The physical manifestation of LabVIEW object actors? Oh yes.

[Aristos Queue]

I do believe that some days the Marketing Forces Of America decide to target me personally, as they did about three months ago when I first saw the Cubelets video online. Cubelets are like the physical manifestation of Actors: cubes that each do their own action and pass messages between each other using dataflow buffers to create robots!

So, I quickly ordered a set, because that's what you do when personally targeted by MFOA -- you don't want to make them angry. They arrived today. And, oh yes, they're neat. I had a couple false starts, but quickly built up the basic "come to my hand" robot. Shortly thereafter I had a robot running around, capable of turning to dodge my hands and flashing light patterns. But I quickly ran into the LEGO problem. You know the problem: You *never* have enough LEGOs. In this case, within a half hour of playing, I found myself wanting two inverter blocks, and I was "hacking" using a flashlight block as a data blocker block. And fifteen minutes after that, I had exhausted the permutations available with my limited set.

Why must the coolest toys be so expensive?! Check out the price list!

http://www.modroboti...vidual-cubelets

And then, I realized the answer to that question: it's hardware. Physical matter costs. And I looked at my cubelets, and I looked across at my laptop, which had on screen the cube control of one of my actor classes. Looking from one cube to the other, I realized just how lucky I am that nature made me a software engineer instead of a mechanical engineer. And then, my next thought... "Hm... perhaps we should start charging $25 per cube? If people are willing to pay so much for hardware cubes... and, hey, the software cubes are *reprogrammable*!" But then my cat started chasing my cubelet robot, and I realized this is the one area that the software just cannot compete, and I guess that justifies the hardware price: no software actor is going to have my cat pouncing quite so adorably. So I guess it's better to keep the software cubes priced like an all-you-can-eat buffet: buy LabVIEW and get all the cubes you want. And I'll just dream about the day when we *finally* get reprogrammable matter. And then we'll see software *can* keep cats on their toes!

(Side note: When one of the hardware cubes receives two messages simultaneously, it averages the messages. I wonder if there's any way a feature like that would be useful in a software actor framework? Add it to the brainstorm list...)

[crelf]

Come! See cubelets! I love that guy

Hmmm - maybe NI could pitch in to give away 2 cubelet KT01 Robot Construction Kits at the LAVA/OpenG BBQ*?

*and maybe you could talk to the people that "randomly" draw the prize tickets?

[todd]

Have you seen Reactable?

http://www.reactable.com/products/

(youtube links in there)

They have hardware and software versions, though both rely on a screen.

If only each Sense and Action Cubelet could be turned into a Min, Max, Blocker, Passive or Inverse Cubelet when touched with a "Be This Instead" Cubelet. Or touch an Inverse to the business side of a Sense or Action to change it's behavior.

[Aristos Queue]

Todd: In theory, later this year the makers of Cubelets will change out all the logic cubes for a new style that allows bluetooth to change which instruction each cube represents. Includes ability to put custom logic on drive cubes, etc. But that would mean buying a new set of cubes... *sigh*

[curiouspuya]

This is all so inspiring! We need a hybrid toy robot crossed between Cublets and Mindstorm so that we can reprogram the cubes to do new things using labview.

[mike5]

Phew! For a moment there I thought this is gonna turn into a lolcat thread . Luckily it went the other way.

[Darren]

Damnit, Stephen, stop showing me expensive things that I want. Thankfully, Cubelets are so over-the-top expensive that the practicality of putting food on the table immediately overrides my normal impulse of reaching for the credit card. Now, if they were about half that price, I don't know if I could control myself...

[Aristos Queue]

I wouldn't have bought them either, Darren, if they hadn't been cube shaped. You're just lucky that MFOA didn't add the tag line "and they'll make you a faster LV programmer." :-)

[SteveChandler]

Has anyone ever read Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg?

[Yair]

I ran into another similar concept, but one which looks more practical - littleBits.

There's a nice TED talk where the creator demonstrates how it works - http://www.ted.com/t..._and_teach.html

[Cat]

Hmmm - maybe NI could pitch in to give away 2 cubelet KT01 Robot Construction Kits at the LAVA/OpenG BBQ*?

Did you all do this at the BBQ?

The kit is currently out of stock. Probably a good thing for my budget.

[crelf]

Did you all do this at the BBQ?

Unfortunately no. Although VIE gave away some Ardhuinos

[Aristos Queue]

I had two sets at the BBQ for folks to play with, but I did not give them away. :-)