Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #00387



To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Sean Rigter rigter@cafe.net
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 13:48:45 -0800
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: question


Bob Shannon wrote:

> Actually, small robots without CPU's are NOT a new technology. BEAM is
> simply a popularized form of retro-robotics, a return to the original
> principles of robotics that still apply today to CPU based designs.

RIGHT ON! but remember 50's turtles were designed and build by deep
thinkers on the leading edge of technology. Although these "lobots" were
well publicized and stimulated many ideas in AI and other fields they
were never in the realm of poptech. As a class, hardwired robots are
quite different from CPU controlled robots. Unlike general purpose CPU
based devices, in BEAM bots the program ("information") is hardwired
into the structure. Hardwired devices are generally considered to be
invariable and deterministic in their application and behaviour. BEAM
devices are based on biological models which do not use CPUs but are
adaptive in structure and program and process a lot of information. So
the trick is to design a hardwired structure which is a Analog
Processing Unit (APU) to "process" information and execute it's
"program" in the information rich analog form.

> Think about this, a CPU based robot needs to be programmed (at least
> once) and this has a cost associated with it. But a BEAM design must be
> engineered for its behavior. This is actually a much MORE expensive
> effort!

> As an example, write a program for a simple CPU based robot, then try to
> duplicate this behavior with BEAM technology. Notice how much longer it
> takes to get the same behavior as the CPU based design.
>
> Now, change the behavior of the CPU based robot, and alter the circuits
> of the BEAM design to match. Again, altering the BEAM design takes far
> longer, and also demands changes to the hardware. Clearly the BEAM
> design is more expensive to produce and maintain.

Hence the work to modularize BEAM bots with (industry standard
interface) hextiles, configurable analog arrays, motor and sensor
modules. These "off the shelf" functions are then plugged together for
specific applications reducing the design costs.

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