I was actually thinking of a pair of humanlike arms with many degrees of freedom, and one or more cameras looking at things. You can have dozens of single datum sensors, or one camera. It’s much cheaper. Similarly, once you have some robot arms, there’s no gain in including many single use motors. For example, when I include an arbor press, I don’t mean a motorized press. I mean a big lever that you grab with the robot arm and pull down, to press in a shaft or shape a screw head.
There are two CNC machine tools, to automate some part shaping while the robot does something else.
It is not at all obvious to me that one camera is “cheaper” than dozens of single datum sensors. The camera requires complicated, expensive, and error-prone image analysis software. The single datum sensor can be a simple PID control mechanism in a microcontroller.
Load up a video of a manufacturing or assembly line, and count how many human-dexterous robotic arms are in use. In most cases, you’ll find zero. Even 3D printers and CNC machines, which are supposed to be general-purpose, find no need for the complexity of an industrial arm, let alone something comparable to a human arm.
I was actually thinking of a pair of humanlike arms with many degrees of freedom, and one or more cameras looking at things. You can have dozens of single datum sensors, or one camera. It’s much cheaper. Similarly, once you have some robot arms, there’s no gain in including many single use motors. For example, when I include an arbor press, I don’t mean a motorized press. I mean a big lever that you grab with the robot arm and pull down, to press in a shaft or shape a screw head.
There are two CNC machine tools, to automate some part shaping while the robot does something else.
It is not at all obvious to me that one camera is “cheaper” than dozens of single datum sensors. The camera requires complicated, expensive, and error-prone image analysis software. The single datum sensor can be a simple PID control mechanism in a microcontroller.
Load up a video of a manufacturing or assembly line, and count how many human-dexterous robotic arms are in use. In most cases, you’ll find zero. Even 3D printers and CNC machines, which are supposed to be general-purpose, find no need for the complexity of an industrial arm, let alone something comparable to a human arm.
We don’t build machines that way for a reason.