orkomedix - Slashdot User

The Open Source Humanoid Robot and Its Many Uses 93

Posted by timothy on Sunday September 07, 2008 @04:57PM from the billy-connolly-in-fido dept.

ruphus13 writes with a story about the open-source centric Willow Garage project (last mentioned on Slashdot early last year), which is making progress in creating helpful humanoid robots for household use. From the article: "PR2 is the mobile hardware design for Willow Garage robots, featuring stereo and laser sensors ... Senior citizens are a big part of the target audience that Willow Garage is aiming for. "All industrialized countries are facing aging populations that require assistance and care to remain independent into old age. By 2020 close to 20 percent of the US population will be over 65," the project leaders say. "These numbers are even higher in Western European and Asian countries." Willow Garage is aiming to produce several types of assistive robots." The PR2 robots are capable of performing critical tasks like cleaning rooms and bringing beer from a refrigerator."

A Look Back At 10 Years of OSI 73

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @05:52PM from the against-crises-of-succession dept.

blackbearnh notes that this week marks the 10th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative. He points us to O'Reilly's ONLamp site, where Federico Biancuzzi (who frequently interviews notables in the Open Source community for O'Reilly) has a collection of interviews with some of the founders of the OSI, including Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. "Eric Raymond: There is a pattern that one sees over and over again in failed political and religious reform movements. A charismatic founder launches the movement, attracts followers, and enjoys significant successes; then he dies or leaves or attempts to name a successor, and the movement disintegrates rapidly. One of the classic, much-studied cases is that of John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community, 1848-1881. It was especially clear in that case that its succession crisis and eventual collapse was due to over-reliance on Noyes's personal leadership. At the time I co-founded OSI in 1998 I judged that FSF would very likely undergo a similar crackup if it lost RMS, and was determined to avoid that if possible for OSI."

Comment Re:Graduates are in short supply (Score 1) 641

by orkomedix on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @08:38AM (#18330475) Attached to: Is Computer Science Dead?

I think you are right by saying "This doesn't mean CS is dead.", but I think for a lot more reasons than those that have been mentioned here. First of all that fact, that these "packadges" are available to anyone the problems that companies are confronted with are a lot more complicated then they where 10 years ago. To solve those problems you need a good education in all different kinds of CS - simple programming was never and will never be the only part of CS ! We have accomplished to solve some more or less trivial problems and provide anybody with this solution BUT now we can try to solve much more complex things with computers. Not only Newton said: "We are standing on the shoulder of giants!" Another reason why education is importand is, that all these systems need to be maintained, updated, expanded... You need to know one or two things about CS to do that aswell. I have seen how much CS and physics you need to create a "simple" component control in an assembly line in the car industrie - without CS (computer vision in particular) you wouldn't be able to ! So the more available Software solutions will be, the more specialized you need to be to solve new problems. I think this conclusion "CS is dead!" is simply shortsighted and poorly read up on.

Slashdot Top Deals