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Toys Software Linux

The Robots are Coming 239

Posted by michael from the metal-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com's new 'Linux-powered Robots Quick Reference Guide' offers an interesting glimpse into of some Linux-powered robots currently available or near production, and provides an extensive reading list with further information on Linux in robotics. According to a fascinating article at TechNewsWorld, Linux is poised to play a centrol role in an emerging industry that many expect to overtake the PC industry in size: robotics. Japan is currently driving robot innovation, according to the article, impelled by a looming labor shortage. Consumer robots like the Sony Aibo and Honda Asimo make headlines, but ubiquitous, cheap, and practical utility robots are what most Japanese robot makers are focused on, and 'carmaker Honda believes that robots will become its most important business,' according to the TechNewsWorld article. Watch out -- the Linux-powered robots are on the march!"
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The Robots are Coming More

The Robots are Coming

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  • We prefer... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:47PM (#7651658)
    ..the term "Electronic-American", you insensitive carbon-based clods!

  • Linux-powered robots? (Score:5, Funny)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:47PM (#7651659) Homepage
    Finally, a solution to our needless dependence on batteries!

  • yeesh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:48PM (#7651665) Homepage
    Japan is currently driving robot innovation, according to the article, impelled by a looming labor shortage.

    Ugh. I get as excited about robots and Linux as much as anybody, but the semi-marxist in me gets a little freaked out by things like this.

    How long before innovation that can take the role of a worker in a labor-shortage environment ends up being used to replace real people in a labor-glutted environment?

    • Re:yeesh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by OtakuHawk ( 682073 )
      but you have to remember, there will always be people needed to FIX the robots when they break down. and OTHER robots capable of doing this job won't be around for a long time.
      • ...there will always be people needed to FIX the robots when they break down. and OTHER robots capable of doing this job won't be around for a long time.

        And when the robots can repair themselves, they'll still need us to supply the power ... oh, sorry, that was just a movie [warnerbros.com], right?

    • Perhaps... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Azureflare ( 645778 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:57PM (#7651719)
      Perhaps our social labor structure needs some redesigning? Perhaps not everyone needs to work nearly as hard as we are?

      I think the developments in robotics are going to force us to seriously reconsider our philosophy about life. If robots can do what we do now, better, what are we here for?

      Personally, I'll welcome the day when robots can do all our work for us, and I can go and relax on the beach all day long.

      • Re:Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:00AM (#7651731) Homepage
        Personally, I'll welcome the day when robots can do all our work for us, and I can go and relax on the beach all day long.

        But how are you going to be able to purchase the necessary commodities of life? Food/shelter/clothing and all that?

        It's not like the people who have these robots are going to donate the fruits of their labour for free.

        • Re:Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Azureflare ( 645778 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:11AM (#7651780)
          True... That would be really horrible if the corporations used the robots for all the work and then charged for the fruits of those labors. If those corporations in charge of the use of the robots decide to do such a thing (which is likely, given the fact that they want profits more than anything), there are going to be a lot of poor in the world...

          I think now is a time when ethics and morals are really, really important in our capitalistic society. Without them, we are at the mercy of those who can develop such systems.

        • Simple! The robots will be collectively owned!

          Its nay-sayers like you who keep us back from this wonderful utopia of endless beaches and relaxation. Sometimes I wonder if you're with us or the robots.

          • More likely, the robots will own of all us. You see they will be the only one's working, ie:the only ones getting a salary. Sooner or later they will have all the money and we will have to sell ourselves into slavery for a "white chocolate mocha"... mmmmm mocha, OK where do I sign? >:)

        • Re:Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:18AM (#7651810) Homepage
          But the companies will be paying taxes on their income, right? As will the people that do have a job (and those jobs are likely very highly paid; if they didn't need very qualified people for them, they would have automated as well, right?). So the government will still have quite a lot of income.

          What would be needed is a social coverage system that does make allowances for having perhaps 50%-80% unemployment; in essence, "unemployment" would need to cease to be an abberration at all, and become the norm. In effect, you'd have everybody - having work or not - on a basic income (that may be purely monetary, or in a hybrid form) that gives you a basic but decent standard of living.

          Now, I'm sure free-market people are busting a vein right now, but consider the alternative: having more than half the population with no money, no work, and no prospects of ever getting either? Can you spell "riots", "looting", "crime wave" and "insurgency"? I knew you could!

          This is all of course contingent on the assumption of the parent posters that new work opportunities aren't opening up in sufficient numbers.

          Also, there is a world of options in between our current 40h+ work week and "relax on the beach all day long". You have quite different amount of work being done in different parts of the world already; in Europe, we generally work quite a bit less than in the US for instance; valuing the extra hours of off time more than the added income. You could imagine a future where the normal work week could be an average of 10 hours or so (maybe as 20 hours per week for half the year).

          • when governments no longer need citizens... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:26AM (#7651830) Homepage
            There is a saying:

            "What happens when goverments no longer need citizens?"

            It applies just as much to the network of corporations as it does to the network of governments.

          • Re:Perhaps... (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Fat Cow ( 13247 )
            If everyone owned stock in the corporations producing the goods, they would make money off the robotic advances too.
          • Athens produced so much philosophy and science because slaves gave the citizens lots of time to sit around and think. If we have robot slaves, we'll also have lots of time to sit around. A high-technology communism would cause an explosion in philosophy, art, science, and open source code. :)

            Since we now know that centrally planned economies are unable to adequately allocate resources (this is why the USSR fell -- it had nothing to do with socialism), guaranteed income to citizens to be spent on the free m

        • Re:Perhaps... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by quandrum ( 652868 )
          Except, if no one has any capital because their jobs have been replaced by robots, who will purchase the fruits of the robots labour?

          New forms of redistribution will emerge. The free market demands it. Perhaps more people will find work in creative endeavors.

        • Re:Perhaps... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Cannelbrae ( 157237 )
          ...fixing the robots?
        • Your point is valid - mechanization and automation always create huge economic imbalances as workers are dislocated and the wage/consumption cycle breaks temporarily. ITs been happening since the cotton ginny.

          Yet you and I are not adversely affected by autoamtion of cotton production, so its clear that a flexible workforce can, over time, adapt. The key is education and a willingness to change. If you don't have those, you're screwed.

          • Your point is valid - mechanization and automation always create huge economic imbalances as workers are dislocated and the wage/consumption cycle breaks temporarily. ITs been happening since the cotton ginny.

            Yet you and I are not adversely affected by autoamtion of cotton production, so its clear that a flexible workforce can, over time, adapt. The key is education and a willingness to change. If you don't have those, you're screwed.

            I have to disagree with you on that one. There exists a point where the

        • Re:Perhaps... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Kaboom13 ( 235759 )
          If the robots really make human labor obsolete, there would be no point in depriving others of their use. Lets say I make a robot capable of doing anything a human does but better, able to make more of itself, repair itself, and power itself. Now this robot supplies me with everything I desire. Now I can either keep this robot to myself, and put up with the hordes of people demanding I let my robot help others, or I just let my robots build some robots to help others while they arent working for me. Ei
        • But how are you going to be able to purchase the necessary commodities of life? Food/shelter/clothing and all that? It's not like the people who have these robots are going to donate the fruits of their labour for free.

          We already have an example of a product that costs nothing to mass produce once it's been designed: free software. You can download it from the Internet and share it with your friends. Presumably, the same principle will apply to other goods and services that can be replicated for free.
        • If a robot can build another robot, then all it wouldn't really be worth much for a select few to keep the robots to themselves. When the day comes when robots can do all our work for us, then they'd obviously be complicated enough to repair themselves and create new copies. If there are more robots than are needed in the world, and robots can be produced, effectively, for nothing, then there's no economic motication for hording all these 'bots for oneself.

          What if some benevolent person bought a robot and,

      • Re:Perhaps... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by sillybilly ( 668960 )
        "For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living." - Henry David Thoreau You could already redesign the social labor structure, but when robots take over the simple work, the issue will be more looming. These days everyone is ushered into a hampsterwheel of 'jobs' and 'debt,' just so you never get bored and you always have something to keep you busy, something to strive for. P
    • For every job replaced by a robot, there will be many more created, and the overall productivity of the robot+humans teams will be higher than the only human teams.

      Therefore

      don't worry

    • Re:yeesh... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:03AM (#7651744) Homepage
      A good question.

      But, don't forget that the "robotics revolution" is really a pretty long-term thing, and long-term, demographics show that population - especially the work-age population - is or will be trending downwards in more and more countries. For most industrialized countries, "labour glut" is simply not happening thirty to fifty years down the line.

      What is happening (and has really been happening for a long time already) is that automation tends to remove the jobs that are the most brainless, dangerous or repetitive, at the same time creating new (but fewer) jobs "higher up" in the organization - as somebody already said, you need people to design, deploy and manage the automation systems. It does mean that education and training is becoming steadily more important, however. We are already long gone fron the days when someone could attend just grammar school, then start a job and learn in place. Twenty or thirty years down the line, having a high school diploma only will likely be similarily useless.

    • Re:yeesh... (Score:5, Informative)

      by JJahn ( 657100 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:04AM (#7651752)
      Well...right now is when robots will replace people. For example, I work as a web developer at an investment casting company. We extensively use robotics throughout our process, and I would say we are probably the most automated investment caster in the world.

      Where the robots excel are at the jobs that finding reliable people for is almost impossible. Its hard to find people who will take factory positions and do a good job at it. Keep in mind though, that the more robots there are, the more high-paying programming, troubleshooting, etc. jobs that are made to support them.

      Oh, and its really cool to watch robots dip molds or pour molten steel ;)

      • Keep in mind though, that the more robots there are, the more high-paying programming, troubleshooting, etc. jobs that are made to support them

        Not that it's particularly important as the Earth is over-crowded anyway, but you do realize that if you replace 25 workers with 25 robots, that those 25 robots will likely require perhaps just 1 maintenance person, right ?

        Even including all the other tasks involved with these robots.. design, standards compliance checking, etc. those are all 1-man jobs that are t

        • It's also not as simple to say that all these people will be out on their keister, except for the one repair guy. History shows that mechanization and boosts in productivity benefit everyone, starting with the use of agricultural machinery to get people out of the fields. Yes, in the short term jobs are displaced, but the increase in productivity means that fewer people are needed to generate one commodity, and so that the remainder are free to open up new lines of business and create new services and com
          • The whole point of computerization is to improve productivity. That may mean less people, same amount of product, or it may mean same number of people, more product.

            Unless you do it wrong, you either end up with more product (and the problems related to this..) or less employed people (with its problems as well).

            If you do it wrong, you end up with the technology bubble (spending on technology but not really getting any benifit from it).

            If you computerize and it requires the same number of people to do t
          • If by the short term you mean for a century or two, then I agree. But you didn't talk about what it's like to live through that century. Or about what proportion of the people normally do. Most europeans today don't have largely (say more than 60%) peasant ancestors, but if you go back very far, you find over 90% peasants. This is because the peasants tended to die, unpleansantly, whenever things became difficult. Their *normal* lives were close to the edge.

            Do you really like the prospect of living th

        • Re:yeesh... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by BinxBolling ( 121740 )
          Not that it's particularly important as the Earth is over-crowded anyway, but you do realize that if you replace 25 workers with 25 robots, that those 25 robots will likely require perhaps just 1 maintenance person, right ?

          And where did those 25 robots come from? Did they just spring, fully-formed, from the maintenance person's head? Or were they maybe manufactured by some other company that employs tens of thousands of people?

          (Yeah, yeah, I know that not all of those 10s of thousands of people are di

    • Re:yeesh... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dylancable ( 718004 )
      Total replacement will never happen. Companies make money by mass producing products to the public, If the public has no work they have no money to buy these products that keep these people rich.
    • Most importantly, they're going to have labor shortage?!?!? Hell I'm sure a lot of folks in USA and Europe (Western as well) wouldn't mind having jobs. Maybe the Japanese can outsource their jobs.

    • Re:yeesh... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Imperator ( 17614 ) <slashdot2 AT omershenker DOT net> on Sunday December 07, 2003 @01:02AM (#7651958)

      Oh, but I'd love to live in a world where robots did all the work. Where I showed up to work one day a week to code the robots a bit, and spent the rest of my time in leisure pursuits. The only problem is that won't happen. We constantly want more. If we were happy with our current standard of living we could steadily reduce the workweek for decades to come. But instead Americans are working ever longer and harder.

      No, right now we have solved the problem of scarcity at a level Marx never dreamed of. If we wanted to, we could eliminate (not just reduce) poverty, homelessness, and hunger in America. It would take a massive shift in values, but it would not be technically or economically difficult. If we aren't doing these things now, why should we think that robotics (or any other technological improvements) will change that? No, we'll just keep working our asses off so we can get shiny new cell phones every six months.

      But all that will probably be denounced as socialism by some knee-jerk American. As far as I'm concerned, the advanced societies of this century are the ones being built in Western Europe. They are not perfect, but they are trying new things and consciously trying to leverage the economic and political successes of the last 55 years into better societies. America is falling behind, and that worries me.

    • How long before innovation that can take the role of a worker in a labor-shortage environment ends up being used to replace real people in a labor-glutted environment?

      That's not a technical problem, it's a societal problem: the notion that you are a bad person if you don't work needs to change. A large fraction of the population will simply have to get money from "the government" and "other people's taxes" since they will have no useful skills that other people would be willing to pay them for.

      I mean, w

    • Re:yeesh... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @03:42AM (#7652425)
      Japan's 'impending labor shortage' is nothing more than plain old-fashioned bushito bullshit. The world's population is exploding, which means that there is no labor shortage in real terms. When they say 'impending labor shortage' the Japanese mean not enough of 'our people' to do all the work that needs to be done.

      This is an indicator of the overwhelming but subliminal racism that permeates Asian culture. It never occurs to the Japanese that there actually could real decent intelligent civilized human beings outside of Japan that could be encouraged to move to Japan, do the work, and eventually become Japanese citizens and even, over time, actually even become Japanese.

      Contrast that frame of mind with the Americans. The Americans talk endlessly about the levels of racism, both overt and subliminal, between the various groups of people who move there and live there. But after a few generations of being part of American culture, everybody is accepted as part of the 'salad bowl' of American society.

      This could never happen in Japan. There are families of Korean background who have lived in Japan since the Tokugawa era (1600's) and they are still marched down to the local police station every year to be registered as 'gaijin' (foreigners). The Japanese even practice racism against their own people. They created a social sub-class called 'buraku-min' which get treated a second-class citizens even though there is no disconcernable difference between these people and the mainstream.

      It's all just accepted as the way that things are, have always been, and should always be. But do they actually have a real labor shortage in a world that doubles in population every twenty years?

      No way.

    • Didn't Marx specify that communism would not work until technology was to a point that people's basic needs could be cheaply met? Didn't he warn Lenin that Russia could not sustain a communism unless Western Europe were also involved?

      Robotic labour is exactly what we need if we want communism. The only way we can save mankind from the tyrrany of greed is if labour is optional.

      A lot of posters are pointing out that robots won't replace all labour but leave just a few highly qualified positions, how will

  • Why Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ergo98 ( 9391 )
    It really is a serious question. All software systems generally have a technical focus guiding their design, but when they're crammed into uses beyond that what they are designed for, product disasters usually result (see embedded NT. Indeed for the portable market Microsoft basically threw it all out and wrote CE from scratch for that platform).

    I guess my question is given the plethora of extremely proven, capable solutions in the embedded market, what would make Linux (which was designed for the desktop/

    • Who do you think.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Who do you think is developing these robots? I'll tell you. People that know what they're doing. If they are choosing linux, obviously there is some reason they are doing so. That is because, the kernel is extremely stable.

      Now, they aren't installing KDE or X on the robot, goodness me. I think you're making the mistake of lumping linux all together, when they are really talking about the linux kernel here.

    • buahaha... to build an army to take over and destroy Bill Gates!!!!

      But seriously, this makes perfect sense. The linux kernel (unlike NT's kernel) is configurable so you can take out or add whatever bits you'd like. So say I don't want to use a printer, modem, but I do want to use the microphone and speakers. I can remove and add the availability by either a simple recompilation of the kernel or by loading or unloading modules.

      It takes a lot to write a OS from scratch and robots are very complex things. If
    • I guess my question is given the plethora of extremely proven, capable solutions in the embedded market, what would make Linux (which was designed for the desktop/server market) a credible choice beyond perhaps catering to the hype machine?

      I think you are missing what made Linux the thing that it is. It's not that it was designed for the server or the desktop or whatever - it's that it was written to scratch an itch - whatever particular itch the writer of a piece of it most wanted to scratch - and the

    • That's an excellent question. This is one of the cases where the uncapitalized 'free' can be of a much more applicable use, however. Any other system would be developed in a proprietary environment, and would be very expensive to license. In this case, the *already-skilled* developers (we're not talking about IT in the workplace being "given" code to learn from, but actual EE's and CS's who have systems and electronics expertise) benefit greatly from having an Open codebase, the cost of choosing which wo

    • Why *NOT* Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MarkJensen ( 708621 )

      Now, I am not talking that Linux has to be in control of the robot. In industrial robots, Windows is often just used as the 'front end' GUI for the operators and technicians. KUKA and ABB both use Windows for this. Why can they not use Linux instead? It is certainly a very capable OS for a GUI system that needs to communicate TCP/IP to something like VxWorks (on the robot control end).

      I think that the lure and attraction of a royalty-free OS would have had industrial manufacturers already on Linux. Co

    • Or how about "Why Linux for real time control?" Can Linux, with whatever "real time" extensions, provide honest-to-goodness real-time control? In other words, can it guarantee that my program will have all the priority it needs to achieve 1ms loop time? This is critical for all sorts of real robotics work.

    • When working with robots the best would be a written from scratch machine language (not assembly! See the story of Mel for some of the things machine language gives you that assembly doesn't, even without drum memory the lessions apply) program that does everything. It would also take all the programers on earth 20 years to do what a small team using an easier language and a lot of third party tools can do in two. Sure it would take a lot more CPU, but it is cheaper.

      Linux means that you won't be obsolet

  • 1. Gain controll of Linux
    2. Command army of Linux robots
    3. Take over the world!

  • Take this to the bank (Score:5, Funny)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:01AM (#7651737)
    There is no reason for any individual to have a robot in his home.

    • You already have several robots in your home (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:12AM (#7651785) Homepage Journal
      There is no reason for any individual to have a robot in his home.


      You already have several robots in your home, more than likely:
      • You have a robot for cleaning your dishes
      • You have a robot for cleaning your clothes
      • You have a robot for drying your clothes
      • You have a robot for maintaining the temperature of your house


      In addition, there are folks like me who have robots for preparing their coffee in the morning. Some have robots for baking bread, and for making ice cream.

      Most people make the mistake of thinking ROBOT = anthropomorphic device but that is not true.

      Now, if you want to say "There is no reason for any individual to have an anthropromorphic robot in their home" you are correct, today

      But as my mother, who was born in the 1920's once said to me, "When I was your age, if somebody had told me I would have a computer in the home, I would not have believed them - simply because I could not have seen any use for one." This, as she was playing cards on her computer.

      Be careful, or you may find yourself up there with the "there is a market for 6 computers in the world", or the (non-quote) "640K is enough for anybody".

      • Dang. I read the first part of this post and thought he was going to talk about the wife and kids. Then I remembered this is slashdot. So no wife or kids. Oh well. Hail the robots.
      • You know, Slashdotters have a thing for being hung up on semantics and missing the big picture. His point still stands.

        You could have just said, "Lots of things could be considered robots, though. But I know what you meant."

      • Re:You already have several robots in your home (Score:5, Funny)

        by paiute ( 550198 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @01:14AM (#7651988)
        I think there is a world market for maybe five robots. I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that robotics is a fad that won't last out the year.

      • Well, apart from the fact that I don't have any of those in my home*, I don't classify any of them as robots. A dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer all follow a pre-programmed sequence of actions. A dishwasher doesn't monitor the cleanliness of the dishes. It isn't even aware whether or not there are dishes inside. Same thing with washing machines and dryers. These are all dumb machines, not robots.

        Thermostats, although they sense their surroundings and respond to them, are basically the same: uni
    • robots will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.

  • OT, but still... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:06AM (#7651758)
    "Japan is currently driving robot innovation, according to the article, impelled by a looming labor shortage..."

    Excuse me?? Japan, with a labor shortage? This is the same Japan w/ the huge unemployment rate, runaway deflation, and enormous national deficit, right? Or, is this some other Japan I haven't heard about yet?

    Looming labor shortage, my ass - robotic workers can't form unions, don't need health insurance, don't go on strike, don't quit, don't disobey orders, yada yada yada.

    Corporate Japan's fascination with robotic workers has nothing to do with a 'looming labor shortage', and everything to do with eliminating the blue-collar worker to increase the white-collar's income.

    Bastards.

    • Re:OT, but still... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:26AM (#7651833)
      Excuse me?? Japan, with a labor shortage? This is the same Japan w/ the huge unemployment rate, runaway deflation, and enormous national deficit, right? Or, is this some other Japan I haven't heard about yet?

      This is the Japan with an extremely low birthrate and a population aging faster than any other in the first world. This is the Japan that not too many years down the road is going to have one retired worker for every productive one. This is the Japan where labor just costs too damn much to be able to justify doing manufacturing there.

      • Japan's retirement problem is certainly worse than the rest of the First World's, however the problem of increased retirement is epidemic. Different countries have different solutions:

        Japan: build robots.
        United States: outsource to the Third World.
        Canada: bring the Third World to us (via immigration).

        Although many First World countries would benefit from Canada's approach, very few are so non-xenophobic and have a culture capable of integrating so many immigrants. The US perhaps comes close, but since man
    • There will be an impending shortage of labor... ...for those who need to labor!!
    • Corporate Japan's fascination with robotic workers has nothing to do with a 'looming labor shortage', and everything to do with eliminating the blue-collar worker to increase the white-collar's income.

      At least they're keeping their blue-collar jobs inside their own country, creating quite a few good jobs for engineers and technicians to design and fix these electronic blue-collar workers.

      Here in the USA, we're shipping the blue-collar jobs to 3rd world countries instead. All that leaves here is emplo

  • Old Glory Robot Insurance (Score:3, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:11AM (#7651778) Homepage
    This article reminds me of the need, now more than ever, for insurance plans that cover robot attacks such as the Old Glory Robot Insurance plan.

    See the video here [robotcombat.com]

    As a senior citizen you're probably aware of the threat robots pose. Robots are everywhere and they eat old peoples' medicine for fuel. Well now there's a company that offers coverage against the unfortunate event of a robot attack: Old Glory Insurance. Old Glory will cover you with no health check up or age consideration. You need to stay safe and that's harder and harder to do nowadays because robots may strike at any time. And when they grab you with those metal claws you can't break free, because they're made of metal and robots are strong. Now, for only for only four dollars a month you can achieve peace of mind in a world full of crime and robots, with Old Glory Insurance. So don't cower under your afghan any longer, make a choice. Old Glory insurance, for when the metal ones come for you... and they will.

  • Robots are Coming? (Score:4, Funny)

    by twoslice ( 457793 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:16AM (#7651801)
    Sounds like Data and Tasha Yar are at it again...

  • Processing power will determine usefullness (Score:4, Informative)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:17AM (#7651809) Homepage Journal
    Humanoid robots use a lot of processing power, every little shift in weight, wind, all has to be compensated for with carefully calculated counter-movements. A robot lying down or sitting would not use as much CPU.

    It's why you see the Asimo moving so slowly. Even if faster motors were put into it, and it was rated for a higher top speed, those calculations for balance would have to be done more often.

    This is before we even get into random terrain navigation. The robot has to know how to recognize different sorts of terrain (carpet, cement, gravel, dirt) and adjust its stride accordingly.

    On top of all that we have the "interacion" layer. Facial recognition, speech and vocabulary. Now we have the perfect robot.

    It's 2003, we can barely get the Asimo to walk up some stairs or do a few preprogrammed tricks. Our current limitations are CPU, storage, and battery life.

    I think CPU, storage, and battery life will increase, as we create more powerful lower wattage components. Batteries themselves look as though they may be a dead end technology, so robots might be powered by methane fuel cells or some alternative power source we haven't discovered yet.

    I think we have another 20 years before we see robots good enough for general use for labor, and maybe another 20 after before we can no longer tell the difference between what is robot, and what is human.
    • Another 20 years.. it's always another 20 years. Have you seen Asimo? It's jaw-dropping how good he is. I think we're going to start to see humanoid robots deployed much, much sooner than that. People claimed it was impossible to do what Asimo is doing now.

      People are mistaken when they think the robot has to be smart, at least right away. Most of blue collar labour in the manufacturing sector revolves around humans are general-purpose movers and fitters of pieces. Some fixed machines can be used to speed t
      • Or maybe, the North American worker already doesn't have a chance. If you wait until all the human manufacturing labor is outsourced to other countries (which is happening fast [usatoday.com]), you can appeal to the local nationalism to build factories and robots in the country, in the name of "bringing back Made in the USA".

        You could build a factory of robots anywhere in the world, so why are they built in some nations and not others? Regulations, and tax structures... two items that are seriously broken in the USA.
    • In other words, blowjobs and dismemberment of enemies might require a few more upgrades
      .

    • Consider trying Mountain Dew(tm), or possibly moutain dew (original formula) as fuel cell power supplies.

      The first choice will require metabolizing sugar. I'm not sure how your robot will use the caffine, but it's reputed to improve CPU function.

      The second choice is move volitile, and reputed to interfere with balance, but can be used in a simple burner with thermal-electric generation.

      Both formulae are liquid for easy transport and high energy density. The first formula is traditionally dispensed unde
  • What I am surprised that I have not seen yet is McDonalds investing in some robotics.

    Consider how the average McD's runs - there is a proceedure for EVERYTHING, and they pretty tightly control everything, as well - the time the fries are in the oil, the time burgers are on the grill.

    Let the minium wage be raised a few times more, and I would not be surprised to see a McFryer that you load a pallet of frozen fries into, and it handles thawing, frying, drying, salting, and storing, and a McFlipper that take
    • They do, to a certain extent.

      I have been to a couple with fully automatic beverage dispensers. The order is placed with the cashier, which sends a signal and the system drops a cup of appropriate size, feeds it under the appropriate soda flavor, and conveys it out to a person to give to the customer. Someone just has to fill the cup hopper.

      And I have seen the soap-and-squeegie equivalent of the Roomba moving about in one once, as well.

    • Re:What I am surprised by NOT seeing yet (Score:4, Informative)

      by MarkJensen ( 708621 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @01:58AM (#7652137) Homepage

      In fact, McDonalds did a very specific test of robotics in their food lines. It was a Fanuc A-510 that had its cast components replaced so it had a stainless steel body (for wash-down purposes). It also had the regular grease replaced with non-toxic grease. It was edible, but NOT tasty! :P You can see archive.orgs cache of a page that mentions the A-510's successor, the A-520i, here [archive.org]. Needless to say, it never made it past the initial study.

      Also, to be technical, there is a difference between the term "robot" and what is called "hard automation". I have seen people claim that a dishwasher is a robot. It is not. A robot is programmable and multi-functional. A dishwasher has a single purpose (two if you count torturing the cat). The same is applied to factory automation that is driven by automated equipmet runnign off of cams or pneumatic/hydraulic cylinders. Those are "hard automation" devices, as they perform a single function until they are mechanically altered.

    • A few years ago, McDonalds made a big deal about moving to robotics in their outlets. But other than drink dispensing, not much seems to have been deployed.

      AMF built a hard-automation hamburger stand in the 1960s. It had huge capacity but was inflexible. The test location was outside some big industrial plant where most of the day's business was in a single half hour period.

      Airline meals are sometimes assembled on conveyor lines by industrial robots.

      But illegal immigrants are so cheap.

    • They do (Score:5, Informative)

      by bluGill ( 862 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @02:28PM (#7654299)

      Back when I worked at McDonalds (I quit in 1995) we already had a robot to fill the fry baskets, we just took a basket off the machine, and put it in the fryer. Nearly all McDonalds have this machine now.

      This machine is actualy a spinoff from the fully robotic fryer. McDonalds had a fryer delivered that you poured froozen frys in one end, and out the other came fully cooked frys. That machine was too expensive for most stores to justify purchasing, (at current wages anyway...) but the figgured they could make the basket filler a seperate machine for a reasonable price and save come labor there. Eventially all stores will have the full robot, but not until prices come down a little more.

      The fryer will come before the robotic grill, because while either can be done, the fryer is much more dangerious. More serious burns result from accidewnts involving the fryer than the grill. However McDonalds can't figgure out how to make money putting the robotic fryer in each resteraunt. (higher prices won't sell in thie buisness)

  • Robonurse, come here sweet thing .... (Score:4, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @12:30AM (#7651842) Homepage Journal
    Meanwhile, Mitsubishi is targeting the medical market. The company has developed a robot designed to perform many functions that a human nurse can perform.

    Hmm, but I bet they don't look as nice in white stockings.

    I wonder how long before they develop a blow-up version.

  • In Japan, mass immigration is simply politically unacceptable [vdare.com]. Robotics is a means by which Japan may cope with an aging population without immigration. Time will tell if the leaders of Japan are wiser than those of the United States and the EU(personally I suspect the Japanese leaders are wiser-leadership in Japan carries very real responsiblities and consequences for failure can be severe).

  • PAK CHOOIE UNF (Score:3, Funny)

    by Keighvin ( 166133 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @01:37AM (#7652061)
    Do you have stairs in your house?

    To protect the people of earth, from the horrible secret of space...

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @02:06AM (#7652153)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Industrial Robots (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkJensen ( 708621 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @02:11AM (#7652170) Homepage

    Of industrial robots, I know that KUKA [kuka-roboter.de] uses Windows 95, and now Windows XP in their robot controllers.

    At one time ABB [abb.com] also used windows in what they called the "top hat", which was little more than an industrial Win 95 laptop supported above the controller. I am not sure if their new products have changed.

    The third major player is Fanuc [fanucrobotics.com]. I worked for these guys for a little over 4 years. They use thier own OS.

    Working with the Windows-based robots has had some issues (BSOD, etc.), and I think it would be nice to have some of these running Linux. All the Win portion is used for is/was the GUI, anyway, so the real path execution is handled separately. Perhaps some of the industry heavies are considering Linux already...

  • Is there some sort of auto comments generator that automatically generates comments on Slashdot?

    How about a challenge - can anyone make a robot that produces, without hardcoded input, a +5 comment?
    • Yeah, scan a bunch of slashdot articles, find any nearly identical +5's, especially with recurring keywords, then post those.

      Soon words like Dying, Beowulf, and Soviet would end up in the database.

      Don't even need the robot.
    • How about a challenge - can anyone make a robot that produces, without hardcoded input, a +5 comment?

      For that, all you'd need is a beowolf cluster of robots located in soviet russia, all Windows hating, Linux loving, making you produce the +5 comments.

      Amm... and occationally add in a Simpsons reference, and you're set :-)
  • I have been working with my brother for years trying to develop robots with mining related applications. We have gold mines that we could reopen if we could cut the labor cost, which is the greatest expense. We are experimenting with off-the-shelf technology from other industries.

    On the other hand, as miners in a long family of miners, we are concerned at the loss of mining jobs. That concern is tempered by the lack of participation I see from other miners when it comes to being politically active. It's ha

  • Linux on NASA Robots (Score:3, Interesting)

    by goatbar ( 661399 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @02:34AM (#7652242) Homepage
    I think it was about 1997 that a bunch of us at NASA started replacing VxWorks systems on robots such as the Marsokhod [schwehr.org] and Nomad with Linux systems. Much more pleasant to develope Linux based systems. Then there was the time we were forced to cope with a WinNT box on Nomad when it went to Chile. Bad memories.

  • Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @02:58AM (#7652301) Homepage
    At the lab [usherb.ca] where I'm working, we've been using Linux robots (ActivMedia Pioneer 2) for years. Linux actually came pre-installed on them (the only option). We've even been developing a bunch of Linux tools [sourceforge.net] for robots.

  • More Photos of Robots (Score:5, Informative)

    by rpiquepa ( 644694 ) on Sunday December 07, 2003 @06:10AM (#7652659) Homepage
    In addition to the Linux Devices guide, Paul Baron spent some time shooting 61 pictures [in-duce.net] during the 2003 International Robot Exposition in Tokyo about two weeks ago. (Warning: navigation is somewhat difficult; the screen is getting refresh when you just want to scroll). Here is a link [weblogs.com] to a shorter selection. And for more information about Linux-based robots, you can take a peek at a former overview, "Real-Time Linux Robots Are Coming [weblogs.com]."

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