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<DIV>John,</DIV>
<DIV> It would be interesting if you could do a spectrum sweep
against a cone and find a predictable signature. Or use a combination of sensors
and the duck algorithm (if it feels like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like
a duck, ... it is a duck). I’m not sure anyone has looked at a traffic
cone for uniqueness with sensors other than cameras and color. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> We expect to see you at the next contest.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
<DIV>Doug P.</DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=swindle@compuserve.com>John
Swindle</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, December 5, 2016 11:28 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=davida@smu.edu>davida@smu.edu</A> ; <A
title=dprglist@lists.dprg.org>dprglist@lists.dprg.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Dprglist] Seeing the RoboColumbus
cones</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
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<DIV>Dave,<BR> <BR>Great stuff. Thanks for setting me straight on the
already-uniqueness of the orange cones.<BR> <BR>But I'm still not making my
point (largely because I'm still slowly formulating it). At the same time, I get
your point, which is: Go and do it! But vision-related stuff is just not
interesting for me to pursue.<BR> <BR>More of my point: It's not to look
for, say, an orange cone, but to look for, say, a plastic thing or a rubber
thing or a wood (or non-wood) thing. Unique in the arena and likely unique in a
large unconstrained space.<BR> <BR>My interest in this is to build a robot
that weeds the yard. I suspect that it is insufficient to look at leaf shapes,
and I suspect that different plants have other signatures that will be easier to
detect, as with the Earth sciences satellites that see what kind of trees are in
a forest.<BR> <BR>When I saw a root heater weed killer for sale (basically
a soldering iron on a stick), I got interested in having a gadget wander about
the yard, selectively cooking the roots of undesired plants. A vinegar spray
works also, but the root heater is more precise. (A flame cultivator is more
dramatic though. We had those on the cotton farm.)<BR> <BR>You say we often
build stuff that is purpose-built to win an arbitrary contest. In this case, I
am looking for something that serves as a sensor for something beyond color and
shape differences. It would be great if it involved sound! Talk to the
weeds.<BR> <BR>I thought we developed sight for visible light because
that's what gets through the atmosphere. Water has a big impact on the
atmosphere as well.<BR> <BR>And so a UV sensor would be OK for a robot
because it would either be designed to not get burned up by UV, or we wouldn't
care that the sensor only lasted a few years. We try to anthropomorphize things
too much, building our own limitations into our creations.<BR> <BR>Good
stuff. Back to slowly formulating now.<BR> <BR>John Swindle<BR> </DIV>
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