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From: mun@cup.hp.com (Richard Man)
Subject: Re: Subsumption dead ? Any new buzzword ?
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Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 19:24:00 GMT
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Christopher J Burian (cburian@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: jmh@vttoulu.tko.vtt.fi (Jorg-Michael Hasemann) writes:

: ]Hi,

: ]I just visited MIT's www-pages. No word about subsumption anymore.

: ]Could somebody please let me know if I am hunting some outdated
: ]buzzword ? 

: ]Is subsumption dead, finally proven to be not useful for anything
: ]else than smart toys ?

: Maybe somebody important figured out that subsumption was one of
: those very fancy-sounding words used to describe a practically 
: trivial idea--an obfuscated prioritized interrupt structure.

Well, that's a bit harsh ;-) MANY people over the years have been
critizing subsumption that way, so I doubt any *new* important people
have jumped in the bandwagon lately.

Anycase, Brooks is supposedly working on COG, a humanoid robot built
using subsumption. I talked to him 1 year ago and it looks like they are
making progress (and enough materails for dozens of PhD theses...).
I haven't heard much lately. Someone mentioned that there was an
article in WIRED about COG recently....

Besides, what is wrong with smart toys?

re: "obfuscated prioritized interrupt structure."

Really now, can we say your brain is "just" an obfuscated neuro
structures? 

: Chris


--
/o)\  // richard
\(o/  // Richard F. Man, mun@cup.hp.com
