[info] [agi] News bit: Carnegie Mellon unveils Internet-controlled robots anyone can build

Thu Apr 26 13:20:55 UTC 2007

----- Forwarded message from Bob Mottram <fuzzgun at gmail.com> -----

From: Bob Mottram <fuzzgun at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:10:24 +0100
To: agi at v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [agi] News bit: Carnegie Mellon unveils Internet-controlled
 robots anyone can build
Reply-To: agi at v2.listbox.com

   At the moment I'm thinking of robotics in a Moravecian manner, where
   the main purpose is to perform very utilitarian labour saving chores,
   but as some of the projects on the TeRK site suggest there may be a
   whole variety of unconventional uses for robots which few people have
   ever tried simply because of the high technical barrier to be
   overcome.
   I have thought about making a robotic artist in the distant past.
   Some of the first robots which I remember seeing in the 1980s used the
   LOGO language to produce sketches using different coloured pens.  You
   could maybe do something similar to that, with a mouse-like body and a
   few differently coloured pens mounted on servos (there is plenty of
   scope on the Qwerk to add multiple servos).  Alternatively you could
   build something more like a manipulator arm, and attach pens as if
   they were fingers on separate servos.
   And then there is the Jackson Pollock robot, which would behave more
   chaotically.  So you have a bucket on a string.  The bucket contains
   paints which can be released by servos.  The movement of the bucket is
   controlled indirectly by two motors pushing or pulling the string,
   producing an erratic pendulum motion of the bucket.  When your
   masterpiece is complete you can call yourself an abstract
   expressionist and sell the robots works to the Tate gallery for a
   million dollars with the title "Expressions of post-human hubris".

   On 26/04/07, Benjamin Goertzel <[1]ben at goertzel.org> wrote:

   On 4/26/07, Bob Mottram <[2]fuzzgun at gmail.com > wrote:

     Well you've correctly anticipated the next step.  I'm adding a
     manipulator arm, which is only a little shorter than an adult human
     arm, so that the robot will be capable of doing a few useful jobs.
     The intention here is to use it for things like sweeping, mopping
     or dusting.

     Hmm... looking at the photo of your bot, and imagining it here in
     my livingroom (where I work, and my 10 year old daughter often
     hangs out and plays, draws or reads), I immediately had a somewhat
     different idea....
     Sweeping, mopping and dusting are not very interesting to me.
     (Anyone who has visited my house can confirm this! ;-)
     However, I think it would be rather interesting to see a variant of
     GROK1 that could draw pictures.
     I'm not sure what the right medium would be:
     -- a whiteboard, perhaps?  but erasing would be hard for the robot
     -- a tablet PC screen is a bad idea because the clumsy robot might
     break it, and it's costly
     -- a flip-pad of paper might work best, if a simple physical
     mechanism allowing the robot to flip to a new page were devised
     I guess either a whiteboard or a flip-pad would work fine
     initially, even if the erasing/turning-the-page problem isn't
     immediately solvable.
     A bot that could draw physical pictures of what it sees, on a pad
     of paper or whiteboard with a marker, would be quite fun.
     It could also draw collaboratively with people --- it would be
     looking at the pad of paper, seeing what the person drew, and then
     making a visual response.
     My daughter would certainly get a big kick out of this ;-) ... and
     I like the way it mixes up perception, action, social interaction
     and symbolic representation.
     I am envisioning a special manipulator arm that has slots for
     plugging in a few magic markers of different colors.  So the bot's
     "hand" would be a set of a few markers, basically.  The manipulator
     would need to be flexible enough to draw pictures.  The "hand"
     would contain a mechanism so that at any given time, it could
     extend one marker and retract the other ones a bit.  To change
     colors, it would just make a different choice as to which magic
     marker to extend.
     This bot would be fun for people to interact with, so it would get
     taught a lot more than a bot that sweeps, mops and dusts...
     Just a thought...
     -- Ben G
     _________________________________________________________________

   This list is sponsored by AGIRI: [3]http://www.agiri.org/email
   To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
   [4]http://v2.listbox.com/member/?& 
     _________________________________________________________________

   This list is sponsored by AGIRI: [5]http://www.agiri.org/email
   To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
   [6]http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=1391210&user_secret=bd91068
   2

References

   1. mailto:ben at goertzel.org
   2. mailto:fuzzgun at gmail.com
   3. http://www.agiri.org/email
   4. http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&
   5. http://www.agiri.org/email
   6. http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=1391210&user_secret=bd910682

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE