For one thing, you seem pretty unclear about what my other points are. (That the control technology already exists to do this, and that it's decades old. And that this guy doesn't seem to appreciate the control problems.)
You're putting words into my mouth. No one's damning him. But his project is not going to produce anything that looks like *combat* unless there's some pretty sophisticated dynamic balancing capability.
Imagine that mecha A and mecha B are fighting. A is not dynamically balanced and has no haptic feedback from its limbs, but B is dynamically balanced by a human pilot getting feedback through a full-body haptic interface. B grabs mecha A's arm and gives a good tug. If mecha A was a human being, then it would sense the amount of force exerted through its arm, then shift its feet or stumble to keep its center of gravity over its feet -- perhaps even slacken its arm to prevent the transmission of the impulse. But since mecha A has no dynamic balance, it can do none of this. If mecha B pulls hard enough, then mecha A's left foot might even be levered entirely off the ground, and the pilot would have no immediate feedback.
Contrast this to what happens when you grab a human's arm a give a tug. If you stop and think about it, dozens of things all happen at once as a reflex to keep you from falling over. A mecha with haptic feedback can leverage this naturally evolved ability. Maybe the monster truck crowd is going to be impressed because of all the heavy metal, and the clashing of big clubs on steel, but the perceptive ones will notice that combat without balancing capability look like a couple of toddlers duking it out.
Without balancing tech on the level of Asimo, I'd rather put my money on a non-bipedal robot like the T-52
Take a look at my Other Post for some links relating to the research that led up to the accomplishments of Sarcos. Not flashy stuff. Mostly concepts from old research. But if you put the concepts together, you realize that Mecha are indeed possible. Though I would agree with the other guy that pointed out that these are impractical for real warfare. But I would still watch a TV show with 2 human piloted mecha fighting!
The haptic interface is not to give a lareg degree of motions. Force-feedback is what is critical. Controlling and balancing an entire body in combat is going to be next to impossible, unless the thing is statically balanced -- in which case it will have all the dexterity/manuverability of a walrus on dry land. But for *real* humanoid to humanoid combat at a large scale, the movements are going to have to be dynamically balanced. If you could work up a full bady haptic interface, you could then use a person's natural control system to do this work.
An alternative would be to control the robot like a fighting video-game character, and actually have the robot itself do the fine coordination of movement and balance. But such tech is on the level of Honda's Asimo. I somehow doubt that this guy can muster that!
The problems in this area are *control* problems. Read the guy's web site. He doesn't give me a lot of confidence he knows what those problems really are. Actually building the Mecha is straightforward. The hard part is keeping it from falling down and letting it be controlled efficiently. Otherwise, this is just going to be like Robosaurus. Good for monster-truck showpieces, but pitiful at any real hand-to-hand combat.
And as for the stuff being in the research phase, Sarcos Corp, which is linked to in my other post, has solved them using the research pointed to by the links. (Look at the giant arm holding the ANVIL like it was a frying pan.)
Sorry there wasn't a whole lot of flashy pictures in the links, and only *concepts*. But someone with a brain would read and observe what's on the other side of the links, note the long-ago dates of a lot of the research, and realize that such Mecha are actually within out technical reach. All we need is funding!
Forget this guy in the post. He clearly doesn't have a clue. But the problems have been largely solved in the past several decades with DARPA money.
If you put a full body haptic interface around someone strapped into a huge robotic body, you'd have it. (See the Immersion Corp link.) But the thing would have to be freaking huge. A full-body haptic cockpit would be something like a sphere 8' in diameter, implying a mecha 30 foot tall!
Perhaps have the cockpit controlling separate and much smaller mecha body remotely, and just have the haptic controls on one of those motion simulation platforms.
The control problems are not trivial, and I doubt that this guy will be able to solve them. But a lot of these problems have already been solved by Sarcos. In particular, look at this page, especially at the "Sensuit" and the "Large Arm."
The Large Arm is especially impressive, holding a freakin anvil like it was a stein of beer!
If you could build the whole body of the Sensuit to a large enough scale that the whole pilot can be encased in a haptic feedback harness, you'd have a viable mecha.
But this is true for any new technology. Once use is widespread, economies of scale will take over. Aluminum was once so expensive that Napoleon owned a set of "silverware" made from it as an outrageous luxury.
Already Solved - Vanadium Redox
on
230mph Electric Car
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Vanadium Redox batteries solve a lot of these problems. You can fill them with charged solution in the same way you fill up a tank of gasoline.
These are already in industrial use. They are discussed here
Get a hyperefficient Whispergen Stirling generator. It would both heat your home and provide electric power by burning natural gas. In fact, if your meter is wired correctly, at times you would be selling power back to the power companies. You can think of it as augmenting your furnace heat with a 2nd device and getting electricity (in the form of your own off-grid generator) for free.
WebTV failed because TVs of the day didn't heve the resolution for web surfing. But what about recent HDTV Plasma TVs?
What about as a $250 add-on to Plasma Screen TVs? Make an optional module that you can plug into a compartment on the back. This could be very tiny, with an iPod sized drive, use of the TV's power supply, and a low power Via processor, this could be very cheap, quiet, and unobtrusive. And with Plasma HDTVs costing $2000+, this could be a very attractive option indeed.
I'm just waiting for management to get a clue about this. Most software projects fail on some level. Most software in big corporations sucks on some level, in at least one important component. Management should get a clue and PLAN for this. They should:
Have redundant competing projects
Have standards that mandate how components/systems fit together
NOT mandate that thou shalt use software X all across the enterprise
What large corporations have been doing is Soviet style central planning. What happens is that they get stuck with mediocre or sucky software that they cannot replace. Eventually, a few smaller companies start up that manage to have good software (out of many that fail in part because of sucky software) which gives them a competitive advantage. These either get bought up by or grow into ossified bureaucratic behemoths with no internal competition.
Sometime a corporation is going to become the Bazaar within, instead of the Cathedral (Cathedral & the Bazaar) and they'll maintain a long term competitive advantage by having internal competition.
You have a good point. However, you have to distinguish evaluating the description from evaluating the thing itself. My point is that -- because of the marketing/engineering disconnect -- a bullshit message can front something with substance. Also keep in mind Sturgeon's Law and its collorary. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is shite. StCredZero's collorary: 10% of everything isn't shite.
The hard part isn't avoiding the bullshit. It's not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Maybe you could use a Bayesian Spam filter to do this, but how are going to train it in the first place? I think the answer to that is really the important thing to think about here.
Can someone point to examples of something which clearly isn't marketspeak, fronting something worthwhile?
Deciding if marketing-speak is BS based on buzzword matching/frequency counting is just sinking to their level. It's as devoid of semantics and real thought as buzzword matching to do hiring. After all, there's always a marketing/engineering disconnect, so this will likely tell you zilch about the technology.
If you want to evaluate a technology, evaluate the technology -- ignore all of the marketing. Be empirical. Actually play with the technology. If they won't let you get your hands on it, then be suspicious.
Responding to the original post, that's right if you define "maturity" for an industry to mean "the point at which a significant fraction of those involved don't understand what they're saying and just pass along marketspeak like neurons in a big brain processing signals."
A big problem with methods that are "more efficient" in turning solar energy into locomotion (household solar used to create hydrogen for fuel cells), is that their storage efficiency is not up to the standards we are used to.
Algae Biodiesel has the advantage of zero net carbon emissions, with the storage efficiencies we are used to.
Note I said "Mac OSX." I remember the freezes from the old Mac II days. But my 15" Powerbook has yet to do anything even remotely resembling a "crash."
Yes, I have long known that programming languages are not technological contstucts, so much as cultural constructs like any human language. Programming languages just have more precise grammar, are used by technological subcultures, and can be mechanically translated to machine language instructions.
Therefore a programming language derives its strength primarily from it's subculture/community, not from any technical difference. At least this is how it is today. In some ways it is a sad state of affairs.
I know for a fact that OpenTalk is already trademarked by these guys.
From that page:
Opentalk
Opentalk is the new distribution framework that allows rapid implementation of distributed protocols such as SOAP. Opentalk is the basis of UDDI and SOAP implementations. In this release, the Opentalk core (the base distribution tools) has moved into product status. We expect The Opentalk tools (browsers, etc.) to ship in the next several releases.
You can get as close to silent as you need for a lot less than $1400, with an ordinary case, a Zalman fan, a quiet power supply, and a hard drive noise dampener. I did it for under $300. (Not counting the case, motherboard, and hard drive, which I recycled from my previous system.)
Unless you get under the desk and put your head next to the case, the only thing you can hear is the CD-RW drive when it's running. (Which makes it arguably quieter than the Zalman -- the Tom's Hardware reviewers stated they could still hear the Hard Drive.) My desktop is still a PIII, which made it easy, but it's also feasible for P4s. Look at the Silent PC Review site.
It will allow imaging of blackholes, that is actual visualization of the Shwarzchild radius
Actually, the chances that we can have "actual visualization of the Schwartzchild radius" is quite small, since most black holes will have quite high rotation and strong magnetic fields. Schwartzchild black holes are not likely to be formed in nature. We will probably get to image black holes described by Kerr's equations. (Rapidly Rotating) If these have an event horizon, it is likely an oblate ellipsoid.
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing, you seem pretty unclear about what my other points are. (That the control technology already exists to do this, and that it's decades old. And that this guy doesn't seem to appreciate the control problems.)
You're putting words into my mouth. No one's damning him. But his project is not going to produce anything that looks like *combat* unless there's some pretty sophisticated dynamic balancing capability.
Imagine that mecha A and mecha B are fighting. A is not dynamically balanced and has no haptic feedback from its limbs, but B is dynamically balanced by a human pilot getting feedback through a full-body haptic interface. B grabs mecha A's arm and gives a good tug. If mecha A was a human being, then it would sense the amount of force exerted through its arm, then shift its feet or stumble to keep its center of gravity over its feet -- perhaps even slacken its arm to prevent the transmission of the impulse. But since mecha A has no dynamic balance, it can do none of this. If mecha B pulls hard enough, then mecha A's left foot might even be levered entirely off the ground, and the pilot would have no immediate feedback.
Contrast this to what happens when you grab a human's arm a give a tug. If you stop and think about it, dozens of things all happen at once as a reflex to keep you from falling over. A mecha with haptic feedback can leverage this naturally evolved ability. Maybe the monster truck crowd is going to be impressed because of all the heavy metal, and the clashing of big clubs on steel, but the perceptive ones will notice that combat without balancing capability look like a couple of toddlers duking it out.
Without balancing tech on the level of Asimo, I'd rather put my money on a non-bipedal robot like the
T-52
Take a look at my Other Post for some links relating to the research that led up to the accomplishments of Sarcos. Not flashy stuff. Mostly concepts from old research. But if you put the concepts together, you realize that Mecha are indeed possible. Though I would agree with the other guy that pointed out that these are impractical for real warfare. But I would still watch a TV show with 2 human piloted mecha fighting!
The haptic interface is not to give a lareg degree of motions. Force-feedback is what is critical. Controlling and balancing an entire body in combat is going to be next to impossible, unless the thing is statically balanced -- in which case it will have all the dexterity/manuverability of a walrus on dry land. But for *real* humanoid to humanoid combat at a large scale, the movements are going to have to be dynamically balanced. If you could work up a full bady haptic interface, you could then use a person's natural control system to do this work.
An alternative would be to control the robot like a fighting video-game character, and actually have the robot itself do the fine coordination of movement and balance. But such tech is on the level of Honda's Asimo. I somehow doubt that this guy can muster that!
The problems in this area are *control* problems. Read the guy's web site. He doesn't give me a lot of confidence he knows what those problems really are. Actually building the Mecha is straightforward. The hard part is keeping it from falling down and letting it be controlled efficiently. Otherwise, this is just going to be like Robosaurus. Good for monster-truck showpieces, but pitiful at any real hand-to-hand combat.
And as for the stuff being in the research phase, Sarcos Corp, which is linked to in my other post, has solved them using the research pointed to by the links. (Look at the giant arm holding the ANVIL like it was a frying pan.)
Sorry there wasn't a whole lot of flashy pictures in the links, and only *concepts*. But someone with a brain would read and observe what's on the other side of the links, note the long-ago dates of a lot of the research, and realize that such Mecha are actually within out technical reach. All we need is funding!
Forget this guy in the post. He clearly doesn't have a clue. But the problems have been largely solved in the past several decades with DARPA money.
If you put a full body haptic interface around someone strapped into a huge robotic body, you'd have it. (See the Immersion Corp link.) But the thing would have to be freaking huge. A full-body haptic cockpit would be something like a sphere 8' in diameter, implying a mecha 30 foot tall!
Perhaps have the cockpit controlling separate and much smaller mecha body remotely, and just have the haptic controls on one of those motion simulation platforms.
The control problems are not trivial, and I doubt that this guy will be able to solve them. But a lot of these problems have already been solved by Sarcos. In particular, look at this page, especially at the "Sensuit" and the "Large Arm."
The Large Arm is especially impressive, holding a freakin anvil like it was a stein of beer!
If you could build the whole body of the Sensuit to a large enough scale that the whole pilot can be encased in a haptic feedback harness, you'd have a viable mecha.
But this is true for any new technology. Once use is widespread, economies of scale will take over. Aluminum was once so expensive that Napoleon owned a set of "silverware" made from it as an outrageous luxury.
Vanadium Redox batteries solve a lot of these problems. You can fill them with charged solution in the same way you fill up a tank of gasoline.
These are already in industrial use. They are discussed here
Get a hyperefficient Whispergen Stirling generator. It would both heat your home and provide electric power by burning natural gas. In fact, if your meter is wired correctly, at times you would be selling power back to the power companies. You can think of it as augmenting your furnace heat with a 2nd device and getting electricity (in the form of your own off-grid generator) for free.
WebTV failed because TVs of the day didn't heve the resolution for web surfing. But what about recent HDTV Plasma TVs?
What about as a $250 add-on to Plasma Screen TVs? Make an optional module that you can plug into a compartment on the back. This could be very tiny, with an iPod sized drive, use of the TV's power supply, and a low power Via processor, this could be very cheap, quiet, and unobtrusive. And with Plasma HDTVs costing $2000+, this could be a very attractive option indeed.
What large corporations have been doing is Soviet style central planning. What happens is that they get stuck with mediocre or sucky software that they cannot replace. Eventually, a few smaller companies start up that manage to have good software (out of many that fail in part because of sucky software) which gives them a competitive advantage. These either get bought up by or grow into ossified bureaucratic behemoths with no internal competition.
Sometime a corporation is going to become the Bazaar within, instead of the Cathedral (Cathedral & the Bazaar) and they'll maintain a long term competitive advantage by having internal competition.
I'm not holding my breath, however.
You have a good point. However, you have to distinguish evaluating the description from evaluating the thing itself. My point is that -- because of the marketing/engineering disconnect -- a bullshit message can front something with substance. Also keep in mind Sturgeon's Law and its collorary. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is shite. StCredZero's collorary: 10% of everything isn't shite.
The hard part isn't avoiding the bullshit. It's not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Maybe you could use a Bayesian Spam filter to do this, but how are going to train it in the first place? I think the answer to that is really the important thing to think about here.
Can someone point to examples of something which clearly isn't marketspeak, fronting something worthwhile?
Deciding if marketing-speak is BS based on buzzword matching/frequency counting is just sinking to their level. It's as devoid of semantics and real thought as buzzword matching to do hiring. After all, there's always a marketing/engineering disconnect, so this will likely tell you zilch about the technology.
If you want to evaluate a technology, evaluate the technology -- ignore all of the marketing. Be empirical. Actually play with the technology. If they won't let you get your hands on it, then be suspicious.
Responding to the original post, that's right if you define "maturity" for an industry to mean "the point at which a significant fraction of those involved don't understand what they're saying and just pass along marketspeak like neurons in a big brain processing signals."
Energia. 145 tons to Orbit.
http://k26.com/buran/html/energia-mars.html
A big problem with methods that are "more efficient" in turning solar energy into locomotion (household solar used to create hydrogen for fuel cells), is that their storage efficiency is not up to the standards we are used to.
Algae Biodiesel has the advantage of zero net carbon emissions, with the storage efficiencies we are used to.
Note I said "Mac OSX." I remember the freezes from the old Mac II days. But my 15" Powerbook has yet to do anything even remotely resembling a "crash."
Except the machine will be running Max OSX, and you'll never see the "Blue Screen of Death."
Yes, I have long known that programming languages are not technological contstucts, so much as cultural constructs like any human language. Programming languages just have more precise grammar, are used by technological subcultures, and can be mechanically translated to machine language instructions.
Therefore a programming language derives its strength primarily from it's subculture/community, not from any technical difference. At least this is how it is today. In some ways it is a sad state of affairs.
I know for a fact that OpenTalk is already trademarked by these guys.
From that page:
Opentalk
Opentalk is the new distribution framework that allows rapid implementation of distributed protocols such as SOAP. Opentalk is the basis of UDDI and SOAP implementations. In this release, the Opentalk core (the base distribution tools) has moved into product status. We expect The Opentalk tools (browsers, etc.) to ship in the next several releases.
The real gift would be the what happens during and after the game play.
If he plays games, and he has a PS2, get him Rez with the Trance Vibrator. It might be a bit of a rush by now.
You can get as close to silent as you need for a lot less than $1400, with an ordinary case, a Zalman fan, a quiet power supply, and a hard drive noise dampener. I did it for under $300. (Not counting the case, motherboard, and hard drive, which I recycled from my previous system.)
Unless you get under the desk and put your head next to the case, the only thing you can hear is the CD-RW drive when it's running. (Which makes it arguably quieter than the Zalman -- the Tom's Hardware reviewers stated they could still hear the Hard Drive.) My desktop is still a PIII, which made it easy, but it's also feasible for P4s. Look at the Silent PC Review site.
This sounds like a precursor to Planet-es. It's a very well written anime (even from a Hard Sci-fi POV)
It will allow imaging of blackholes, that is actual visualization of the Shwarzchild radius
Actually, the chances that we can have "actual visualization of the Schwartzchild radius" is quite small, since most black holes will have quite high rotation and strong magnetic fields. Schwartzchild black holes are not likely to be formed in nature. We will probably get to image black holes described by Kerr's equations. (Rapidly Rotating) If these have an event horizon, it is likely an oblate ellipsoid.
Not Linux! Read this article down in the body, it talks about hosting the software on Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.