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Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us Antitechnologists may shudder at the story line, but readers interested in the astounding possibilities of the digital age will be fascinated by Brooks's vision of what is and what will be. More information at Amazon US UK |

Robotic Golf-Helper Placing Balls on Tees all Day...
Robotic Golf-Helper Beyond 200 has a new article called Robo-Golf. It describes a recent American invention targeting keen golfers, who no longer want to bend down to pick up the ball and place it on the tee. The invention uses infrared sensors to pick out the ball and the holes. Due to the imprecision of the sensors, I don't expect the range of perception to be that great. I assume it'll be partly guided by remote control to the vicinity of the ball's location, in order for it to find and pick up the ball. A great enhancement would be to have a lightweight frequency emitter inside the ball, so the robot could find it no matter how thick the grass (whether the robot can move in the rough is another issue!) I think the application could be quite successful as an assistant on the course itself, but I doubt it'll be any use on the practice range, as suggested in the article. On the driving range you need huge tractors to pick up the balls, and non-mobile robotic arms to place the balls on the tee. Such a moving robot would be slower, and overkill for such a problem. The final part of the article is a bit controversial. It describes early computers as game machines, until IBM came along to 'prove' they could work in industry. Games were not the primary incentive for computers, but given their lesser requirements for reliability and quality design, games just happened to be wider spread at first. The same applies to robotics… we have a plethora of entertainment robots simply because they do not need to be fool-proof, and cost is the primary issue over reliability. No-one doubts the practical uses of robots, and many (more or less) recent applications demonstrate this. An interesting article, so go and check it out! | Alex J. Champandard 935 posts. Saturday 22 December, 13:14 Reply