Research bots leverage open-source for child-like intelligence

Article

Ok, so why are you using open source instead of proprietory stuff from companies ? Isn't that cheaper than building it yourself all the time ?


The conventional approach of using commercial robots has long caused problems for academics. They must sign limiting nondisclosure agreements to gain access to proprietary technology, and they may be prevented from going into low-level control code. Then there's the headache of discovering that a line is being discontinued. When Sony abandoned robotics in 2006, for example, many groups that had been using the company's Aibo robot as their primary research platform were left in the lurch.


So what you're saying is they lock you down so you can't share your research (a primary requirement of advancing science) milk you for every dime, and then bugger off and discontinue the robots you were depending on ?





"Tekkotsu is intended to make it easy to develop sophisticated applications on mobile robots, by providing an extensive set of well-integrated primitives for perception, navigation, manipulation and control," said project head David Touretzky, a research professor of computer science at CMU.


But now that you're going open source you can share stuff like crazy and people don't have to keep inventing the wheel over and over and over ? One person can get the movement navigation going and then everyone has that ?


"Modularity and reusability are required to enable the technological evolution of autonomous robots," von Stryk said. "In the long run, this is only possible with open software and hardware modules that enable an unlimited number of researchers and developers to share their particular contributions."


Let me rephrase that for you.

Big business can't do research. They lock down and copyright everything, share nothing, and monetize, monetize, monetize every tiny little thing to the point where you can't fart without having to pay someone a buck.

The interesting thing about this statement is that it's made by a scientist in the field , trying to get something done. And he's tried it one way , and it didn't work. And he's tried it another way , and the other way did work.

The iPhone came out july 11th. It doesn't look much different than the old iPhone. It has a gps navigation chip in it that the old one didn't have, but those already existed. It has a touch screen , my playstation double screen has a touch screen. It runs apple only software and is locked down to a fair thee well.

I have an old lap top. It runs windows 3.1
It has word processors with spell checkers , and spread sheets and everything. Any business task you do today , it was doing fifteen years ago with far more limited technology.

My computer plays nifty games that wont run on older computers. And thats all it does.

I do believe that scientist guy is right. Big business can't innovate. All it can do , is lock down , copyright , and monetize monetize monetize. And then leave you in the lurch just when you start to depend on it.

I just got all the junk stripped out of xp and got it up and running just the way I like it. No longer supported , upgrade to Vista. Too bad if your system won't run it buy another system. Don't care that it's full of bugs , xp not supported anymore !

Bill gates is not the only one in town playing that game , it seems.