h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/12/omni-directional-treadmill-allows-individuals-to-sashay-through/

*wants*

How's you Ellen?

Talking of recreating ancient Pompeii, Doctor Who was there last night. I haven't watched this yet, but word is it's great. They used the abandoned set for the HBO show Rome.

http://snipurl.com/pompeii

that's almost a holodeck!

It'd certainly make exercise more interesting, but it's too big to fit in my apartment.

How cool!

Fascinating. Personally I'm looking forward to the superfluid/superconductor phase liquid crystals revolution. Exciting to see new hardware developments in the tradition pioneered by Lewis Padgett, Norman Spinrad and Star Trek.

I'll have to e-mail that around work. It could be useful. for the brownie points.

I know people at the Glasgow School of Art Digital Design Studio working with that kind of stuff.

Back to the thread:

http://www.endgadget.com/2008/04/12/...lows-indiviuals-to-sashay-through/

Among other things, this could provide an ideal platform for automaton- slave technique development of software regimens for humaniform robots (the Asimo for example), an essential for development of an industrial capability on the Moon and elsewhere in the Solar system.

Basic technique: Robot in automaton slave mode replicates motions of human operator, recording routine on a disc or chip... a fast track for robotic software development for routine and repetitive tasks, to be supplemented with high autonomy judgement routines.

Hmm. But the point about the brin processes that we use to control our motions is that we *don't* copy. We calculate the motions required from first principles.

See also Chomskyan Generative Grammar. We don't learn language by repeating sentences we hear from others. Instead, we distill the rules. Using these rules, we can generate a huge number of sentences, many of which will never have been uttered by anyone else. Ever.

So...robots. They'll not learn by copying us, but by learning our rules. (Or...for those who know about neural networks...working the rules out for themselves).

(For my take on Generative Grammar: http://bonoboworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/those-invisible-green-ideas-are.html )

So far as robots go, I personally prefer 'tools' to 'companions'. They can be enormously more cost effective to maintain in place in space applications where hands are needed than human beings and provide a fast track to developing a permanent and expanding human presence in outer space.