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by beambot 4862 days ago
I've ranted on this topic before [1]. I still think it's a bit dishonest... academics shouldn't promote their work to general audiences without properly denoting caveats. In this case... they're using a ~$50k vicon motion capture system that returns millimeter-precision pose estimates at ~1kHz.

[1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/07/02/being-honest-robot-vid...

Without the vicon and (probably) a central control PC, this feat would be SUPER difficult -- by ~1-2 orders of magnitude. The real problem is: when someone does solve that herculean problem, the general public won't care. They'll just say, "eh, we've seen that before."
2 comments
snowwrestler 4862 days ago
Who cares what the public thinks? The funding and eventual commercialization will come from people who do understand what is going on here.

I'm no expert, but I would imagine that research using remote viewing and centralized processing is just a first step that could make it easier to validate particular solutions, which can then be "baked into" self-contained platforms.

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beambot 4862 days ago
It's the same as industry... good PR goes a long way toward acquiring funding. Would you be upset if (say) Apple, Google, or Microsoft's PR machine was intentionally deceiving folks? Academics are even more sensitive to this -- it's why we're always railing against "shitty science reporting."

Also, I suggest reading the article. I am an expert... I greatly admire this group's research(!!), which is why I don't mind giving 'em some tough love. But I also want the group that "cracks the egg" for self-localization and decentralized control to get their deserved limelight. This video makes that less likely.... as evidenced by the fact that so few people in this thread (probably) know what a Vicon is, how it works, or that it's being used.

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alwaysdoit 4861 days ago
What if they demo it in a non-laboratory setting, especially one where noisy backgrounds would make vicon impossibly difficult. If I understand correctly, the main problem with vicon is that it can't really be used in a real world scenario, right? So if the demo shows what can be done with the non-vicon solution, it should still be effective.
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