From: utzoo!decvax!cca!HPM@S1-A@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.space Title: Earthworms don't need light Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3327 Posted: Fri Sep 17 12:00:13 1982 Received: Tue Sep 21 09:25:53 1982 From: Hans MoravecThere are currently a couple of factories in Japan that run unattended part of the time, usually the night shift. In those, the lights are turned off, since the robots don't work by vision anyway. The easiest methods for automating most of the dirtmoving, processing, and construction would use short range radars for terrain and object tracking - or some other active system - and would probably work better without that huge radio noise generator in the sky. Don't sell robotics short, it is presently vigorously alive, and by the time the transportation is ready, the automatic machinery for unattended operation 90% of the time will be too.