Why does torque controlled work better?
In interaction with anything rigid (or even deformable), position control does not mean anything. Force (or torque) control defines the actual physical interaction.
Readit Newsjonnycowboy commented on Using OpenAI Gym to train an open-source 3D printed robot github.com/nicrusso7/rex-... · Posted by u/nicrusso7
jonnycowboy commented on Using OpenAI Gym to train an open-source 3D printed robot github.com/nicrusso7/rex-... · Posted by u/nicrusso7
It's unfortunate that we still don't have cheap torque controlled robot actuators. Controlling force rather than position led to a drastic improvement in walking robots. I would also highly recommend using something beefier than an arduino to control a walking robot as most approaches to walking robots today rely on performing fast optimization. MIT's minicheetah has used a control approach that involves simulating the robot about 0.5 seconds into the future 50 times a second.
We actually have very cheap and pretty powerful position-controlled actuators (hobby servo motors). Attach any kind of spring and displacement measurement device (potentiometer, hall sensor, optical, LVDT, etc) and voila, instant torque controlled actuator.
You can look up Series Elastic Actuators for more info or use this article as guidance (any spring will do as long as the force range and spring constant is adequate).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589631...
jonnycowboy commented on Developer preview of TensorFlow Lite developers.googleblog.com... · Posted by u/runesoerensen
> Looking forward to your feedback as you try it out.
Thanks Rajat. We use typical Cortex-A9/A7 SoCs running plain Linux rather than Android. We would use it for inference.
1. Platform choice
Why make TFL Android/iOS only? TF works on plain Linux. TFL even uses NDK and it would appear the inference part could work on plain Linux.
2. Performance
I did not find any info on performance of TensorFlow Lite. Mainly interested in inference performance. The tag "low-latency inference" catches my eye, just want to know how low is low latency here? milliseconds?
Also interested in answers to these two questions, as well as OpenCL performance in vanilla linux (iMX6 and above).
jonnycowboy commented on OpenEMS: a free and open electromagnetic field solver openems.de/start/index.ph... · Posted by u/privong
When I was in grad school, I had quite a few colleagues using FEMM for various electromagnetic clutch designs, looks like it worked well.
Did you go to Sherbrooke?
jonnycowboy commented on Ask HN: Assistive Devices for recently quadriplegic dad · Posted by u/throwawaysci
Tobii is horrible for people with disabilities. Their reps are driven by making money, their devices dry your eyes out because of the amount of IR they put on your eye balls. And they don't offer extended support. And forget trying to run these devices if you have glasses or any eye condition!
Sad to hear, I demoed a system with a Tobii sensor and it performed very well (even with my glasses). We were wondering about the effect of the constant IR blasts (are they continuous or pulsing?), thanks for the input.
jonnycowboy commented on Ask HN: Assistive Devices for recently quadriplegic dad · Posted by u/throwawaysci
I work for a company that makes robot arms for assistive purposes (Kinova) so I have some insight to share.
1st a voice setup with Alexa or similar can really help.
With regards to phone use, some of our users have an attachment to put the phone close to their head and use their nose to "click/select" (they can move their head).
Eye tracking technology is really impressive these days (can be as fast as using a mouse). I've recently demoed a system with a Tobii sensor (https://www.tobii.com/) that was hooked up to a laptop, very impressive when combined with appropriate software (it handles scrolling, keyboard shortcuts, etc in a custom interface). I'm not sure with regards to phone/tablet use how well they integrate.
Ping me on Linkedin if you'd like to talk more.
jonnycowboy commented on What Happens When You Mix Java with a 1960 IBM Mainframe thenewstack.io/happens-us... · Posted by u/3n7r0pY
The thing is that there was a lot about those old systems that was slow, so you were very, very careful how you programmed. You tended not to use vast library stacks, you went close to the metal and you coded in languages like Assembler, COBOL or FORTRAN. I/O was often run through specialised co-processors (such as IBM's channel processors) and the terminals could sometimes help too.
I have friends who have been looking after legacy applications for an airline running on Unisys. The core apps for reservation, Cargo booking and weight/balance were written in FORTRAN. In recent times, the front end was written in Java to give web access. They tried to rewrite the core apps but it was impossible to do so and get the performance.
I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences.
Im curious if a startup can be built from this.
the real question of course would be how to train the AI to have varying levels of "expertise" (ie: penalize if score is too high)
What's the best way to profit from rising sea levels? Investing in land that's higher up in our nearby coastal cities?
Shorting insurance companies.
That said, I’m not sure their choice of materials is the good one for a startup.