{"id":8827,"date":"2006-03-15T13:16:18","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T13:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streettech.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8827"},"modified":"2006-03-15T13:16:18","modified_gmt":"2006-03-15T13:16:18","slug":"gareth-guestblogs-on-nxtbot-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/?p=8827","title":{"rendered":"Gareth Guestblogs on Nxtbot.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been asked to be the first guestblogger on Nxtbot<\/a>, a blog that the LEGO Company has set up to talk about their forthcoming Mindstorms NXT<\/a> system and consumer\/hobby robotics in general. I’ll be tryng to get some dialog going on various issues surrounding personal robotics today, so please drop by and chime in, if so inspired. Here’s an excerpt from one of my first postings:<\/p>\n

“MIT\u2019s Rodney Brooks has an adage (to paraphrase): A bunch of working \u201cdumb\u201d bots (i.e. robots w\/little computing power that sense and react directly to their environment) is better than one broken \u201csmart\u201d bot (i.e. a robot that maps its world, plans optimal routes through it, etc).<\/p>\n

“I propose a corollary: A robot that is actually on the market is better than a bunch of bots that are endlessly demo\u2019d at trade shows. Look at the Hondo P3 and the Sony SDR-4\/Qrio vs. the Wow Wee Robosapien and the iRobot Roomba. While Hondo and Sony keep parading around these perpetual demobots but never bring them to market (and Sony just turned the development lights out on Qrio), the Robosapien and the Roomba are proven market successes and are now several product generations in pedigree.<\/p>\n

“NEC\u2019s answer to the Honda and Sony demobots is the PaPeRo (\u201dPartner-Type Personal Robot\u201d). While it\u2019s an undisputedly cute little rug-rover, and has enjoyed plenty of ink and electrons since it was first rolled out in 2001, it remains in the prototype stage and there is still no release date. If you ask me, I think there should be a \u201cput up or shut up\u201d statute for such prototypes. If you show off a prototype and it garners a bunch of media attention, and then you don\u2019t bring it to market in, let\u2019s say three years, you gotta retire it; show us a NEW concept robot. Hey, maybe that\u2019s what Sony did on their own. The SDR-4\/Qrio couldn\u2019t cut the mustard, so they did the only honorable thing, they took it off the world stage and stopped teasing us with it. So, what\u2019s it going to be NEC? The shelves of my local Target or the wayside on the road to Robotopia?<\/p>\n

“And, in case you didn\u2019t notice, the robots above that are actually on the market are of the \u201cdumb bot\u201d variety while the ones in perpetual prototypical stage are \u201csmart bots.\u201d Coincidence? We think not. Discuss.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been asked to be the first guestblogger on Nxtbot, a blog that the LEGO Company has set up to talk about their forthcoming Mindstorms NXT system and consumer\/hobby robotics in general. I’ll be tryng to get some dialog going on various issues surrounding personal robotics today, so please drop by and chime in, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gareth Guestblogs on Nxtbot.com”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}