Freesiders are continually tinkering with
robotics and other such
machinery. Many of these embedded processors and firmware are becoming open source and every-more diversified in the wake of the modern
Maker movement.
One notable boost to the hackerspace arsenal is the
Arduino (an like platforms). This offers designers an incredible power to devise not just
individual devices but even the emergence of
complex, integrated systems.
This evolutionary pace of modern technological systems may be significantly faster the biologic system development, but there may be a few well learned tricks yet to be mastered. It seems that studying how nature has managed to solve many development challenges will aid in designing robotics, where efficiently counts just as much.
One challenge, that is particularly interesting, is data processing. Artificial intelligence is labored with processing data and producing a meaningful and useful output. When considering the increase in sensory and input devices avaible to robot hackers, AI technology may not be able to simply apply
Brute Force for all scenarios.
How does the human brain sort through data and minimize
apophenia, in real time? It delegates.
This, unfortunately is not a perfected system but it is still, (currently), better than anything man has managed to hacked together. What's important to remember about these systems is that they are subject to some strange exploits, which we call "Illusions". Optical illusions are centuries old and have often uncovered the curiosity within us all.
A
recent study in the science journal, "Perception" has illustrated this point well. In this, they illustrate the error of duplication. Some such duplications do not appear to throw off any red flags in the observer. However, try causing an irregularity to someone's face and it's a totally different story.
The human face is one of the most instant and profound "appliances" of human interaction. Humans have evolved a very acute sense of facial recognition, which plays a vital role in our day to day goings on.
The difference between a smile and a frown, could mean the difference between a successful mate and a fight to the death. Other mild variations in not so useful things don't trigger the same primal response. This assumptive processing center of the brain acts somewhat comparably to a natural checksum, operating autonomously in the subconsciousness like a
daemon.
Often, Makers and Hackers share their knowledge and designs in a very "open" manner. Nature itself has
many lessons to teach designers as well. A better understanding of these such integrated systems and their exploits may better help us to design technological systems which are both sophisticated and efficient.
-GlassDPM
Join us a Freeside next Thursday for an Introduction to Arduino Class. The class will be aimed at the basics of Arduino Programming, so some programming experience in any environment would be preferred, but is by no means necessarry. We will even have a limited number of Arduinos and Computers, however if you have the ability, please bring your own laptop and Arduino to work with.
