Hahaha, yeah for some reason here in Adelaide people know us for the weird murders that go on (Bodies in the Barrels - inside a bank ). Ohh well.
I'm surprised that this post was actually on Slashdot, I was AMAZED when I saw Adelaide in a slashdot post. Most friends I know in the city go to Adelaide Uni and use their wireless, or they hang out at the state library:P
Still, this is probably good advertising for Agile and Internode, hahaha.
I love both companies, they've managed to give Adelaide faster ADSL(2+) speeds before most of the rest of Australia.
Hell, you could get ADSL2+ out in the coorong (where I used to live) before it was available in the Adelaide CBD, thanks in part to my Mum:P
Anyway, there are only a few people that this article would actually affect, and only about 2 of them would read Slashdot, I'm just glad that one of the people affected happens to be a really good friend of mine, so I can now talk to her on MSN even more, hahaha.
OK, it's not just about CPU power, it's also about vast amounts of ram, and time critical applications. A lot of people are saying it would be easier to run their program on a single PC over 41 days than spend $10,000 on the Sun cluster for an hour. But sometimes the programs Sun is targeting would just not work practically on a single PC, or even a small cluster.
Take the 3D Animation Industry for example. One of the hardest programs to run are Fluid Dynamics software as it requires a very long time to run, and also requires excessive amounts of Ram. I have used Aura and Glu3D and they will happily use up 2 or 3 Gbs of Ram (the max Windows allows to a single process), and it will take over 24 hours to create a few hundred frames of animation.
If you are a high end Visual Effects studio tasked to create the latest effects on a blockbuster movie, you can't wait months for the computers to sit there and think. They have to turn over shots daily. In that case, you will happily use a local super computer, or Grid computing array.
The current humanoid robots are very slow and very fragile.
It will probably take 10 to 20 years until you see humanoids competing against each other, but at the moment they have enough difficulty walking and kicking a ball.
I would say that the robots will probably be larger than 32cm tall, although if one robotics team want to make theirs that big, then they can. There's not yet been the rules for the final competition laid out. They will have requirements for the size, power, speed, communications, saftey switches (remote turn off) and object/human recognition. Once these are all established then it might turn out the robots have to be average human size, can't have extra arms, and isn't allowed to hover (couldn't resist).
I went to the International Robocup Challenge in Padua Italy 2 years ago and have to admit that it's just amazing what's being developed.
While the human robotics competition side of things has only just started if anyone has seen the SDR (Sony Dream Robot) then you'll see that it'll probably take less than 45years to win.
The Robocup challenge's whole goal is to produce a robot by 2050 that will beat the top human soccer team in the world cup. That goal has been around for quite a few years, and isn't exclusively for the Osaka robotics team.
I became very good friends with one of the AI programmers of one of the Osaka robotics team, and amongst all the different human robots theirs was the best (the SDR wasn't competing, it was only dancing in the background).
Don't forget their are more sections than just the Human robotics side. There is the Small robot league which has some of the fastest games of robotics soccer you'll ever see, there's also the Mid sized robots, which kick around real sized soccer balls and have been using the full 360deg viewing for some time. Rescue league has lots of potential, and coupled with the computer rescue simulation competition I can see in the future waves of small robots being controlled by a hot air balloon floating above a crash site as they scour the rubble for signs of survivors.
The humanoid robots will be able to (hopefully) kick the soccer ball with such precision and accuracy that they just shouldn't miss. They will be able to run simulations to determine the best way to hit the ball. There is already a team of researchers trying to create mechanical muscles which will be faster and more efficient then human muscles but are powered by chemicals not straight electricity (solving the battery problem).
Check out http://www.robocup.org/ or just email me for more info.
Slashdot Mirror
Hahaha, yeah for some reason here in Adelaide people know us for the weird murders that go on (Bodies in the Barrels - inside a bank ). Ohh well. I'm surprised that this post was actually on Slashdot, I was AMAZED when I saw Adelaide in a slashdot post. Most friends I know in the city go to Adelaide Uni and use their wireless, or they hang out at the state library :P
Still, this is probably good advertising for Agile and Internode, hahaha.
I love both companies, they've managed to give Adelaide faster ADSL(2+) speeds before most of the rest of Australia.
Hell, you could get ADSL2+ out in the coorong (where I used to live) before it was available in the Adelaide CBD, thanks in part to my Mum :P
Anyway, there are only a few people that this article would actually affect, and only about 2 of them would read Slashdot, I'm just glad that one of the people affected happens to be a really good friend of mine, so I can now talk to her on MSN even more, hahaha.
OK, it's not just about CPU power, it's also about vast amounts of ram, and time critical applications. A lot of people are saying it would be easier to run their program on a single PC over 41 days than spend $10,000 on the Sun cluster for an hour. But sometimes the programs Sun is targeting would just not work practically on a single PC, or even a small cluster. Take the 3D Animation Industry for example. One of the hardest programs to run are Fluid Dynamics software as it requires a very long time to run, and also requires excessive amounts of Ram. I have used Aura and Glu3D and they will happily use up 2 or 3 Gbs of Ram (the max Windows allows to a single process), and it will take over 24 hours to create a few hundred frames of animation. If you are a high end Visual Effects studio tasked to create the latest effects on a blockbuster movie, you can't wait months for the computers to sit there and think. They have to turn over shots daily. In that case, you will happily use a local super computer, or Grid computing array.
The current humanoid robots are very slow and very fragile. It will probably take 10 to 20 years until you see humanoids competing against each other, but at the moment they have enough difficulty walking and kicking a ball. I would say that the robots will probably be larger than 32cm tall, although if one robotics team want to make theirs that big, then they can. There's not yet been the rules for the final competition laid out. They will have requirements for the size, power, speed, communications, saftey switches (remote turn off) and object/human recognition. Once these are all established then it might turn out the robots have to be average human size, can't have extra arms, and isn't allowed to hover (couldn't resist).
I went to the International Robocup Challenge in Padua Italy 2 years ago and have to admit that it's just amazing what's being developed. While the human robotics competition side of things has only just started if anyone has seen the SDR (Sony Dream Robot) then you'll see that it'll probably take less than 45years to win. The Robocup challenge's whole goal is to produce a robot by 2050 that will beat the top human soccer team in the world cup. That goal has been around for quite a few years, and isn't exclusively for the Osaka robotics team. I became very good friends with one of the AI programmers of one of the Osaka robotics team, and amongst all the different human robots theirs was the best (the SDR wasn't competing, it was only dancing in the background). Don't forget their are more sections than just the Human robotics side. There is the Small robot league which has some of the fastest games of robotics soccer you'll ever see, there's also the Mid sized robots, which kick around real sized soccer balls and have been using the full 360deg viewing for some time. Rescue league has lots of potential, and coupled with the computer rescue simulation competition I can see in the future waves of small robots being controlled by a hot air balloon floating above a crash site as they scour the rubble for signs of survivors. The humanoid robots will be able to (hopefully) kick the soccer ball with such precision and accuracy that they just shouldn't miss. They will be able to run simulations to determine the best way to hit the ball. There is already a team of researchers trying to create mechanical muscles which will be faster and more efficient then human muscles but are powered by chemicals not straight electricity (solving the battery problem). Check out http://www.robocup.org/ or just email me for more info.