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How hard could it be to build? Actually the whole articulated arm thing seems quite unnecessary to me since you’re dealing with interactions on a flat plane.

How hard could it be to build? Actually the whole articulated arm thing seems quite unnecessary to me since you’re dealing with interactions on a flat plane. A simple XYZ platform driven by steppers would probably be far easier and more reliable/reproducible. Throw some OpenCV in with feature tracking and a database of phone screenshots and some shitty internal web app and...lol

rtkwe 8y ago
These robot arms are off the shelf and very repeatable and reliable. They're used all over the place in automation and assembly every day. What's hard about using this either the controllers are very good and can be easily scripted for the whole sequence of test touches T Mobile's engineers wanted. They're also very fast moving so they can rapidly test across different parts of the screen.
- Latteland 8y ago
  If they are so easy why was Huawei trying so persistently to steal the details? This is more irrefutable than the usual info. H might have done a great job developing their own tech in some areas totally on their own, but that's not what was happening here.
  - tivert 8y ago
    > If they are so easy why was Huawei trying so persistently to steal the details? As someone mentioned upthread, it could just be company culture around how they value stolen trade secrets vs internally developed know-how. Sort of like, once upon a time, "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM."
    - Latteland 8y ago
      It's not okay to try to steal things (as we probably don't even need to mention). It's doesn't matter if that is the accepted way to do things in a company, you are making a moral mistake. I don't want to tar everyone in the company as being that way, but it would be a serious thing to consider if someone in Huawei in my town (they have offices in the Seattle area) was looking for a job. If you work in a company that has standard cultural practices of stealing things, then you have to not do it. Of course many companies try to be aggressive and push the illegal envelope (like say Uber) but you have to be moral and honest, it's a crucial aspect of the professionalism that we should have. That's a difficult line that I feel fortunate never to have faced in my software engineering career. Think about those engineers and leaders at VW who lied about the 'defeat device'. I would guess they were in some kind of automotive or mechanical or other professional organization that had a code of ethics that you couldn't do those things.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    I was responding to iamleppert's assertion that it'd be easier to use a gantry based system versus a SCARA arm like T Mobile used. Either method runs into most of the same issues including the end effector (pokey-bit that touches the screen like a finger) which seems like the bit Huawei was having trouble with given that's the bit they stole. Ultimately the real trouble probably isn't the actual arm or gantry but all the software around it to determine what's on the screen and if the phone is functioning properly with respect to the expected test results and the response times which seems what they were interested in. Maybe that's just my bias though and there may be some major hurdles with the function of the fingertip.

rtkwe 8y ago

These robot arms are off the shelf and very repeatable and reliable. They're used all over the place in automation and assembly every day. What's hard about using this either the controllers are very good and can be easily scripted for the whole sequence of test touches T Mobile's engineers wanted. They're also very fast moving so they can rapidly test across different parts of the screen.

Latteland 8y ago
If they are so easy why was Huawei trying so persistently to steal the details? This is more irrefutable than the usual info. H might have done a great job developing their own tech in some areas totally on their own, but that's not what was happening here.
- tivert 8y ago
  > If they are so easy why was Huawei trying so persistently to steal the details? As someone mentioned upthread, it could just be company culture around how they value stolen trade secrets vs internally developed know-how. Sort of like, once upon a time, "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM."
  - Latteland 8y ago
    It's not okay to try to steal things (as we probably don't even need to mention). It's doesn't matter if that is the accepted way to do things in a company, you are making a moral mistake. I don't want to tar everyone in the company as being that way, but it would be a serious thing to consider if someone in Huawei in my town (they have offices in the Seattle area) was looking for a job. If you work in a company that has standard cultural practices of stealing things, then you have to not do it. Of course many companies try to be aggressive and push the illegal envelope (like say Uber) but you have to be moral and honest, it's a crucial aspect of the professionalism that we should have. That's a difficult line that I feel fortunate never to have faced in my software engineering career. Think about those engineers and leaders at VW who lied about the 'defeat device'. I would guess they were in some kind of automotive or mechanical or other professional organization that had a code of ethics that you couldn't do those things.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  I was responding to iamleppert's assertion that it'd be easier to use a gantry based system versus a SCARA arm like T Mobile used. Either method runs into most of the same issues including the end effector (pokey-bit that touches the screen like a finger) which seems like the bit Huawei was having trouble with given that's the bit they stole. Ultimately the real trouble probably isn't the actual arm or gantry but all the software around it to determine what's on the screen and if the phone is functioning properly with respect to the expected test results and the response times which seems what they were interested in. Maybe that's just my bias though and there may be some major hurdles with the function of the fingertip.