GlenTheMachine

4 ms·

1.
by GlenTheMachine 12d ago
But if you're a rational actor, and you need humans to e.g. release your bioweapon, then clearly humans are capable of a bunch of stuff you still can't do. So you can't kill all the humans. OTOH if you're a religious fun
2.
by GlenTheMachine 12d ago
Omniverse (new Isaacson) is good, but no existing dynamics engine does an actually good job at contact dynamics.
3.
by GlenTheMachine 12d ago
"I tend to agree but it is hard to shake the feeling that there is a larger system in play that the humans are just a component of. And that system is making the decisions." That system is "the economy". Which, clearly,
4.
by GlenTheMachine 12d ago
By definition, if you're taking over the world by bribing humans to be your hands, you aren't killing all the humans. I"m not saying it's obviously going to be great. I'm saying that "extinction event" has
5.
by GlenTheMachine 12d ago
"If you're in the field, then you know: modern robotics is an AI problem more than anything else." It is not. Certainly AI is a big part of why robotics is hard, but it is by no means the biggest. You can fall into one of two
6.
by GlenTheMachine 12d ago
Like (I assume) most of you, I have been struggling with this. And where I currently come down is that 1) I am very worried, but 2) I am more worried about human actors. "AI" by itself won't kill us in the next ten years. I t
7.
by GlenTheMachine 14d ago
I mean, deer (and cows and goats and sheep, but not horses) are ruminants. They can eat all sorts of things humans can’t digest: grass, tree leaves, most weeds, etc). The evolution of the rumen was one of nature’s best tricks.
8.
by GlenTheMachine 20d ago
I suspect that if/when we get to a world where it makes economic sense to manufacture billions of robots, it’ll be easier and cheaper to modify the infrastructure.
9.
by GlenTheMachine 23d ago
Roboticist here. All of this, and he didn’t mention compliance or online adaptation to otherwise un-sensable dynamics. Or massively complex miniature mechanisms. Current generation tactile sensors cost a couple thousand $ PER FINGER, and ha
10.
by GlenTheMachine 1mo ago
I vote for Zotero integration!
11.
by GlenTheMachine 1mo ago
The conclusion linguists are coming to is much stronger than that. The data indicate that the last common ancestor of languages as varied as Hittite, German, and Latin was spoken around 4500 BCE in Ukraine. It's a linguistic equivalent
12.
by GlenTheMachine 1mo ago
Turns out that isn't exactly true. You can poly concepts from genetic drift to language and infer what they must have been like. It's revolutionized the field of linguistics.
13.
by GlenTheMachine 1mo ago
Isn't this a testable hypothesis? If consciousness spread virally and isn't a natural outgrowth of the physical structure of the brain, then presumably isolated indigenous tribes would still have pre-consciousness mental processes
14.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
The RPO and docking are autonomous specifically because it's hard to deal with the latency. Note that the algorithm stack for almost any spacecraft cannot rely on modern compute. Single-core sub-1 GHz processors are the standard. Very
15.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
It's very likely that a spacecraft similar to MRV/RSGS could do a life extension mission on Hubble. But, unfortunately, Hubble is in a very different orbit than MRV/RSGS is, so we wouldn't be able to reach it. "Does
16.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
It's almost impossibly hard to return things to earth from GEO. Robert Heinlein famously wrote that "a circular orbit is halfway to anywhere", which means that the most energetically difficult part of a mission to the Androme
17.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
I can only provide answers to technical or programmatic questions that have already been "approved for public release" by DARPA and NRL. We've done a number of publicly released presentations over the years, so there is a fai
18.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
It’s all custom flight code. The only software packages we use are basic matrix-vector libraries. Hopefully there will be a paper describing the dynamics/kinematics/controls algorithms soon.
19.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
Oh gosh. I grew up in the middle of nowhere Virginia. Like many of you I was a nerd, and I had no outlet for that nerd-dom until I spent all summer working for money to buy a C64. I taught myself assembly, and was a high school intern at NA
20.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
Thanks! There isn't a paper yet, but I'm working on one; I hope it will be presented at the upcoming iSAIRAS/iSpaRo conference in Cologne.
21.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
We use pretty standard BLDCs.
22.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
You wouldn't. Ionizing radiation at GEO altitude quickly exceeds your lifetime exposure dose. The Apollo (and Artemis II) astronauts went through GEO inside a metal capsule going as fast as they could.
23.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
Sort of mini-fridge sized. They take over attitude control and propulsion for satellites that are low on fuel. "Since the mission is designed to attach one and then leave to go to another satellite that needs servicing?" Yes.
24.
by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago
I'm the lead roboticist. Within bounds, I can answer questions.
25.
The most advanced robotic servicing satellite–that we know about(arstechnica.com)
39 points by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago|2 comments
26.
DARPA Robotic mechanic for broken satellites launched(darpa.mil)
4 points by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago|0 comments
27.
First Robotic Satellite Servicer Launched(nrl.navy.mil)
87 points by GlenTheMachine 2mo ago|54 comments
28.
by GlenTheMachine 4mo ago
If you had no idea what a restorable sequence is the takeaway is about halfway down the OP: “This is why Linux now provides rseq() which is a much more enlightened solution. With restartable sequences, you actually can get rid of both the m
29.
by GlenTheMachine 4mo ago
I am firmly convinced that, in the long course of time, Pratchett will be recognized as a modern Shakespeare.
30.
by GlenTheMachine 5mo ago
Maybe that’s the protocol?

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