Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!wupost!think.com!mips!mips!decwrl!csus.edu!netcomsv!seer!tomk
From: tomk@seer.gentoo.com (Tom Kunich)
Subject: Re: MIT Insect Robots
Message-ID: <1992Jun14.142955.3979@seer.gentoo.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1992 14:29:55 GMT
References: <48844@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Jun8.001739.21290@seer.gentoo.com> <22586@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Brad Lanam,  Walnut Creek, CA
Lines: 40

In article <22586@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>
>You're using too strong a sense of the word "replace". I can think of
>several examples of "intelligent" robotic devices that will very
>likely soon appear on the market, because they will be useful.
>
>	"Flag" guided mowing machines, that just need the boundaries
>	staked out.
>
>	Cars with auto-parkers. The first ones will probably ask you
>	to heave the wheel around. For some reason only a minority of
>	humans can be bothered learning how to park efficiently in
>	small spaces.
>
>	Cars that will refuse to go faster than the seen-to-be-clear
>	distance and speed of obstacles ahead permit, and which will
>	hit the brakes faster than you could if a little girl runs out in
>	front.

I wouldn't consider these instances of machine "intelligence", though
I might just make them out to be in the area of robotics.o
>
>There are smart machines around that we now all take for granted,
>which do things for us we can't be bothered to work out for ourselves,
>e.g., word processors, lift (elevator) schedulers.

Again, there is a major difference between machine intelligence and
programming. I can't think of a word processor program that has
any intelligence. If there was it could write for itself. :-)

>And don't forget that human intelligence is (usually considered to be)
>too expensive for some tasks, e.g., guiding smart missiles onto their
>targets.

Oh, certainly there are plenty of uses for machine intelligence. I
just don't see there being an awful lot of economically feasible
uses and so the development funding is low.

Hopefully there will be less and less uses for "smart bombs".

