Monday, July 26, 2010

Watching Paint Dry

Only a parent finds his own kids pictures "beautiful"...

I guess this roboticst found his successful training of a robot to flip pancakes gripping, exciting video...

A robot learning to flip pancakes from Sylvain Calinon on Vimeo.



Watching the failures was pretty boring. It is mildly interesting to see that the robot succeeded. But without any explanation from the roboticist, it is hard to appreciate how well and how fast the skill was transferred.

I keep waiting breathlessly for the day when robots will make a real impact on my life. The funny thing is, I believe that when that day arrives, it will be a turning point even more dramatic than that during the late 19th century when electricity, the light bulb, electric motors, the automobile, the radio and other technologies utterly transformed life for people. It will be a truly marvelous day when it arrives. And I expect that once the initial generally useful skill can be taught to a robot happens, then the floodgate will be opened and suddenly the world will be populated by an utterly unimaginable number of suddenly very useful robots. May that day come soon!

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