Artificial Retinas Can Balance a Pencil On Its End 165
mikejuk writes "A team of researchers has built a neural information system that is good enough and fast enough to balance a pencil in real time. If you think it's an easy task, try it! The Institute of Neuroinformatics, ETH / University Zurich have used what look like video cameras to do the job but in fact they are analog silicon retinas. They work so fast that even with fairly basic hardware they can balance a pencil."
High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity (Score:4, Interesting)
Similar: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation [hizook.com]
It uses high speed visual servoing to dribble a ping-pong ball and to toss and catch a cell phone.
Ironcially, I am listening to President Obama's speech as I write this, and his advisors (and speech) seem clueless about the changing nature of economics given robotics and other automation, AI, better design, and voluntary social networks (even as I think he means well and it is good for the US that he his helping create some jobs by increasing some exports):
http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/01/obama-visits-ge-wind-turbine-plant/ [earthtechling.com]
Pres. Obama can talk all he wants about "winning a global competition", but the average human worker anywhere is not going to win a competition with advanced robots... Humans need to learn to "cooperate", not "compete".
Economic solutions (my comments):
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2 [google.com]
From a comment I posted yesterday in relation to an (purported) demo of a cold fusion device:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360&cpage=6#comment-20270 [journal-of...hysics.com]
In brief, a combination of robotics (and other automation, all made possible by cheaper computing), better design (whether from cold fusion devices or thin-film solar panels), and voluntary social networks (especially with volunteers cooperating through the internet on free and open source digital public works), are decreasing the value of most paid human labor by the law of supply and demand. Cheaper energy will only accelerate this trend, since often you can substitute energy for labor and thought.
At the same time, demand for goods and services is limited for a variety of reasons. These reasons include some classical ones, like a cyclical credit crunch or a concentration of wealth (with that concentration aided by automation, intellectual monopolies, and the rich getting richer and buying up more and more resources like land for rent seeking). The reasons also including some heterodox alternative economics ones, like people moving up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as they get a lot of "stuff" and move on to other pursuits than materialism (including spiritual aspirations, self-actualization, and social connections in communities), and as people embrace a growing environmental consciousness of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" to protect the biosphere.
In general, mainstream economists ignore these issues or have very unexamined beliefs about them. Imaginative innovation, like economist Julian Simon talks about in "The Ultimate Resource", makes possible many wonderful potentialities if we think them through. Please don't let your inventiveness or cold fusion get blamed for any issues caused by unimaginative scarcity-based economic models held onto with almost a religious fervor by so many (see "The Market as God" by theologian Harvey Cox in the Atlantic). Mainstream economist have long used such scarcity-based models to apologize for an overly hierarchical social order that we probably did not even need in the past -- search on "The Mythology of Wealth". Still, some degree of centralization can be a good thing; see Manuel De Landa on "meshworks and hierarchies", and how they keep turning into each other and how all real systems are mixtures of both. So, we need to think and experiment regarding ways to allow our 21st century society to function in a healthy way given all the 21st century technology people like yourself are busy creating in all sorts of areas.
A New York Times article called: "They Did Their Homework (800 Years of
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is impressive bit of tech.
This [vimeo.com] really impressed me! No artificial vision involved, but awesome nonetheless. Explanation [reddit.com]
Re:To the person who told me before here on /. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I'm not sure that standing a pencil on end is the same thing as an inverted pendulum, because the bottom end isn't secured for the pencil (correct?). For an inverted pendulum, if you oscillate the base fast enough the pendulum will remain upright (see the wikipedia article you linked) -- so it's pretty trivial to stand a pencil on end in this fashion, I think (just attach it to something that oscillates -- a speaker will probably do).