Freedom Box: A more pragmatic view
"Social networking—that is, the ability to use free form methods of communication from many to many, now, in an instantaneous fashion—changes the balance of power in society away from highly organized...
View ArticleDeconstructing the Zeitgeist Movement
I've seen the various Zeitgeist movies, including most of the first one which was pretty dubious and has been widely criticized. Here is some commentary on the latest such movie, called Zeitgeist:...
View ArticleAV will make no difference
There is supposed to be an upcoming referendum in May on whether or not to change the voting system in the UK from first past the post to an Alternative Voting (AV) system in which voters rank their...
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ALL YOUR AL-101 BASE
Creating a URDF model of the Zagros Robotics AL-101 mobile robot base.
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GROK2 model
Here I've created a URDF model for the GROK2 robot with the Kinect sensor head.
View ArticleControl theory
Quite a good series of lectures on control theory. These principles apply not just to industrial engineering, but to any self-regulating system, such as a thermostat, a living cell, your heart rate and...
View ArticleRobonaut: Scaling space manufacturing
Hysterical criticism of humanoid robots in space is probably misguided. I think that there is a place for humanoids, provided that tasks involving the combination of dextrous manipulation and...
View ArticleThe new eugenics
Maybe the new eugenics in the 21st century is going to be quite benign after all. This documentary highlights the uses and abuses of Darwinian ideas in society, and there's a depiction of a sort of...
View ArticleChurnalism
There's a rather amusing and potentially somewhat disruptive new web site called churnalism.com, which allows users to detect instances of churnalism. I spent an entertaining few hours trying it out,...
View ArticleA smarter way to do education
I don't expect that education is ever going to be an exact science, but something like this turns it into more of a science than in was in the past. I particularly like the inversion of labour, where...
View ArticleRobot economics
An article about the dilemmas faced by managers as the service robotics industry grows. This is the standard narrative around robotics and employment, and to large extent I think it's true that...
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Clegg against Cronyism
Earlier in the year out of curiosity I conducted a survey of the educational backgrounds of front bench MPs, in order to see whether a popular saying was merely mythology or whether it had some basis...
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Turtlebot
Although this may look like every other small trash can style robot which has existed in the previous couple of decades it's really a big deal. The Turtlebot is both low cost, having a total cost of...
View ArticleA state within a state
Nicholas Shaxson talks about the UK banking system and tax avoidance. He's right that although I've always been a UK citizen the existence of a "City of London Corporation" with it's own mayor separate...
View ArticleA strange radio announcement
Listening to the radio whilst driving I heard a very peculiar advert. At first I thought it was a spoof, but it seemed not to be. The announcement went something like:"Do you suspect a member of your...
View ArticleWar and information
I think the final point about wars, and the propaganda required to sustain them, might be a very optimistic sign for the future. The Iraq war which started in 2003 is a good example of this kind of...
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On not voting in the referendum
Under ordinary circumstances I usually always vote, even if it's in a pseudo-random way by the flip of a coin or some other arbiter. The 2010 general election was my most systematic voting attempt to...
View ArticleCleaning up
Assuming that this demo can be taken at face value as representative of typical performance then this is pretty impressive, and probably indicative of early uses of service robotics.Even if the robot...
View ArticleSolar Fire
This looks quite neat, and would be especially suited for equatorial regions. The main limitations are that you need a water supply, and that in this case it looks as if the adjustment of the mirrors...
View ArticleReinventing money
Money is a very old invention. As soon as you go beyond subsistence farming, such that you're creating a surplus which you might want to exchange then money becomes an obvious trading technology. Money...
View ArticleOne more personal robot
Another personal robot, similar to the Turtlebot, but with a simple arm and gripper.The price is $1200, so this is an affordable machine which anyone could buy and start developing software for. Having...
View ArticleOn wasting money on robots
Does the US government waste money on robotics? Probably it does. In the past I've complained about "robot bees", and there does appear to be a lot of robotics research which seems to be poorly...
View ArticleA new blog
I've started a new experimental blog over here, where I'll be continuing to speculate on all sorts of topics (but probably mostly robot and AI related).This is part of my "out of the cloud" strategy,...
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