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Subject: 
Re: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Fri, 13 Jan 2006 21:27:55 GMT
Original-From: 
steve <sjbaker1@airmail.=spamcake=net>
Viewed: 
2539 times
  
Steve Hassenplug wrote:

My two year old cell phone has 32k of memory, just like my eight yr old RCX.

EXACTLY.

And my three-month-old cell phone has 4M of memory (which is needs
because it has a camera in it), but my not-born-yet NXT will have
256k+64k. Over eight years, most devices have increased in memory
capacity by a factor of maybe 100 to 1000 times.

The Lego controller has managed just a 10-fold increase.

I really can't imagine doing image processing on an NXT.

That's because you are still thinking in terms of an itty-bitty little
computer.  The NXT's CPU is more than capable of doing this kind of
thing.  They've provided digital expansion ports and such to get the
data into the beast - everything one might need is there.  If it had
a few megabytes of memory - it could do it comfortably.

> I can't imagine anyone on my First LEGO League, or in our local
> LEGO club doing image processing.

What happens when things get this capable is that you give up on the
idea of writing every line of code yourself and you start making use
of pre-built libraries.  I would no more think of writing my own image
processing library than I would of hand-building a motor from magnets
and bits of wire.  There is a mountain of free image processing code
out there for the taking - if only you can fit it into the box somehow.

Given a suitable pre-built image processing library, the high level code
to deal with a camera tracking objects in the scene need be no more
complex than reading a rotation sensor.  It's just a matter of providing
the right level of abstraction to FLL kids and other non-programming
experts.

That's not a new concept - it's what Lego themselves did with their
own tethered camera.

Oh well, I guess we just have to patiently wait another 8 years for
the next-but-one Lego computer.



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
 
(...) When LEGO are able to sell as many NXTs as Nokia does mobile phones, I'll accept that as a valid comparison. ROSCO (19 years ago, 14-Jan-06, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
 
(...) Now this is funny. Are you suggesting (A) JB doesn't know much about hardware or (B) JB doesn't know about LEGO's development process? If you select (A) or (B), you should rethink your answer. On Fri, January 13, 2006 1:23 pm, steve wrote: (...) (19 years ago, 13-Jan-06, to lugnet.robotics)

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