Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!sun-barr!decwrl!csus.edu!netcomsv!seer!tomk
From: tomk@seer.gentoo.com (Tom Kunich)
Subject: Re: MIT Insect Robots
Message-ID: <1992Jun10.201132.5349@seer.gentoo.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1992 20:11:32 GMT
References: <1992Jun8.075950.12341@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Brad Lanam,  Walnut Creek, CA
Lines: 28

In article <1992Jun8.075950.12341@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> btaplin@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Brad Taplin) writes:

>Mars terraforming come to mind. The key, I agree, is whether it's
>economically attractive. Well, that depends. Electric cars weren't
>so until the need began to be perceived by a wide market. Now GM
>and others are developing several models. If the chips and related

Mars would be better terraformed very simply by dropping massive
amounts of various life-forms selected for survivability and capable
of initiating the Gaia principles. This would require a minute
percentage of the capital that the Time magazine version of terra-
forming would take.

Electric cars are no more economically attractive now than they've
been for the last 50 years. The only increase in efficiency has been
in slightly better controls. This hasn't increased the overall 
efficiency of the electric car substatially. This technology 
_as_well_as_all_robotics_ is limited by energy storage methods that
simply cannot rival living bodies.
>
>The Japanese car companies maintain profitability partly by making
>their production lines robot-controlled and able to handle fifty
>different models, refitting on the fly. This primitive example of

I consider these production lines _not_ robotic, but, rather, automated.
 
They are not robot contolled either. They are computer controlled

