Author Topic: bill gates and the robotic industry  (Read 5335 times)

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Offline AdminTopic starter

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bill gates and the robotic industry
« on: January 05, 2007, 10:11:12 AM »
Scientific American has an article with Bill Gates comparing the robotics industry of today with the computer industry of 30 years ago.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&articleId=9312A198-E7F2-99DF-31DA639D6C4BA567

In it, Gates says a standardized robot-OS will solve all the industry's probs. It did for PC's, but is he right?

"Whenever somebody wants to build a new robot, they usually have to start from square one."
I think as individual components become more developed, it will be more like assembling a PC of today. You dont need to design and build a harddrive, just simple attach a few cables, etc. Robot eyeball, anyone?

But then again, Gates also said by 2007 there will be no such thing as spam . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3426367.stm
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Offline JesseWelling

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Re: bill gates and the robotic industry
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2007, 01:18:26 PM »
I don't see his 'robot os' taking off. Its one thing for a computer that has no physical capability to go BSOD.
It's quite another to have a robot car go BSOD at 70mph. I don't think MicroSoft can release a product
that can be relied upon In that capacity. If they do you can bet it will take 20 years for them to get it halfway
right. Just look at how long all thier vaporware promises floated around till vista came out. And they still
don't have all the stuff in there they want. MicroSoft is big on promisses but short on delivery.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2007, 01:19:44 PM by JesseWelling »
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Offline Militoy

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Re: bill gates and the robotic industry
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2007, 02:30:36 PM »
Quote
It's quite another to have a robot car go BSOD at 70mph. I don't think MicroSoft can release a product
that can be relied upon In that capacity.

My concern with a Microsoft Robo-Car would be that when the software crashed - it would REALLY crash! Also, I wouldn't want to have to constantly stop the car, and close and open all the windows, just to get it running again!
« Last Edit: January 05, 2007, 02:32:00 PM by Militoy »
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Offline AdminTopic starter

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Re: bill gates and the robotic industry
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2007, 03:16:35 PM »
haha well obviously microsoft cant do it . . .

but is he right?

investors start now, the next microsoft like company for the robo-age could be in the garage next door  :P
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Offline JesseWelling

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Re: bill gates and the robotic industry
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2007, 04:22:39 PM »
Really the only issue that linux has to fix before it becomes more robot friendly is adding more Real Time Support.
Which more and more real time API is being added every kernel revision. 2.6.20 will be out some time in first quarter.

The advantage to linux is that it is a predominatly flat system. EG if you know linux for you laptop you know linux
for your micro controller. There are some minor differences (no Floating Point Hardware) but I'm using a Gumstix
on my robot running a light Debian linux and I'm running Ubuntu on my laptop which is Debian bassed, and every thing
is in the same place, and code compiles exactly the same (although I can't compile natively).
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