blogoversary

blogoversary

I've been doing this Blog thing for about a year now, posting sporadically. I figure now is as good a time as any to explain the name.

For about thirteen years, I have been working on a project in artificial intelligence. It involves a new self-programming language that synthesizes several common approaches to AI, and a demonstration as the operating system of three robots.

I haven't updated my drill press or snakebot websites in a while; I'll get around to it. It's not like anyone is paying me for any of this.

Heck, it's not like anyone is paying me for the blog - or reading it, for that matter. That's alright, it's a handy place for me to store links. Most of the hits have been mine, as I check the weather forecast daily.

Back to the name thing.... anyone who does read this will notice that I don't link to much stuff about robots, and spend a lot of bandwidth talking about space and politics.

As it relates to space, I think that robots ought to be an integral part of any space mission, manned or otherwise. Furthermore, I am positive that such robots will require at least a modicum of artificial intelligence, if only to handle the problems associated with time lag and communications gaps. The robots I am building are a testbench for the control system that would be used by the type of robots that would later be used in space. These are serpentine robots: shaped like a python, with bodies consisting of a train of body segments interspersed with joints, with grippers at each end. In the robots I am putting together, there are six body segments and five U-joints, each capable fo two degrees of freedom.

Such a robot, if built to handle the rigors of space environments, would be useful in gravity fields ranging from microgee (like the Canadarm) to moon or Mars gravity. It could be used either as a teleoperated remote manipulator arm or as an independent rover. The design has the advantages of modularity (enabling mass production), small packed volume (enabling multiple robots in the place of a single rover), scalability (two robots grip each other to form one longer robot), and robustness (a failed joint is an encumbrance, not a failed mission). Multiple tools could also be included in a mission, to be used by the robots as needed, and stored and recharged when not.

Viewed from the political angle, the name "robot guy" is kinda ironic: I am definitely not a robot. I did not follow the programming encoded by the public school system (beating them at their own game was fun). I veered well off the beaten path in my political education since that time. Much of my political education occurred before I left high school, a few incidents which showed me the truth behind the polite facade of Canadian politics and indeed Canadian society as well.

After high school, I was exposed to several political microcosms, both in university when I was studying physics and later at a technical college where I studied electronics engineering. Of course I did not quite fit into the parameters of the program; students who rarely attend classes are not supposed to be getting A's. One might say I have issues with conforming to the expectations of others.

So my politics tend to stray from the perspective of the norm as well. I see the Republicans and Democrats as different wings of the same party, the Boot-On-Your-Neck Party. I see the term "Libertarian Party" as an oxymoron. TANSTAAFL.