I've lived in a lot of places (although not New York or Texas), and I think every place certainly has its pros and cons. Many times, I think that places could learn a lot from each other and whittle down the cons while boosting the pros. However, if I suggested that my previous city had an idea that my current city could benefit from, I imagine people would think I'm just suffering from this "the old grass was greener" mindset, even if I'm not at all suggesting any sort of overall superiority.

So, I'm wondering how cross-pollination of ideas between cities can happen without sounding like an ass.

I saw a demonstration of Basil earlier this month at the event mentioned in the article, and the Gundersons explained some of the technology and what they are trying to accomplish.

There is nothing special about the sonar -- it's just a simple low-bitrate input scheme. The Gundersons are focusing on solving the problems of environment perception by focusing on a cognitive model instead of throwing horsepower at interpreting the input in fine detail, as computer vision or perhaps some sort of advanced sonar would. The robot manages an internal model of its environment, and compares the input to its expectations instead of continually trying to reconstruct a scene. Perhaps it distinguishes a chair from a person with clues (a chair doesn't move on its own, for instance).