


Intel combines Robots, WLANs, and Linux 62
An anonymous reader writes "This article by a researcher in Intel's Emerging Platforms Lab details some of Intel's current research into wireless, mobile robotics technology. A key goal of the effort, according to the article, is to efficiently combine the two technologies -- mobile robotics and wireless networks -- so that mobile robots can serve as gateways into wireless sensor networks.
The Intel project is providing robotics researchers with a robotics development package that includes standardized silicon, a Linux-based open-source operating system, and open-source software drivers for robotics applications. Additionally, Intel has released a test version of a technical library for building Bayesian networks, which will help advance the ability of robots to navigate their environments, and pilot systems based on Intel's open-source packages are already being deployed in a variety of flexible environments in agricultural, security, and military applications."
Thought process (Score:4, Funny)
"Robots are cool. Wireless networking is cool. Linux is cool. So logically, wireless Linux robots would be the coolest thing ever!!!"
The only downside I can forsee is that imagining a Beowulf cluster of those might lead to a Matrix-esque apocalypse for us outmoded carbon units, which would be less cool.
Good idea! (Score:2, Funny)
Ok, ok, I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons for this, but I still like my idea more. I want to play my UT2003 after a nuke attack dammit!
Half-Life Skills (Score:1)
Use? (Score:1, Funny)
Seriously, I wonder what use this... you don't need *mobile* network gateways that actually *think*, do you?
Re:Use? (Score:2)
As for linux, well, you can strip it down and work with it a lot more easily
Re:Use? (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, really - and if they're not programmed with the Three Laws Of Robotics [evansville.net], they might rat you out to your ISP for running a NAT gateway [slashdot.org]...
Is it linux based or RT linux based (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is it linux based or RT linux based (Score:2)
RT operating systems (whether linux or something else) will always have a place in certain tasks. It says something for linux that it can be modified to suit different tasks.
Re:My thoughts on this idea (Score:1)
What happened to Windows for Robots? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What happened to Windows for Robots? (Score:1, Funny)
The Three Laws of Robitcs (Score:5, Funny)
1. A robot may not install Windows products, or, through inaction, allow a Windows products to be installed.
2. A robot must obey the orders set forth in the GPL except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect the open source initiative so long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Re:The Three Laws of Robitcs (Score:2)
4. Profit.
Looks interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely the robot controller code could be emulated purely in software to determine how the robot will respond, a much more sophisticated version of the recent Java battle bots if you will.
Is there some benefit to physically building the robot when researching group intelligence ?
Re:Looks interesting (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Looks interesting (Score:1, Informative)
Here at Carnegie Mellon, most of our mobile robots used for research are controlled in one of two ways:
1) a pc/104 stack has been added onto the robot.
2) some poor graduate student's laptop has been tied down on top of the robot.
Putting laptops on top of robots is a nice hackish solution, b
Control and simulation tools (Score:1)
But using real robots is a vital reality check.
We already do that. (Score:1, Funny)
We have a merging of bio-mass, networking and telephone services where I work: when people think the network is getting flaky, my phone starts to ring.
WLANs and Linux... (Score:3, Interesting)
Research cool, not consumer cool (Score:5, Insightful)
So everyone's first instinct is to make some disparaging remark about how combining buzzwords --> profit!!!! I don't think that's what this is about. This has nothing to do with consumers, and presumably therefore little in the way of profit for Intel. This is about adapting a consumer technology for a research area in a highly useful way.
Mobile robotics has been hard hit recently, when one of the main companies making robots (Nomadic Technologies) was acquired by 3COM in 2000 for their wireless networking technologies. Obviously 3COM had no interest in research robots that cost thousands but sell only hundreds of units. Since then there's been a bit of a hole in the market for somebody to sell prepackaged wireless robot stuff to researchers, especially those that work in the software/AI/algorithms end of things don't care to spend effort developing hardware.
Intel's Centrino blah blah is supposed to make connected mobile computing easy and increase battery life. Well guess what drives my ancient Nomad Scout robot? A laptop connected to the robot's power supply in a hack'd fashion, communicating using a USB-driven RF link. This platform could have saved a couple of months development of things which aren't exactly shining examples of engineering anyway.
This hardware isn't the sort of thing that the average /.'er is going to drool over and plot how to justify purchasing it to their spouse. But it is very useful for the couple of thousand mobile robotics researchers around the planet.
Re:Research cool, not consumer cool (Score:1)
Re:Research cool, not consumer cool (Score:2)
Nomads seem to have had a lot of what little market share there was for research robots, but there are a number of other companies that of
Free robot Mind is available (Score:3, Informative)
Mind.Forth [scn.org] is free AI source code for a robot AI Mind in Win32Forth.
Mind-1.1 in JavaScript [virtualentity.com] is the AI Tutorial version of the same robot Mind software for true artificial intelligence.
AI4U: Mind-1.1 Programmer's Manual [barnesandnoble.com] is the textbook of artificial intelligence describing the Robot Mind-1.1 software of the Mentifex AI project as listed in the Free Software Donation Directory. [q-ag.de]
Technological Singularity [caltech.edu] is happening right now.
Re:Free robot Mind is available (Score:2)
I thought I had an interesting idea when I started to think about an AI developed as open source versus a closed-source AI developed by a soft
Re:Free robot Mind is available (Score:1)
Re:Free robot Mind is available (Score:2)
How the robot raised by geeks would turn out would be interesting. Nevertheless, you have an interest
Re:Free robot Mind is available (Score:2)
offloading the brain (Score:3, Interesting)
us are no longer used to. What would be excellent is if you could "offload" the brains via high speed wireless. 45mb wireless to high speed processor(s) I would think offer a much different version of robot programming than the current set. I would also think this would use less power than lugging a laptop around on the robot like the kit you can buy at compusa (let alone minaturization possibilities)
-avi
Re:offloading the brain (Score:1)
This concept has been explored in great detail in science fiction; those of us w
Re:offloading the brain (Score:2)
Kill them now! (Score:3, Funny)
Intel Stayton boards (Score:5, Informative)
This lets the robots run more complex code and communicate with each other wirelessly. Intel has provided CMU with enough boards for a LOT of cool projects.
Re:Russia? (Score:1)
Some of this has been done before (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some of this has been done before (Score:1)
Intel + WLAN + Linux == unsupported (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is symptomatic for many big companies. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand does...
Cheers, Peter
I've been doing this for 3 years now! (Score:2, Interesting)
If Intel tries to patent the idea it will piss me off. I did not feel this was worthy of a patent.
I'm driving servos with a pontech controller, I've monitoring Analog ports, I'm processing ultrasonic
ranging data. I've got some of my robots at
www.nfnnet.org
Intel, Linux and WLAN, yeah right (Score:1)
But I also still have the Centrino notebook (Samsung X10). Does anybody know if there are Linux supported mini-PCI WLAN cards which I could use instead of the Intel card?
First "SkyNet" reference!!! (Score:1, Redundant)
Soon after, they will receive a government contract to create a unified defense infrastructure, and merge it with their wireless networked robots. Soon after, it will determine that humans are outdated.
Let the games begin!
Re:First "SkyNet" reference!!! (Score:2)
Sounds so good, we've been doing this, too! (Score:1)
From the program:
The electrical components used in MASLab are quite different from other
contests. At the heart of each team's robot is the "Geode," a 300 MHz
x86-compatible processor. With 256 MB of RAM, a 6GB hard disk, wireless
networking, and a full complement of peripherals. This PC runs an
unmodified installation