Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!topaz.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: What to do with all those MIPS Message-ID: Date: 19 Apr 88 20:39:14 GMT References: <880419102020.000000D9051@grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 25 My guess is that "all those MIPS" are going to make all those robots that everybody thought were coming ten years ago, possible in the next ten. The crux is vision. There's a host of tasks that you can do with cheap, low-precision "effectors" if you have visual feedback, that are virtually impossible without it. Sometime in the next ten years, there will be a two-year period where before, there are virtually no household robots, and after, they're common. I reason by analogy to cd's or vcr's, and on the theory that there are plenty of yuppies out there who would easily spend $5000 for a household factotum. (Myself included.) We're at the point, I think, where the underlying technology is moving enough faster than the product developers that a sort of catastrophe- theory effect happens: We'll be well beyond the stage where robots become feasible (and cost-effective) before the marketing departments realize they are even possible. Part of the effect will be due to the push-and-flop of household robots of the past decade, which will cause a justifiable reticence on the part of management. In common, general-purpose computers, I'm sure we can soak 10 or 20 thousand MIPS into the scheduler and window system as if it were never there at all ... :^) --JoSH