Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #08456
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: "Richard Caudle" richard@cqc.com
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 22:39:13 -0500
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Lets Hypothesise...
You know, the biggest question that I have on my mind is "Why worry about
the real distance between objects?" When you hear a noise, you can't make
an accurate assessment of it's distance from you. You're lucky if you can
even tell the direction it's really coming from. We make no distance
measurements when we hear things. I don't really think that we make any
visual measurements unless we're specifically trying to do so.
The way we navigate through our world is what I call the "Second star to the
right, and straight on 'till morning" system. We pay little attention to
distances and such things. We see something interesting, we go that way
until we see it better. There's no real measurement involved. That's why
we need maps and such things.
As far as media go, air and water are the real world situations that
99.99999999999% of our robots will face. Sound works well in air and even
better in water. It's relativly easy to do this with a piezo. (T.A.)Wilf
Rigter has posted a couple of circuits for chirping. RF is obviously the
solution for space.
The thing that I'll be concentrating on this week (vacation!!) is developing
a Uiversal Com-munications Device. Bruce Robinson brought this up and it
makes the most sense. Make an add-on device that will allow any BEAM bot'
to join the herd. It's my belief that if we can get them to talk to each
other, we can get them to _DO SOMETHING_ (other than looking really cool)!
I also have some thoughts on collective intelligence that I want to test,
and this would be a good way to do just that!
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