I wanted to know something more basic than that. How would these things get up stairs?
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Fowle Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 10:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] guide robots Dan has many good points as to why this kind of device is much farther off than the writer thinks. We at Smith-Kettlewell have been working on parts of this kind of thing for years mostly using computer vision techniques. The successes, too put it mildly have been lacking. With all the power of a modern fast laptop and a very clever algorythm, a computerized vision system takes 15 to thirty seconds to tell if there is a print sign in a still photo containing a clearly visible sign. A recent test in which I participated as a subject was of a system to try to find a cross walk at an intersection. This was looking for the kind of cross walk with large crosswise stripes, not just parallel edge lines. The test was a complete failure, the thing was neither consistant or accurate. computers, no matter with what kinds of sensors, just don't do well loking at the real world. They only do well dealing with carefully devised set of specific circumstances from which they must choose. The one area that seems to be the exception to this conclusion is speech recognition, that seems to be getting pretty darned good. It would be very interesting to know, in the robotic car challenge, just how many of the obstacles that faced the cars were defined in the protocol and how many things were completely unexpected. How many pedestrians jumpped out in front of those babies when they shouldn't have. How many cars were where they shouldn't have been etc. To summarize, I've heard this line of 'reasoning' for over 40 years now and I am not impressed with it. It's a very long way off of reality I remember a science fiction story from many years ago wherein they had little such helpers that sat on your shoulder. They helped you keep your schedules, did your phone calling etc. Pretty soon somebody got the idea to have them hooked into your blood stream to deliver appropriate psycho active medications in case you got too excited, too rebelious, too sleepy etc. If you dcan't see the ending of that one, you're too optomistic! <GRIN> Not holding my breath. Tom Fowle Smith-Kettlewell Rehab Engineering Research Center Net-Tamer V 1.13 Beta - Registered
