[EAS]Two from PARC

[pjk]

Subject:   Two from PARC

(from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology
 October 11, 2002, Volume 1, Number 18)
 <http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/nsdl-reports/met/2002/met-021011.html>

Modular Robotics [.pdf, QuickTime, .mpg, Java 3D]
http://www2.parc.com/spl/projects/modrobots/
The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is a subsidiary of Xerox
Corporation. One of its most intriguing areas of study is "modular
reconfigurable robotics," which is a technology that allows a robot
to take itself apart and put itself back together again in a new
form. This lets the robot customize its design for a given task.
Several different models of robots have been constructed at the
PARC, and this Web site describes how they were built and how they
function. There is a large collection of video clips that show each
of the robots in operation, including one of a robot riding a
tricycle. Two Java simulation programs can be downloaded that
demonstrate the control systems of two of the PARC models. A long
list of publication titles with abstracts is given, and the full
text is available for a few of them.


(from NewsScan Daily, 11 October 2002)

PARC'S DE KLEER: ALL LEARNING IS SOCIAL
In an interview with John Gehl for the ACM online publication
Ubiquity, Johan de Kleer of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
talks about his own experiences at that famed research center: "The
biggest thing was coming to PARC and watching how people actually
use technology and learning to manage and see how organizations
actually function. And discovering that all learning is social.
Perhaps now I'm being too social, but you have to balance the two.
One without the other gets you nothing...  Pure bottom-up approaches
have not created the breakthroughs in science, and I do not believe
they will succeed in artificial intelligence. Remember, studying
feathers and birds did not get us flight."  (Ubiquity 11 Oct 2002)
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/j_dekleer_1.html

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See also
<http://ranier.oact.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_page/coolrobots.html>
and <http://www.service-robots.org/IEEE-start.php>
     --PJK