... Jez Davey on 'serving the purposes of God in my generation...: Family

serving the purposes of God in my generation...: Family

... being back on the water

After what must be surely another 18 months of dry dock the Moose finally makes it back on the water. This time on Cardiff Bay. Seen here with Alex keeping her well trimmed.

Thanks Alex for a great afternoon out. What a fantastic way to spend an Indian Summer.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

...elegant robots

These quadrotor robots rely on 8 motion-capture cameras located around the space to allow the robots to respond to the flying ball in a very natural-looking manner. So not ready to hit the street just yet. It certainly stirs the imagination though and suggests that with new dynamic controls future robots may be agile and even graceful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR5y8qZf0Y&feature=player_embedded

... new space opera

Discovering Alastair Reynolds and his take on the space opera has brought me back to the science fiction genre with a passion. Following a 10 year journey into historical fiction. My first taste of Reynolds was via a short story on Interzone. Now the chap cannot write fast enough for me.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

...R2D2

At the age of 9 there was Star Wars. And I was a believer. A tried to take apart my mums Aqua-Vac with designs on an R2-D2. I read all the Asimov novels and dreamed robot dreams.

Then I grew up. Well, Nearly!

At Uni' I got my hands on a 6DOF robot arm with the pleasure of writing a robot-programming language to sit atop its machine code instruction set; and discovered that a robot was merely a machine with an appetite for matrix algebra (groan).

But across the lab at Cardiff uni stood (not quite) a pair of robo legs with aspirations for the good life.

Just keeping alive those C3P0 moments.

So a glimmer of the boyhood dreams remained through all the years of practical engineering in heavy industry. Sometimes diminished by episodes of robowars.

Recently I have been managing a project that includes the installation of a couple of ABB robot arms. Naturally safety has been of primary concern. It is this I think that ensures the industrial robots remain firmly in the machines category. After all how can you build a relationship with something surrounded by double trip wires and light curtains.

Very interesting however to read about Robonaut2 built by GM and NASA. Designed from the outset to work in a human centric environment (as much as space can be). Although the higher levels of AI do not seem to have been developed it appears that significant steps have been taken regarding safe interaction.

Year by year the field of robotics advances. But the steps are very small indeed. I would suggest a lot of research has been inefficient and egotistical. There are some very basic aspects that can be developed using modelling at a much greater rate and at less expense. The insistance on a hardware realisation of a concept is more useful for maintaining enthusiasm and funding but of small value. It is this that has kept me back from purchasing a lego mindstorm and locking myself into the garage for months. Each time I consider a potential project I always come back to the AI as being the real challenge, and one that is beyond my programming ability (oh the heady days of GA, NN and Fuzzy logic written using Pascal on my Amstrad 9150)

But the next 10 years or so is surely going to be the most exciting of times for robot development. Especially when the Afghan war is over and the expanded list of drone suppliers have to find alternative commercial outlets for their wares.