Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #05247



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Richard Caudle
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 23:02:46 -0600
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Apples and Oranges (was: Smart bodies???)


>I'm inclined to believe that the term Smart Body being bandied about is a
comparative statement.
>The comparison is being made between mainstream robotics and BEAM, not
between natural systems and BEAM systems.

I couldn't agree with you more! It _is_ a comparative statement. And as
your >Subject suggests, the first thing one needs to do when making
comparisons is to make sure that they are comparing the same classes of
"things". However, once there is at least -some- agreement that "this
thing" and "that thing" (for example, mainstream robotics & BEAM robotics)
are both in the same class, don't you need some way of comparing them??

Basically, I was trying to point out that the word "smart" is, uh, kind of
meaningless if you don't know what "not smart" is. In other words, what
kinds of rules do you need to compare "kinds of bodies" so that you can say
where one more-or-less fits on the "smartness" scale? My attempt to come up
with a scale may be pretty useless, but it seems to be self-consistent
anyhow.

Nonetheless, I don't think that we ought to delude ourselves that the
current state of BEAM robotics produces bodies that are... say... even up to
halfway on the "smart" scale, at least as far as the level of "body" is
concerned. On the other hand, it -is- making what I would call smart
"joints", primarily because the implex thing (in other words, distal
implicit sensing) allows them to react to differences in their immediate
environment by themselves. And stuff like the legs on Spyder are moderately
smart because they perform a function -- and it is a non-trivial function --
without supervision.

Think about boxes of stuff in a grocery store that often will have the words
"NEW!!!" or "IMPROVED!!!" emblazoned in huge print on the front. I don't
know about you, but those words began to fail to impress me not long after I
learned to read! After all, if a laundry detergent has been
improved yet again after 40 years it ought to be "PERFECT!!!", eh? If you
use comparative words or phrases in a desert (are you likely to ever hear:
"Hey! I'm so proud of myself! I made a 'bot with a really STUPID body!!!")
or without rules by which to -make- comparisons, you might as well leave
those words out because they aren't much better than noise (and not _even_
the kind of redundant noise that English, for one language, is riddled
with.)

But hey, this is only my opinion, I could be wrong. (Dennis Miller)


Zoz


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