On 10/23/06, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Grinding my own axe, I also think that stereo vision systems will bring
significant improvements to robotics over the next few years. Being able to
build videogame-like 3D models of the environment in real time is now a
feasible proposition which I think will happen before the decade is out.
With a good model of the environment the robot can rehearse possible
scenarios before actually running them, and find important features such as
desk or table surfaces.
I worked for a robotics company called Arctec in the early 1980s.
We built a robot called the Gemini. They essentially solved the
navigation problem - in an office-space world. You stuck one small
reflector on both sides of every door, at intersections, and on its
recharging station, and if the world consisted of hallways with doors
leading off the hallways, it went where you told it to go, and went
back to its docking station and recharged when it had to. This was
using a 1MHz 65C02. The navigational code took 12K of RAM. It relied
largely on having highly-accurate narrow-beam sonar sensors all around
its body, and on the reflectors.
The problem wasn't technological. It was that nobody had any use for
a robot. We never figured out what people would want the robot for.
I think that's still the problem.
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