2008/11/21 Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Battle-lines-forming-nascent-robotics/story.aspx?guid={FA2B30F1-B78B-4E33-91A4-F7F3D07DECCB}
The biggest growth area for robotics in the next few years I think is going to be telerobots, allowing mobile teleconferencing. In a recession this allows people to interact in a fairly quick and direct way without needing to spend a lot of time and money commuting or taking expensive business trips. It can also be justified on environmental grounds in terms of carbon emissions reduction, and in terms of increasing the productivity of individuals at a time when the number of employees may be falling. I can think of a few occasions in the past where having a telerobot on site would have avoided me needing to take long expensive flights to remote locations, and would have allowed me to diagnose a problem in a much shorter time (and time is a highly prized commodity in industrial manufacturing, where rate of production is everything). Whether Microsoft can become a dominant player remains to be seen. To date it has really had almost nothing to do with robotics, and although MSRS has caused some excitement amongst hobbyists it hasn't had much penetration in the automation market generally. Amongst seasoned roboticists the Windows operating system continues to enjoy an exceedingly poor reputation, at least as far as real time control of machinery is concerned (GUIs and databases on the other hand are a different matter). ------------------------------------------- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
