On 3/25/2017 2:20 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Herb Johnson:
Evan is correct, in his reportage that I said his and Jeff's robotics talk was more technically informative, than my discussion with a student and faculty-member of their $40K demonstration robot. I could not get those persons, to describe the programming interface to their tower of plastic and motors. Evan showed a BASIC program with peeks and pokes. The 20th century won that "battle of the 'bots". Am I a judge? I worked on robotic system interfaces to minicomputers in 1975.
Neil Cherry:
I find great humor in this. Evan who learned on his own (with help, but still) knew more about the technical details of his project than the students did of theirs. This says good things about Evan.
This is amusing but don't take my remarks too far. I'm sure a 2017 engineering student knows a lot that I don't know. I'm sure a professor of electrical engineering knows a lot I don't know. Read what I'm saying. I said "I could not get these persons to DESCRIBE the programming interface...."
My casual understanding from discussion, is that the college's robot was obtained a few months ago. And the plan is to work harder on it, in the summer. So it simply may not have been familiar to either party. And the student may have been intimidated by hard questions; and the instructor may not have had time to look at the programming features.
All that said, my point was that neither person could DESCRIBE in a technical way, what their robot could do at the program command level. It was sold as a development tool, not just some pick-n-place robot. I asked the question a number of ways, and couldn't get a straight answer.
The most direct inferences are 1) they weren't prepared for technical questions or 2) the robot did not come with a clearly defined "API" or applications programming interface or 3) the robot wasn't well documented.
The instructor said something about supporting the "Robotics Operating System" which is "open source" but could not (or would not) inform me further. I've heard of it:
and so I go to the Web page. The home page points to "features" which are listed as:
Standard Message Definitions for Robots Robot Geometry Library Robot Description Language Preemptable Remote Procedure Calls Diagnostics Pose Estimation Localization Mapping Navigation
Creee-IPES! What a bunch of gobble-gook! I'm an engineer, dammit, not a linguist, or a choreographer! It's nice to know I can pass messages, that will help me in homeroom to send notes to my buddies and that new girl. But - what can I move, what can I sense, what can I *see* through this ROS, for this robot?
The page talks about "poses" and "graphical interfaces" and "diagnostics", "data logging"....(sigh) I'm aware of these issues and methods, I understand you can write a MS-degree thesis by playing with this stuff. And I see their "testimonials" from PhD's and grad students, and one "hobbyist".
This goes to my "thesis" - anyone can pose a problem as a thesis, you know. My thesis is this: it's worth preserving 20th century (early) vintage computing, because the technology of the era is simple enough to grasp at a fundamental level. Therefore, it's accessible to those of modest skills, or those looking back at forgotten technology.
More important, this technology solved problems and provided access to a class of computing and control technology. If another generation of devices, or another class of technology, comes around - why not see if THOSE solutions will work for those NEW devices and technology? Or see if the same problems were already solved, or not solved - learn from our mistakes and successes?
I don't expect personal computer collectors to have these goals and these considerations; they have personal reasons and interests. But some of us have this perspective.
So - if you aren't a grad student or scholar, which robot is going to teach you something? the robot with the operating system and message-passing protocols and pre-established methods? Or the robot that you say "move this joint motor" with "peek(12379)" in a FOR loop?
You can argue you are peeing away your time with primitive coding. But I'd argue you are pissing away what you might learn about control and sensor problems, if you only use a graphics interface and script messages about tasks. Not much difference between some game-design avatar and a robot, at that level.
20th century versus 21st century. Engineering design versus product design. These are old tensions. And as they will occur again, this old stuff is worth preserving, to show how we dealt with these conflicts, the last few times they occurred.
Herb Johnson retrotechnology.com
Great post, Herb, on all accounts. I had to look at ROS recently and I had the same reaction to their web site in trying to glean what was all about. I'm convinced its not us, their presentation is flawed.