Yah, although I wrote that article about the iCub, I'm not particularly confident it's "The One" ... mostly I just wanted to call attention to the concept of open-source robotics, and in a journalistic article one needs to focus on *some* specific example...
On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Bob Mottram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 2008/10/17 Bryan Bishop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Bob, it's already happening behind your back, and I'm not talking > > about iCub. While platform standardization is important, there's other > > things that you can do like write cross-platform compatible > > applications and compilers, or working on rounding up all of the GPLed > > source files that are scattered across the web for software that > > people have released but nobody has ever really collected, and such. > > > > Cross platform code is not really a major issue. The basic problem is > that if I expend a lot of time and effort developing a super > manipulation program for a robot arm can someone else then take that > code and reuse it, without needing to make a prohibitive number of > changes or necessarily understanding the algorithms in detail. If the > answer to this is "yes" then open source robotics is really possible. > > The history of robotics, certainly in the industrial realm, is one of > multiple proprietary and mutually incompatible systems, with very > little in the way of code reuse. Imagine if every time you bought a > new PC you had to manually write an operating system for it yourself > before you could begin doing anything useful. Something similar to > this has been the situation with robotics for most of its (admittedly > brief) history. > > I am optimistic that things will change though. As always, the > price/performance ratio resulting from Moore's law predicts that a > real open source movement in robotics will become possible some time > soon. A few years ago it almost looked as if a company called "White > Box" was about to produce a decent PC based robot for around $1000, > but after delays and redesigns the eventual product turned out to be > $5000-8000, effectively squashing the chance of it becoming a common > platform. Still, I think some company will eventually succeed in > producing a mass market PC based robot. > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome " - Dr Samuel Johnson ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
