robot projects

Posted by: @casey

As for whether dreams materialize or not that doesn't matter, all that matters is we enjoy what we are doing. It is the journey not the end that counts as we are all going to end up in the same place anyway whatever successes or failures we may have on the way!

I'm in total agreement with you Casey.  It's the journey that I enjoy.   In fact, I've been accused by quite a few people throughout my life of being a "Dreamer".  And I don't even argue with them.  I accept this as a fact of reality.   I have tons of unfinished projects around and I openly confess that I probably enjoy dreaming about finishing them more than actually finishing them. ?   So the journey is perhaps far more enjoyable for me than the end result.

Having said the above, I've also been accused of being "Results Oriented".   Of course this can be a good accusation if being results-oriented is considered to be a positive trait.  While I have a lot of unfinished projects laying around, many of them are in a state of having visual results having been done on them.  It's ironing out all the fine details that I tend to procrastinate on.  ? 

But yes, enjoying the journey is best way to go. ?    Although reaching successful milestones can also be quite rewarding.

Posted by: @casey

It would be nice to share work on a project but the participants need to agree on a shared goal. This is what I believe Bill hoped for with his DB1 thus the reason I guess he didn't do it all himself and then just present it as a finished project.

I think also that much of Bill's work and presentation on DB1 is up to the viewer to see through their own lens.

They can view it as an exact recipe to follow wire-per-wire.   And duplicate the exact same PCBs and hardware that Bill is using.   That's certainly a viable perspective to take, and what many people may indeed prefer.

However, as Bill states verbally in his videos, he's just offering suggestions on how he's going to do these things.  It's up to the viewers to take from his examples whatever works for them.    So viewers are free to view the DB1 series as simply great ideas on how things can be done.  That's exactly where I'm at.  I'm not building an exact replica of DB1.  Although if I had the spare cash I might be tempted to do that on the side as well.  But financially I can't afford to build an exact replica of DB1 and also work on the robot of my dreams.  

So I see Bill as the ultimate abstract technological guru.  Just show me what can work and how he does it, and I'll take that and twist it into something absurd and insane that probably won't work at all! ? 

But at least I'll have fun doing it. ? 

Love it you guys are so funny !? I'm sure you both will come up with something outrageous .i  know duce is sure a fork in the road just ripped out the connector to the touch screen so I guess its HDMI now .i guess its important that we just keep young minds...........young minds........? and don't worry you just ruined $70 touch screen  !#/!#!!  Yes I guess I'll keep a young mind lol??

@casey

Personally, I agree with the notion that a robot must look like and act like, as much as possible as a real human being (Sorry to my beloved Terminator, or Lost in Space Nincompoop)!  So far, I haven't really gotten into robotics, because I'm not interested in toys either!  For me, a robot has to do something "intelligent".  I think programming a robot to go to X, Y or Z is nothing more than G-CODE on a CNC machine... why is it a robot if you told it exactly what to do, how and when?

First and foremost, with my engineering background, I prefer to build a fully functioning mechanical android, and then worry about the brains! 🙂  The way I see it is... that if I give it the "n" degrees of motion to start with, then all I need is the brains 😛

@frogandtoad

I am not sure whether a robot should have any physical resemblance to human beings, but I do believe that is should do more than avoid crashing into inanimate stationary objects or the cat!

I see this robotic forum going down the rabbit hole of facial recognition, AI and speech synthesis.

But I will only get worried when a robot says to me one day "Good Morning Dr. Chandra"

@pugwash

Posted by: @pugwash

I see this robotic forum going down the rabbit hole of facial recognition, AI and speech synthesis.

But I will only get worried when a robot says to me one day "Good Morning Dr. Chandra"

I want my robots to be dingo mean and ugly 🙂
    1) A Terminator replica
    2) A Predator replica
    3) That nincompoop nini robot from Lost In Space... Warning, waving arms

... and they have to be able to sing happy birthday master 😀

@frogandtoad

There is no accounting for personal taste!! ? 

@frogandtoad

I would like a robot that makes a cuppa tea, brings it to my bed and wakes me up gently but not before 9 am.

And looks like Pamela Anderson ? ? ? ? ? 

Oh, and someone said recently "We haven't had this much plastic in the ocean since Baywatch" ? ? 

@pugwash

Posted by: @pugwash

I would like a robot that makes a cuppa tea, brings it to my bed and wakes me up gently but not before 9 am.

And looks like Pamela Anderson  

LOL... I was a Samantha Fox supporter myself, and for a couple of good reasons! 😛

@frogandtoad
I have a much broader concept of what is a robot but I can't sum it all up in one post.  If a machine could be built to act and look like a human it would be called an android.  The little machines that run around sweeping and/or vacuuming the floors are autonomous robots. You don't tell them to go to x,y or z.  Much of their behavior is controlled by their environment as it is for us. We are machines with feedback and we move towards states of equilibrium (goals). 

Unlike the structure of a mechanical robot we are really a colony of cells. 

How can a mechanical android be fully functioning without a "brain"? The brain is part of the mechanics, it provides functional connections between the parts. Indeed programming is essentially wiring up hardware to perform some set of functions.  If the function is useful enough you might embody it in hardware (think graphic cards, sound cards, and whatever mathematical/logical functions are performed by hardware in the cpu).  A robot can be built out of nothing but hardware, no programming required.

Posted by: @frogandtoad

@pugwash

Posted by: @pugwash

I would like a robot that makes a cuppa tea, brings it to my bed and wakes me up gently but not before 9 am.

And looks like Pamela Anderson  

LOL... I was a Samantha Fox supporter myself, and for a couple of good reasons! 😛

Just to go totally off topic, you have given me some ideas for sculpting in Blender.

Watch out for future posts in the 3D Modelling subsection, with very short lifetimes. ? ? ? 

@casey

Indeed, I think we are in glorious agreement... just making a generalised point!

The whole point behind my message was that I think a robot does have to have a brain, rather than be coerced via it's programming logic, but it's flexibility and dexterity must be catered for in the engineering design if it is to be successful.  I think this (mechanical engineering) is the easier part, in comparison to giving it a real brain, although I do recognise that there must/will be some overlap and collaboration with the overall skeletal framework and nervous system.

Even HAL is still a long way off 🙂

Posted by: @pugwash

I see this robotic forum going down the rabbit hole of facial recognition, AI and speech synthesis.

Those are topics I'm personally interested in.   However, my idea of what constitutes A.I. is quite different from how it is often being used even by the so-called A.I. community.   The call programs that simply sort through data to find relationships between data as "artificial intelligence".  Just call them data sorting programs. ? 

Seriously though, I don't see any actual 'intelligence" in them.   As far as I can tell the reason they call them A.I. is because they build programs that is free to sort data based on what relationships are found within the data.  So the programs find new relationships that humans never thought about and so the humans say, "Hey wasn't that a brilliant idea?"  But it wasn't really a brilliant idea all.  It was just the result of a program that is programmed to sort data based on relationships it finds in the data.   Humans just miss a lot of relationships, apparently.   So they dub these programs as being "smart" for having recognized them.

The other thing that is being called A.I. which I don't personally see as A.I. are simply programs that have been designed to track objects or identify specific patterns or shapes.   We're doing that in the lessons by Paul McWhorter called "A.I. on the Jetson Nano".   Up to this point we haven't done anything that I would consider to be A.I.  It appears that we are getting close to start tracking objects in a video frame.  But I don't personally consider tracking objects to be A.I.  Especially when I'm the one who has to program in all the instructions to do that.   How does that amount to artificial intelligence?  It's just a tracking program.  Hardly A.I.

What I'm far more interested in is what I call "Semantic A.I."  This term has been around since the 1940's and has been used to mean a myriad of different concepts.   I'm using it to simply mean a system of A.I. that is based on the meaning of words (i.e. semantics).

If I can write a program that can learn to understand the meanings of works and carry on intelligent conversations based on what the words actually mean, I will consider that to be A.I.   And so that's the path I'm currently pursuing.

Also, it should be noted that this type of A.I. doesn't even need a "robot".   A robot is a roaming butt. ? 

By that I simply mean that a robot is a physical entity that can roam around and interact physically with the physical world.  But A.I. doesn't need to be able to do that.   We can have an intelligent computer that can simply carry on an intelligent conversation, but have no physical body and no way to physically interact with the physical world.  Therefor A.I. and robots are really two entirely different things.  A robot can have A.I. but A.I. doesn't need to be a robot.

@robo-pi

Hi, I use AIML Bot - I asks random questions, programed it to audibly speak / answer me from out of my laptop -  don't need any robot .

I did create a robot also I use to answer me,

I considered your post,

seems the answer is in the term "artificial" intelligence

something inanimate will never equal real life