.
Think about it this way: humans use sensors that are hundreds of times higher resolution, and processors that are thousands of times faster. What makes you think you can do it on the cheap?. And don't start talking about ants or bees! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAW ANYTHING BUT A HUMAN DRIVE A CAR IN ALL CONDITIONS?
Open standards are fine, but don't believe the exponential growth potential for anything but software.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!