In Star Trek III, Scotty cause a malfunction so the gang could steal a starship. He said ‘The more they overthink the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain’ One of the many tips I’ve learnt from Star Trek alongside my dread of wearing a red top.
So when I read this article on controlling robots where it has a ‘butler’ hoping from one to the other and controlling them while presenting a standard interface to the user I have to shake my head. Why?
For one thing it seems it can only control one at a time. Hope all the others stop in exactly the right place and not doing anything dangerous when they do. What exactly is the issue with having two robots going at once with the same software for the standard interface anyway?
I’m a firm believer is the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. I want to see a robot that hoovers the carpet. I buy it in a shop. Plug it’s base station in to the power grid and then mark out where it is to hoover which it stores in it’s memory then the instructions for activation and how it performs it’s task all on a simple wifi linked web based GUI.
So it gets up in the middle of the night when triggered by my snoring, or whatever, and goes around picking up the bits. When finished it goes back to empty itself and recharge. Yet another picks up my clothes and puts them in the washing machine and if necessary the washing machine analyses the clothes, selects the right chemicals and washes them. When finished another hangs them up to dry. In the meantime out in the garden another cuts the grass while another wanders around the veg patch zapping slugs and snails. All without some smart alec program having to tell them what to do on a second by second basis and I only need to know when some berk breaks it or it malfunctions and it can do that by simply sending a message to the base station which brings it in for servicing or notifies me it is malfunctioning. Of course in this day and age that means replacement and send the old one back for recycling.
Why do we have to make things so complicated? At least my way my garden mower wouldn’t think of taking over the world and killing me, red shirt or not, in it’s attempt.
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. — P. J. O’Rourke
The more they overthink the plumbing…
In Star Trek III, Scotty cause a malfunction so the gang could steal a starship. He said ‘The more they overthink the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain’ One of the many tips I’ve learnt from Star Trek alongside my dread of wearing a red top.
So when I read this article on controlling robots where it has a ‘butler’ hoping from one to the other and controlling them while presenting a standard interface to the user I have to shake my head. Why?
For one thing it seems it can only control one at a time. Hope all the others stop in exactly the right place and not doing anything dangerous when they do. What exactly is the issue with having two robots going at once with the same software for the standard interface anyway?
I’m a firm believer is the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. I want to see a robot that hoovers the carpet. I buy it in a shop. Plug it’s base station in to the power grid and then mark out where it is to hoover which it stores in it’s memory then the instructions for activation and how it performs it’s task all on a simple wifi linked web based GUI.
So it gets up in the middle of the night when triggered by my snoring, or whatever, and goes around picking up the bits. When finished it goes back to empty itself and recharge. Yet another picks up my clothes and puts them in the washing machine and if necessary the washing machine analyses the clothes, selects the right chemicals and washes them. When finished another hangs them up to dry. In the meantime out in the garden another cuts the grass while another wanders around the veg patch zapping slugs and snails. All without some smart alec program having to tell them what to do on a second by second basis and I only need to know when some berk breaks it or it malfunctions and it can do that by simply sending a message to the base station which brings it in for servicing or notifies me it is malfunctioning. Of course in this day and age that means replacement and send the old one back for recycling.
Why do we have to make things so complicated? At least my way my garden mower wouldn’t think of taking over the world and killing me, red shirt or not, in it’s attempt.