2008/7/11 Ed Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Interesting article about EU's open source AGI robot program at > http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208808365 > <http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208808365>
The fact that iCub is open source is to be welcomed. In the past I've been critical of "secret source" robots which were just re-inventions of the wheel. However I think that open source robotics at the present time is more of an aspiration than a reality. For an open source project to thrive you need: 1. a bunch of developers with time on their hands 2. the internet 3. software development tools which anyone can use (i.e. they're not prohibitively expensive) 4. a common hardware platform The first three are all in place, but there is still a gap on the fourth point. We're still waiting for a relatively inexpensive PC based robot to arrive, which anyone with sufficient interest can go to a store and buy then experiment with, rather like the early days of home computing in the 1980s. I think the time when that's possible is going to arrive soon, but for people like myself it has been a long rather exasperating wait which fundamentally all boils down to the price/performance of PCs. ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=106510220-47b225 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
