Serious question, is there anything driving mobile robotics research besides the defense dept?
I spent my grad school time in a robotics lab and it always bummed me out that anytime you see something amazing like this it's invariable funded by a military research agency which can't wait to strap a gun to the damned thing.
Same thing for computer vision, except it was all about surveillance.
this doesn't answer your question at all, but it's just food for thought: imagine we traveled back in time to the 1960's ... i suppose that people would ask "Serious question, is there anything driving reliable robust nationwide packet-switched data network research besides the defense dept? it always bummed me out that anytime you see something amazing it's inevitably funded by military which can't wait to use it to plan and coordinate military strikes against the soviets and to plan for some ridiculous doomsday nuclear holocaust that might never come" ... without huge amounts of DARPA funding throughout the 60's and 70's for the Internet, we'd all still be pen pals sending snail mail to one another ;)
Fair enough, but there's nothing overtly weaponizable about communication technology.
Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled the money is there to advance the field, I just wish it wasn't coming from a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to it.
I guess since the conventional wisdoms says pornography is the biggest catalyst for new media adoption, it shouldn't be a surprise that killing people drives the other engineering fields forward.
Fair enough, but there's nothing overtly weaponizable about communication technology.
Reliable and secure communication technology is what enables the military to function. Without it, all the weapons technology in the world wont do you any good. So on a moral level, if you are against war you should actually find working as a researcher on communication technology more reprehensible than working on weapons. On an intuitive level I would guess that the breakdown or compromise of military communication has resulted in a greater loss of life than advances in robotics.
The reason why I'm pointing this out is that the real world isn't as simple as "a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to [robots]". You're making a simplification because it's convenient, but that simplification is morally inconsistent with approving of DARPA's work on the Internet. The fact that technology has a dual use is something we all have to deal with as researchers. But I don't think it helps matters by treating the issue as a binary.
"On an intuitive level I would guess that the breakdown or compromise of military communication has resulted in a greater loss of life than advances in robotics."
Up to this point, yes. Not many robots. I suspect the next 300 years will change that ratio hugely. Networks won't kill people...bots with guns will kill people.
It's part of the researcher mindset to rationalise their (enjoyable, paid, 'important') work, otherwise it wouldn't get done. What is the likely result over the long term? Probably not something most researchers are too worried about.
"Fair enough, but there's nothing overtly weaponizable about communication technology."
Um, what? DARPA was funding it for a reason. How do you kill someone with a network packet? Quite simply. The packet contains "Hey, sarge, go here and kill those guys." Without modern communication you don't have a modern military.
You can also look at it from a different perspective:
The market is a much harsher master when it comes to fiscal accountability. Stuff doesn't get funded unless it's going to make money. Military spending is a magical well of infinite money with little accountability. You can think up any project you want and get money to do it so long as you say you're going to strap a gun on your robot, or that the decentralized communication network is really to help survive a nuke attack.
I used to work in bioinformatics and money from the typical funding sources was getting tight in the late 90s, early 00s. After 9/11, my department just recast every project as "terrorist bio-defense" and was financially refueled with defense money.
Everything good starts out for war, entertainment or porn. Later that technology benefits regular uses which become the mainstream.
Throughout history all great minds and technological advances were close to defense development. This here internet is an example, GPS another. Good things come from war competition thats the rub.
The Wright Brothers and Ford weren't doing it for any of those, and neither were the people who invented chocolate or GM rice. People researching the solar system aren't working for the defense industry. Many, many things originate outside of war, entertainment or porn.
It is forever intertwined. Ford was against financing war (but also supported Hitler), but the roads and interstates that made the car viable in the US was military driven by Eisenhower's interstate system (and the railroad monopolies).
I agree things are made/innovated on outside of war, but somewhere along the line most technology is defense driven or funded.
What was the Wright brothers invention used for first? Later came commercial flight.
The solar system research is driven by science but the science programs are largely defense supported and dual purpose. For instance, many of the shuttle trips have a defense purpose or classified payloads. Even the trip to the Moon was for defense leverage on Earth.
From Archimedes to Tesla to science and technology innovation today, most technological advances are closely linked to defense funding or war technology.
Common topics here include assisting the elderly, industrial automation, disaster response, (minorly) entertainment, (minorly) consumer goods, and one other application area I studiously ignored because smart foreigners have no opinions about Article 9.
There were a couple of interesting discussions at the prefectural technology incubator about possible applications for research which was in the news at the time. It was a (very early prototype of a) man-portable cloaking device. Clearly, we decided, it was destined for the Tokyo fashion scene.
The Japanese have a fairly large and technically advanced military, they just call it a "self-defense force". They can and do carry out military research.
Ironically, it's the civilian sector that's limiting this research to the DoD. The FAA has very strict regulations on flying autonomous drones outdoors (basically, you're not allowed to do it), so this has seriously hobbled a lot of research into UAVs, etc. Israel, Canada, Western Europe and other places are far ahead now in terms of commercial autonomous drones.
The "only funded by the military" gripe only applies to the US, and is a peculiarity of American culture. In other areas robotics research is funded by a lot of other organisations besides military ones.
A lot of cognitive science (especially AI related) and cog psychology is DoD related as well. For FY2010 60% of the US governments total R&D spending is military 40% non-military.
>Historically, between 50 and 60 percent of the federal R&D investment is made in defense.
>[mentions the American Reinvestment and Recover Act]However, despite this shift in R&D investment priorities, defense R&D spending continues to outpace non-defense R&D spending by $20 billion.
I spent my grad school time in a robotics lab and it always bummed me out that anytime you see something amazing like this it's invariable funded by a military research agency which can't wait to strap a gun to the damned thing.
Same thing for computer vision, except it was all about surveillance.