[Robotgroup] Panel discussion suggestions for Armadillocon 11-13 August 2006?

[Shane Geiger]

I know I won't be able to take part in the upcoming disucssion, but I 
wanted to put my 2 cents in. 

I've been hoping that the equivalent of the IBM PC will appear soon in 
the robotics world--the cheap, standard platform that gets widely 
adopted.  Something that will allow people to program and share software 
that can be used by a lot of people.  I'm a big advocate of Linux, and I 
think that would make a good choice of operating systems for such 
platform.  I'm very much looking forward to the opportunities of such a 
hobbyist platform.  I expect the platform and killer app to come along 
anytime now.  The Roomba is apparently very popular.  Perhaps a more 
general purpose robot that can do what the Roomba does would be a good 
first popular app.


> 3) The rise and fall of the electronic hobbyist.
>
> --Your father may have built a Heathkit radio, and you might have had a 
> 65-in-1 electronics kit from Radio shack. Soldering was not an entirely 
> unknown skill. Where there used to be a slew of electronic hobbyist 
> magazines on the racks of the book store (PopTronics, Electronic 
> Hobbyist, Radio Electronics), you'd be hard pressed to even *find* an 
> electronic experimenters kit at a Radio shack store amidst the clutter 
> of pre-built consumer electronics. Where did the inventors, the 
> creators, the experimenters go? What was responsible for the decline in 
> the "tinkerer" and how do we rekindle an interest in *creating* as 
> opposed to *consuming*?
>
> 5) Wheres the robotic "killer App"?
>
> --The first example of a killer application is generally agreed to be 
> the VisiCalc spreadsheet on the Apple II platform. The machine was 
> purchased in the thousands by finance workers on the strength of this 
> one program. Next came Lotus 1-2-3 heralding the introduction of the IBM 
> PC (and its many clones) into the business world. Aldus PageMaker and 
> Adobe PostScript which gave the graphic design and desktop publishing to 
> Apple Macintosh in the late 1980s. A killer app can provide an important 
> niche market for a non-mainstream platform. So far, Roboticists have yet 
> to find this "Killer App" that will make robotics indispensable. Is 
> there a killer app and if so, what could it be?
>   

-- 
Shane Geiger
IT Director
National Council on Economic Education
sgeiger at ncee.net  |  402-438-8958  |  http://www.ncee.net

Leading the Campaign for Economic and Financial Literacy