I often laugh about that soon miniaturization of electronics and soon mechanics too, we'll be so proud of our new little swarms of silicon insects. Then someone will have the genius idea to make them env. friendly, even biodegradable, and feed on local nutrient; and to provide self sustained optimizations, make them exchange heuristic atom that we'd call genes. Greetings, humans, welcome to nature. You just learned to speak to it.
ps: I heard there were tiny leaf cutting quadcopters on the market in Europe.
I used to dislike nature because technology seemed cooler. Metal beats flesh, right?
But at some point I realised this: nature is technology. It's a super-advanced nanotech that is not of our design, and which we can't control... yet.
Our current solutions may seem better, but that's only because they're crude attempts at directly optimizing for narrow set of goals. Planes may be faster than birds, but they don't self-heal, self-fuel, and don't do centimetre-precision maneuvering in a complex environment.
Nowadays I believe that our technology has a lot to learn and steal from nature - e.g. materials, energy-efficiency, self-replication. Better metal will look more and more like flesh.
Indeed! The best of our conscious creations don't even come close to the marvel of a tiny ant, or even a bacterium; both materially and computationally. Our collective hubris at nature is very very sad.
That's not true. Agricultural robotics and automation are certainly more advanced in America and have improving for a long time. Drones with spectral cameras to examine and map plant health and irrigation levels, and to spot-spray pesticides, automated gps tractors and tools, collaborative augmented reality- nothing new in the US or Europe. It's said a lot, but Japanese robotics is somewhat myopic. IMO mostly it's due to the corporate structures in Japan: huge companies like Honda can pour tons of funding into ASIMO for 4 decades, but their goals are too narrow to make up for broad, investigative research. Plus, culture in Japan is a tangible force, and the awareness of societal problems is so high it actually impedes pure research. They are so focused on their aging population and the automation of labor that the large majority of research is geared towards those problems in one way or another. The US has the same problem- we focus on military use over everything else, but we do it just a little less than Japan.
You typically hear this sentiment (Japan is the best at robotics) wrt humanoid robotics, especially ASIMO[1]. ASIMO is basically just a really smooth suite of soft skills. Facial recognition, voice, HRI, and consumer-friendly hardware. The hard skills underneath are extremely highly optimized but fundamentally weak and outdated by over 20 years. ASIMO runs on the same hardware and algorithms from the 90s except for batteries, computer speed and sensor accuracy. In the US we have been extremely inventive with hardware design- eg all-plastic mass-manufacture BAXTER, or ATLAS, which is largely hydraulic. The newest generations of ATLAS have hydraulic actuators integrated into the frame.
ASIMO and most japanese robots use a variation on ZMP walking methods, which has the characteristic high-knee, ankle-heavy look. It's extremely inefficient and unstable. Russian robots use this too. Other robots in the US, Europe and even in China use much more efficient, flexible methods separated by a couple generations of new algorithms. Take Cassie[2] from OSU's dynamic robotics lab. Pretty clearly far ahead of anything in Japan in stability, speed, power[3] and efficiency, built by grad students from scratch. Compact series elastic actuators with HZD algorithms.
Japanese robots are meant to look perfect. Russian robots are meant to look terrifying. American robots are meant to explore new algorithms or technologies. European robots are mostly meant to build cars.
They have been at it seriously since the 70s, so it's no surprise they are leaders in this field. That said, they've had some misses too. Poured a lot of money into money pits (their AI efforts of old, "5gen computer" for example).
Abundant Robotics. SRI spinoff. They have an apple-picking robot. It's too slow, too fragile, and uses too much duct tape.[1] They need someone to re-engineer the mechanical parts.
Agrobot. Strawberry harvester. Nice vision system, too slow and too fragile.[2]
DeepField Robotics. Bosch automatic weeding robot.[3] Well-built, but too expensive.
Mechanical engineering for dirty environments is hard. But there's a lot of good machinery working in dirty environments and getting the job done.
Computer vision, at last, works, which makes intelligent agricultural implements possible. But the computer vision component isn't a big part of the system; it's basically a smartphone-sized piece of electronics. Most of the problems come from the moving parts.
It's basically a PR piece for a Japanese company. Shows a spraying drone, a drone on wheels that can show you a video of how well your asparagus is growing, and a drone collecting images of onion fields, that can be analyzed by AI for detection of a specific type of fungus, with questionable accuracy.
I didn't see anything that would justify the 30 minutes wasted watching the video.
I think robots are cool, but it is a bit depressing that a big driver for their development is that the japanese want to keep immigrants out... makes me a bit hesitant to wish them luck with it.
Contrary to perception, open immigration is unfair to the weakest and poorest in a society.
I live in India. My country has 300M people living in acute poverty - less than $1/day.
These are the people who would likely benefit most from immigrating to a developed country with better healthcare and opportunities.
Yet:
1. These people would be liabilities in a developed nation since they have no transferable skills apart from manual labor. Most can't even read or write.
2. In 99% of cases, these people wouldn't even know anything about immigration, refugee status, etc.
Open immigration essentially helps people who already have the knowledge and means to immigrate. These are not the poorest and most in-need.
The Indian immigrants moving to America or Europe can have perfectly okay lives in India. I don't begrudge them for moving, but for western people to assume a philanthropic stance for taking them in is wrong. You aren't helping the poorest; you're helping the "doing okay" segment of the population.
What's wrong with that? They just want to preserve their culture, don't see a problem with that. I've spent a decent amount of time there, much of which was with locals. Despite being a white dude outsider, part of my attraction to Japan is the cultural homogeneity. I hope they can keep it up.
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
ps: I heard there were tiny leaf cutting quadcopters on the market in Europe.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
But at some point I realised this: nature is technology. It's a super-advanced nanotech that is not of our design, and which we can't control... yet.
Our current solutions may seem better, but that's only because they're crude attempts at directly optimizing for narrow set of goals. Planes may be faster than birds, but they don't self-heal, self-fuel, and don't do centimetre-precision maneuvering in a complex environment.
Nowadays I believe that our technology has a lot to learn and steal from nature - e.g. materials, energy-efficiency, self-replication. Better metal will look more and more like flesh.
[+] [-] shanev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stretchwithme|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway389443|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yanivleven|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hwillis|8 years ago|reply
You typically hear this sentiment (Japan is the best at robotics) wrt humanoid robotics, especially ASIMO[1]. ASIMO is basically just a really smooth suite of soft skills. Facial recognition, voice, HRI, and consumer-friendly hardware. The hard skills underneath are extremely highly optimized but fundamentally weak and outdated by over 20 years. ASIMO runs on the same hardware and algorithms from the 90s except for batteries, computer speed and sensor accuracy. In the US we have been extremely inventive with hardware design- eg all-plastic mass-manufacture BAXTER, or ATLAS, which is largely hydraulic. The newest generations of ATLAS have hydraulic actuators integrated into the frame.
ASIMO and most japanese robots use a variation on ZMP walking methods, which has the characteristic high-knee, ankle-heavy look. It's extremely inefficient and unstable. Russian robots use this too. Other robots in the US, Europe and even in China use much more efficient, flexible methods separated by a couple generations of new algorithms. Take Cassie[2] from OSU's dynamic robotics lab. Pretty clearly far ahead of anything in Japan in stability, speed, power[3] and efficiency, built by grad students from scratch. Compact series elastic actuators with HZD algorithms.
Japanese robots are meant to look perfect. Russian robots are meant to look terrifying. American robots are meant to explore new algorithms or technologies. European robots are mostly meant to build cars.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEJeIUTValE
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is4JZqhAy-M
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWVci9qS7Ds
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dumbfounder|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antoniuschan99|8 years ago|reply
This is what I'm working on: http://www.kokonaut.com
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
Agrobot. Strawberry harvester. Nice vision system, too slow and too fragile.[2]
DeepField Robotics. Bosch automatic weeding robot.[3] Well-built, but too expensive.
Mechanical engineering for dirty environments is hard. But there's a lot of good machinery working in dirty environments and getting the job done.
Computer vision, at last, works, which makes intelligent agricultural implements possible. But the computer vision component isn't a big part of the system; it's basically a smartphone-sized piece of electronics. Most of the problems come from the moving parts.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0coCmXiYU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT351pQHfI [3] https://www.deepfield-robotics.com/index-en.html
[+] [-] chicob|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] majewsky|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pakitan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stereo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jawbone3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puranjay|8 years ago|reply
I live in India. My country has 300M people living in acute poverty - less than $1/day.
These are the people who would likely benefit most from immigrating to a developed country with better healthcare and opportunities.
Yet:
1. These people would be liabilities in a developed nation since they have no transferable skills apart from manual labor. Most can't even read or write.
2. In 99% of cases, these people wouldn't even know anything about immigration, refugee status, etc.
Open immigration essentially helps people who already have the knowledge and means to immigrate. These are not the poorest and most in-need.
The Indian immigrants moving to America or Europe can have perfectly okay lives in India. I don't begrudge them for moving, but for western people to assume a philanthropic stance for taking them in is wrong. You aren't helping the poorest; you're helping the "doing okay" segment of the population.
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
The govt and pop at large want to keep Japan Japanese. It's not a new religion. They've been that way since before cmdr Perry. I can respect that.
[+] [-] Banthum|8 years ago|reply
In Tokyo these days, you can go to a culture festival and not have to see police stationed every block with assault rifles and flak jackets.
They're watching and learning from us, that's for sure.
[+] [-] dhf17|8 years ago|reply