Subject:
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Re: Design
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Sun, 4 Dec 2005 17:07:25 GMT
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Original-From:
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PeterBalch <peterbalch@compuserve.com/NoMoreSpam/>
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Viewed:
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1292 times
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> In lugnet.robotics, "John Barnes" <barnes@sensors.com> wrote:
> I think there may be a fundamental reason why the commonplace research • robot is
> unable to come close to the behaviour of the average housefly - sensor
density.
I think you're absolutely right. In the animal world, sensors seem to cost
next to nothing but roboticists find sensors very expensive. Electronics,
on the other hand, is dirt cheap. So roboticists spend forever designing
terribly clever algorithms to extract every last bit of useful information
from their sensors.
Robot sensors are expensive because they're built whereas electronics is
cheap because it's printed by the million.
Can <barnes@sensors.com> not do something about that?
> The stuck behind the sofa problem might simplify if touch via hundreds or
> thousands of individual sensors over the whole outer skin combined with • hundreds
> of sensors buried in every joint detecting stress could contribute toward • an
> external sensation of stuckness.
100% right on!
> I have yet
> to see a commercial robot design which comes close to providing the kind • of
> sensory input I think it will take to compete with nature's creepy
crawlies,
I was watching the new David Attenborough series on invertebrates last week
which has some amazing micro-photography. We tend to be in awe at what an
ant can do with a brain the size of a pin-head. But here were whole animals
far smaller than a pin-head behaving with more intelligence than any robot
I've ever seen: recognising a potential mate and doing a coutship dance.
They never, ever get stuck behind the sofa in spite of living in a very
complicated 3D environment.
How many neurons does a creature that size have? There's a definite lower
limit for neuron size. They must have less processing power than a PC. Then
I look at what robots can do and it makes me want to weep.
Peter
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