Comments by Ivan Kirigin

There are constant adjustments made by the dozens of motors in the legs and torso to keep balance, based upon sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes. That's not preprogrammed.

My point about a reasonably controlled environment is that in the real world, even on a "flat" stage for a show, there are enough irregularities to make complete preprogramming hopeless.

I don't know enough control theory, but it could be stated that an open loop controller will be doomed to fail for a biped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-loop_controller

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-loop_controller

Higher level, there are sequences of commands that yield a step forward or to the side. That is almost certainly preprogrammed. When you own an asimo, the api they expose is actually really limited. For example, to lift the arm from the side to the air will only have a few states in between, and you choose which one you want. This is not low level control at all. They do this because they know Asimo is a marketing machine, not a real robot, and they don't want grad students making it fall over on youtube.

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There are constant adjustments made by the dozens of motors in the legs and torso to keep balance, based upon sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes. That's not preprogrammed.

I don't know enough control theory, but it could be stated that an open loop controller will be doomed to fail for a biped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-loop_controller

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-loop_controller

Higher level, there are sequences of commands that yield a step forward or to the side. That is almost certainly preprogrammed. When you own an asimo, the api they expose is actually really limited. For example, to lift the arm from the side to the air will only have a few states in between, and you choose which one you want. This is not low level control at all. They do this because they know Asimo is a marketing machine, not a real robot, and they don't want grad students making it fall over on youtube.

My point about a reasonably controlled environment is that in the real world, even on a "flat" stage for a show, there are enough irregularities to make complete preprogramming hopeless.

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No, people that don't have jobs but aren't seeking them are not counted in the US.

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You're correct. The US only counts those looking for work.

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On second thought, a flamingo standing on one leg might actually be statically stable, and there might be other examples. But flamingos are weird, amirite?

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That's not technically true. Asimo has preprogrammed paths, but not motor movements. Even in a semi controlled environment, a preprogrammed biped would fall.

The difference is between electric motors and pneumatics: today's pneumatics are just jerkier.

And static balancing doesn't mean that it is preprogrammed, just that at any point (unless it is running), all movement could stop and the robot would stay standing.

If humans stop moving, we collapse.

I guess the best reason to say Asimo is not more natural is that no animal in nature is statically stable. All animals with legs have actuators with the characteristics of pneumatics and springs (in humans, tendons are springs).

We can also turn to efficiency. The electric motors on Asimo will _never_ be practical. It takes too much energy for the bot to ever be sold as a product. No animal in nature has a 15 minute battery life :)

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It doesn't have arms to open doors and probably can't go up stairs. Quadriplegic mobility isn't that enticing.

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iRobot made something similar called the "coworker". It was a spectacular failure. It was shorter and ( i think ) a bit smarter about remote obstacle avoidance. They asked around $5K.

They never answered the question: why is this better than a conference call? This is doubly important considering it has no arms.

I'm certain there is a market for this or a similar kind of robot. It needs to have compelling remote presence, and it needs to be cheaper than $5K.

Adding up motors, computers, cameras, the chassis, plastic modling, etc. can get expensive fast, especially if you haven't ramped up production somewhere fast & cheap like China.

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iRobot made something similar called the "coworker". It was a spectacular failure. It was shorter and ( i think ) a bit smarter about remote obstacle avoidance. They asked around $5K.

They never answered the question: why is this better than a conference call. This is doubly important considering it has no arms.

I'm certain there is a market for this or a similar kind of robot. It needs to have compelling remote presence, and it needs to be cheaper than $5K.

Adding up motors, computers, cameras, the chassis, plastic modling, etc. can get expensive fast, especially if you haven't ramped up production.

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I see some patterns in different tech areas.

SF, downtown Boston/Cambridge, and NYC all have pretty bad public schools, some nice parks, and at times annoyingly crowded but workable roads.

Palo Alto, Arlington and points north, and Long Island each have better schools, more open spaces, and less congestion.

This clearly has a lot less to do with startup centers and more a generally to do with population density in and around urban areas.

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Hi, I’m cofounder of Tipjoy.

You don’t have anything to worry about. The phishing is a security hole in any website that accepts passwords. PayPal itself has had huge problems with it.

Not only do we monitor activity on twitter very closely (there wasn’t a single phished-account twitter payment), but we also, we audit every request to cash out. There is no way to get money instantly out of Tipjoy. We do this because we’re working on anti-fraud software. The delay is small, but enough for fraudsters to be stopped.

But you don’t have to take just our word on it. Founders and employees at twitter are using Tipjoy: http://bit.ly/tj_twt

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Vilifying those who seek to ferret it out is just shooting the messenger.People certainly have every right to discuss what they want. I gladly exercise my right to call them out as tasteless in a public forum with my name attached to the comment.

I disagree with this last bit of your comment though. My comments aren't about the messenger. I don't mind TechCrunch posting it. It is news when a CEO posts a message like this. I don't like the segment of the audience whose motivations I question who made him post it.

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I really don't like the treatment of his health. It's just kind of low class that thousands of people are paying such close attention largely because they'd like to maintain the value of their stock or short at the right time.

I certainly agree that Apple without Jobs isn't as good. But this treatment is morbid.

The note at the end about saying more than he wanted is really sad.

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Medicine and media today are very different. Also, stories like this get lots of attention. They skew perception about instances of events like this. Regulation's side effect is often inaction or inactivity. You don't really hear much about that.

Many real elixirs are killing people right now, by not getting on the market fast enough to save lives because of the lengthy FDA approval process. You don't hear about that.

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After a bit of thought, most calls for regulation are unfounded.

I would start by emphasizing that things that can kill lots of people should be regulated. Cars and planes and buildings fall in that category. But how?

An airline should be forced to get insurance for the risk of bad pilots. That might be enough to align incentives and protect people from risk. It is a slightly irrelevant issue as laws will be passed within our lifetimes that mandate a human must _not_ fly a commercial airplane. Only robots.

Driving is similar, but much easier, so more people can do it. It's harder from a robotics front, but will also be solved soon. I've worked on robot cars.

Heart surgery is where it gets interesting. By mandating a certain level of quality, you essentially place a price floor above the market price on medical care. That means a lot of people don't get it. Would you rather have a shoddy operation or none at all? As desperate times often demonstrate (e.g. delivering a baby outside a hospital by necessity), people want shoddy care over none at all.

So licensing doctors is bad. Private accreditation is enough. I will trust a doctor that has received a credential or accreditation from an institution I trust. I certainly trust Harvard more than I trust the AMA or HHS.

You should read Capitalism and Freedom by the way. Milton Friedman is an excellent author. He makes this issue crystal clear.

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