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Personal Robots From Valley Startup
Tjeerd writes ""A Silicon Valley start-up is developing a hardware and software development platform for personal-assistant robots, autonomous boats and unmanned cars. The privately funded company, quietly started almost a year ago by eGroups founder and veteran Google architect Scott Hassan, plans to make its robotics software open source. That way, it hopes to draw a community of developers to build applications in these respective fields.""
It's an interesting strategy outlined in the article - that they're less worried about making money quickly and more worried about making robotics a sustainable sector of the economy means they'll either crash and burn early, or their efforts will single-handedly help to define a new generation of technology. Quite the fun dichotomy. :)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
"With no pressure to make money initially, the company will act more like a robotics think tank and will eventually devise licensing models for its technology"
.. no no not the tazer !!!!"
I have to admit this sounds pretty sweet. Not having the robotic overlords standing over you screaming "Bottom Line Bottom Line" would be refreshing......
Oh god here they come.. "I serve only you, my lords
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
The vacuuming 'bots are cool, but there's so much more they'll need to do before they're really integrated, Jetson's-style.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
While they have no stated goal, one point of the article was the DARPA self-driving competition. This type of goal-oriented competition is really adept in getting people to think of specific problems and devising clever systems to solve these problems. However that's still nothing more than advanced expert systems, and a far cry from a robot that actually "think" for itself. Idiotic contests like the Turing test seem to push AI in the direction of elementary data processing but unfortunately never very far beyond.
I wonder what sort of competition would get people thinking about solving the "thinking" problem. Where robots make informed and appropriate decisions outside the parameters they were originally designed for. Not just to learn, but to take learnt knowledge and apply it in an "intelligent" manner.
wanna kill all humans?
-Bender
this post is now diamonds!
It's not exactly a mathematical proof, and the logic is flawed. Using the same argument one could 'prove' the non-existence of practically anything that is computer controlled e.g. Automatic Landing Systems, ABS, Lifts, fly-by-wire, food production lines, medical machinery etc. etc.
The corollary is that a litigious society prevents any advancement in technology that may have implications on human life. And if that situation ever comes about it is time to shoot all the lawyers.
The biggest problem with the Roomba is that it just doesn't work. Its a dustbuster, not a vacuum. I know a lot of people who bought them and very few people who kept using them because you realize the first time you bust out a real vacuum how little it really cleans.
And I don't mean to dig at Roomba with this, but any robotics company will have a fundamentally similar problem -- lack of power. AI isn't the only real problem with household robots -- the mechanical efficiency of them and the capability they have to store power are the real limiting factors. It doesn't matter to me if the robot can find my litter box or if it can empty the dishwasher if it doesn't have enough power to do that.
At first, I thought the title was "Personal Robots Form Valley Startup".
Now that would have been an interesting story...
They'll torment you with uptempo singing and dancing!