Comment on [Thread] Mental Math
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 day agoRead somewhere that catching is actually dead simple, just “move towards the image of the incoming target” (I’m not talking about the arm kinematics).
There were a robot paper bin that zoomed under stuff you threw up in the air using no complicated algorithms for example.
Funnily many algos are calked on physical and chemical effects in the real workld, like splines for example were made with a thin metal bar and lead weight bending it to get the lines used in boat hull construction.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I mean… there is nothing simple about the calculations involved in something like that lol
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No, IIRC it was just : film the ball and repetedly do: “is the ball to the left, go left. Is it a little to the left, go little to the left” etc.
Like a PID but with only the P part. I don’t know if it makes any sense :-)
Eranziel@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I mean, that’s easy enough if you’re trying to catch the ball with your face. Usually that’s not the goal, so you’ll be standing slightly to the side or the object is moving toward your stomach. ;)
Even then, that’s discounting the whole image analysis part of the equation, which your brain does dozens of times per second with incredible accuracy. Your waste bin example would have had to do enough to differentiate the ball from the background, and that definitely qualifies as a complex algorithm.
Valmond@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
IIRC the imaging was just a black & white camera with the ball being black.
Detecting what is a ball is of course a whole other game, that I think was not the question. But if was then yes, that is more complicated.