Stray Dog Strut

What do you mean you didn’t notice I was even gone? Humph! Well, I wrecked my pc (again) by removing a file I shouldn’t have – I swear it said Lexmark (My dad’s printer brand) alright?! So I had to copy all my important files to the D: drive and completely wipe the C: drive. I messed up some DLLs and the Boot.ini file apparently.

I only just finished reinstalling everything last night. I ‘think’ I managed to save my Eve character. I haven’t played Eve for so long I should really just get rid of it, but it is only around £12 a month (14 Euro) so I might as well make full use of it! I copied the entire CCP folder to my second hard disk (CCP is the company that makes Eve) but i’ve as yet got an answer as to which files I need to keep my character.

I’m currently repatching Eve to get it back to a working state, and checking the Eve forums for an answer. I’m hoping I don’t end up losing my lovely Tristan ship and all those skills I studied so hard for:-S If my character survives, i’ll introduce you to him next post.

I never did get around to playing Ragnarok again. I guess the 15 day trial probably ran out. It was a beautiful game though and I’m sure once I had qualified as an archer, things would have been more interesting. I liked the sumptious graphics but at the moment I think it’s best to just engage myself in one mmorpg – both for the cost and just the effort involved in carving out a digital life in a new universe.

So at the moment it’s Eve. If I get it working i’ll try to spend more time at it – when I last played, I was a few skill cycles away from flying my first cargo ship and hopefully starting a trading business.

I will never be one of these people who plays Eve all day – simply because I do like to get away from the screen every so often and it is unhealthy, but my main hobby is gaming as a whole.

Oh well, dad’s signalling the curtain call for Enter The Dragon which is on TV tonight so I might pull myself away from Eve and Blogger to go watch that. I’m more of a Jet Li and Jackie Chan fan, but you have to respect the legend that is Bruce Lee.

Later

I found that link for Steven Stahlberg’s work=) I’ve added it on the right there as Android Blues. Take a look at his gallery and the script for his project Android Blues. I love anything to do with robotics/androids/artificial intelligence. One of my favourite films of 2004 was iRobot and i’ve got The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov – well worth a read. I fondly remember the 1983 film Wargames – no I wasn’t old enough to see it when it came out!

It’s probably a good place to discuss my definition of a robot. (EDIT: Take the following with a pinch of salt, as I now don’t believe half of what i’ve written here – Rambo, 26/03/10) I’m still unsure actually as I used to just say it has to be “autonomous”, meaning having the ability to operate on it’s own. But then, this could apply to toys too – such as last year’s RoboSapien – as alot of them have simple sensors and respond to stimuli according to their programming with no human controller, but I still don’t consider them robots. Still i’m sure even experts keep one eye on the toy industry’s experiments for a bit of inspiration.

I think what I personally mean when I say robot, is a machine with artificial intelligence sophisticated enough to interact with a human being. This is a tough challenge. We are years away from robots like ‘Sonny’.

I laugh at so-called robots like Honda’s Asimo (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) as they are essentially large radio-controlled toys. Sure Asimo can walk but he’s not steady enough to go get your shopping for you and he has a human with a gearstick controlling him and talking for him – basically an expensive toy! Still I have to admit punching “Japanese robots” into Google images has brought up some interesting projects. I love you Google…ahem.

Anyway, I think when we start talking about robots behaving like humans/interacting with humans, we are really talking about the artificial intelligence behind them. Like many of my interests, this is where the subject becomes fragmented:

You have the physical hardware of a robot – Designing it for it’s purpose or appearance? Mobility methods, considering the physical limitations of the design, and so on (Apparently Johnny 5 from the Short Circuit films had such a poor design there was no way he would be able to lift a human being!) – and then you have the software that controls it: The artificial intelligence. This can be as simple as a bunch of IF statements or as complex as a simulation based on the distribution of information in the human brain.

So do I agree with the view put forward by Arrick Robotics that a robot is a machine with the ability to think using an on-board ‘brain’? Yes and no. While I agree that these decision tables are the building blocks of a more advanced robotic mind, I don’t think that line-following mice and the Roomba vacum-cleaner are complex enough to be worthy of the label ‘robot’. Sure, I would love to make a little machine of my own that sat on my desk and followed my movement with it’s gaze, or a run-around thing that roamed about my room and turned when it reached a wall, but I would argue that they are just experiments, not finished robots.

To me, a robot should exhibit all of these functions and then some. The ability to make decisions based on input and past experience, to move under it’s own power without human assistance, to perform a function comparable to a human and so on.

But does a robot have to be human-like in appearance and purpose? Probably not, we already have machines building our cars – I don’t think I can call them robots though. I think artificial intelligence will grow faster than the hardware, and lead to all kinds of problems no doubt, but maybe one day we’ll have a bunch of NS-5s to help us out.

I’ve bookmarked several on-going robotic projects and miscellanious robotics sites of interest so take a look if you’re that way inclined:

http://howtoandroid.com/HowToBuildRobotHead.html

http://www.fuzzgun.btinternet.co.uk/rodney/rodney.htm One of my favourites!

http://www.juked.com/2005/03/myrobot.asp A bit like some stories in The Complete Robot

http://www.robotics.com/arobot/build.html

http://homepage.mac.com/thenry/home/docs/amusing.html

He slept. Or rather, his body slept. Fed intravenously, the curled up specimen in the incubator could hardly be described as a classic example of the human form. Spindly arms were loosely wrapped around knees pulled up tight to the chest. These limbs had never moved under motor-power alone. The face, pale with sunken eye-sockets, housed eyes that had never even been opened.

This was The Dreamer. A test-tube experiment in mind-mapping technology. The physical body was given just enough nutrients to survive, nothing more, with no regard for outward appearance. But the mind – that was the real gem.

Since before ‘birth’, implants were placed in the subject’s brain. Artificial neurons feeding him a construct. A virtual world to call his own. Knowing nothing else it would seem perfectly real. His every interaction, sensation, and experience could be controlled. He would be shaped and experimented on until his mind had sufficiently progressed to be ready for the Final Separation. It could only be a success…