Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #03059



To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: NSX - evenflow88@hotmail.com
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 01:12:45 -0600
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: HYPER WALKER 1.0


It isn't so much that they are unreliable, it is more like it is difficult
to really "grok" what you are sensing with such a circuit. For example, the
Polaroid sonar devices work fairly well -- as long as the surface isn't
something like velvet. A 'bot that uses such a sensor to avoid hitting
things will run into a sheet of something very sound-absorbent every time.
It just doesn't "see" it.

So, you've got to ask yourself: "What does such a circuit actually
'sense'?" Although we can use our senses to detect changes in our
environment (something just blocked a sound source, a shadow falls on you,
heat from some warm thing is cut off, etc., & their opposites) it isn't
really how we usually use our senses. Instead, we are listening to
something, we see things, we feel heat and so forth.

If you were to use such a sensor for a robot, you'd have to remember the
other conditions where changes in the electromagnetic field occur. If your
clothes drier starts up and there is a momentary dip in the field where the
robot is, do you really want it to act as if it "detected something moving
nearby"? If the 'bot moves quickly enough, do you know how you want it to
act if it approaches a fan? Furthermore, it would be Real Difficult to make
the antenna directional (particularly at 60 Hz... that ends up being a very
long antenna indeed) so you won't get any sense of where the change is
occurring. As a result, putting two such devices on your robot is probably
of no great value.

But hey, I might be wrong about all of this. Still, it does raise the
possibility of detecting things that are out of the realm of everyday human
existence and the useful behaviors that robots can thus be "tamed" to do as
a result.


jab



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