colinator

7 ms·

1.
by colinator 2mo ago
I concur. Most of my MCP pain is dealing with client's differing ability to handle images. Some clients (old codex) would even truncate the base64 data regardless of how it was json-wrapped. And sometimes they just ingest the base64 da
2.
by colinator 3mo ago
Good move getting a nice robot! I'm doing something similar to you, but I went with a cheap robot, the "HIWONDER 6DOF Robotic Arm Kit". It was only $600, but wow is it bad. The precision and repeatability are both "are y
3.
by colinator 5mo ago
That video is pretty good, thanks for finding it. I'm basically betting that an earlier, abandoned approach described in the video, "Code as Policy", will beat everything else. It requires no training data, and generalizes in
4.
by colinator 5mo ago
I was also just in the market for a small experiment robot. I got the hiwonder armpi-fpv. Avoid it, the actuators are pretty bad - they're very 'grindy', the robot jitters like crazy when it moves. Any such problems with the
5.
by colinator 5mo ago
For the fine-motor commands: or, the model can write the code to generate them on the fly. It seems to work, in my very limited experiment. As for memory: my approach is to give the robot a python repl and, basically, a file system - the LL
6.
by colinator 5mo ago
This seems perfect to hook up to my 'LLMs can control robots over MCP' system. The idea is that LLMs are great at writing code, so let's lean in to that. I'll give it a try! I just got a bigger robot, we'll see how
7.
by colinator 5mo ago
Remember how all those years ago (oh wait, a few months ago), that big npm hack attack was found by someone thinking their ssh connection was half a second too slow? Hope this ain't like that! But seriously, good luck!
8.
by colinator 5mo ago
Yeah, the mechanism by which the LLMs control the robot is by writing code. I suppose they could also issue direct joint sequences, but I thought that they're so good at writing code already, might as well do that. So if they 'wan
9.
by colinator 5mo ago
I'm connecting LLMs directly to robots, to see how well they can perform robot things by directly controlling motors and sampling the camera/sensors. Initial results are encouraging! https://colinator.github.io/Ari
10.
by colinator 5mo ago
Here's an idea for how to do that: treat frontier AI as a sort of 'common carrier'. The only business that frontier AI labs are allowed to conduct is selling raw tokens - no UI. Thus, 'claude code' would have to com
11.
Show HN: Ariel gives LLMs direct control over live robots(colinator.github.io)
2 points by colinator 6mo ago|0 comments
12.
by colinator 6mo ago
Yet another problem with MCP: every LLM harness that does support it at all supports it poorly and with bugs. The MCP spec allows MCP servers to send back images to clients (base64-encoded, some json schema). However: 1) codex truncates MCP
13.
by colinator 6mo ago
I've got one of these! Mine is called 'roboflex' (github.com/flexrobotics). It's c++/python, not rust. But similarly born out of frustration with ros. Writing your own robotics middleware seems to be a rite of
14.
by colinator 2y ago
A few years ago there were actually two companies trying to manufacture "zblan optical fiber" (which has better light transmission than normal optical fiber) in orbit: Made In Space, and FOMS. Both of their websites are tombstones
15.
by colinator 2y ago
Borges: Selected Non-fictions. Think his fictions are good? His non-fictions, imho, are even better. You can read three sentences and feel like you just listened to a symphony - you get that constant Borges wit, erudition, mystery. The Engl
16.
by colinator 2y ago
I did some robotics tactile research, it was super fun! We used "biotac" sensors, which are very capable, but are 1) crazy expensive and 2) crazy hard to replace the skins, which do wear out. One advantage biotacs have over these
17.
by colinator 2y ago
Here's another one: "roboflex", https://github.com/flexrobotics ROS is irredeemable. I've seen it used in large projects, and the amount of time wasted "wrestling with ros" was ridiculous. I be
18.
by colinator 3y ago
Well, our brains are closer to spiking neural networks than 'regular' neural networks. And they work pretty well. For the most part. I feel like SNNs are like Brazil - they are the future, and shall remain so. I think more basic r
19.
by colinator 3y ago
Robotics middleware: https://github.com/flexrobotics/roboflex Basically a simpler version of ros. Easily, and performantly (is that a word?) connect cameras and other sensors, via xtensor/eigen/numpy to whate
20.
by colinator 7y ago
Oh yeah, "politely waiting". You mean "denying the very existence of a problem". Meanwhile: is it? How do you know?
21.
by colinator 7y ago
I'm curious about this as well. It's now #69, 5 minutes later. I seem to recall this happening quite a bit for global warming stories. Anyone from HN want to explain please? Do all 'political' stories get buried?
22.
by colinator 7y ago
What if there were a border-adjustment carbon tax? So countries that emit a lot of CO2 get taxed into oblivion? That's a thing we could do... (_will_ do: another story)
23.
by colinator 7y ago
Yeah, totally! You can find me email from my github profile.
24.
by colinator 7y ago
Thanks! No, not quite there yet. Most other libraries are much further along - mine is really an 'exercise'...
25.
by colinator 7y ago
This neuromorphic stuff is super cool. I wish I could just buy some! I'm the author of spikeflow (github.com/colinator/spikeflow). I'd love to support neuromorphic hardware. For the moment, biological neural networks (br
26.
Show HN: Stretchpaper, an Infinite Drawing App for iPad(stretchpaper.com)
5 points by colinator 7y ago|1 comments
27.
by colinator 8y ago
Really? Well then, at least a handful of folks here would be on the buy side. Re sell side: what would it take to sell your expertise on such a service? I've done freelance work in another programming field, and for very short things l
28.
by colinator 8y ago
Huh, I didn't know of that - is that UK only? But from a quick perusal - yeah, exactly like that!
29.
by colinator 8y ago
I use an iPad app called Stretchpaper. Basically an infinite-zoom drawing surface. Disclosure I'm the dev. There's no Mac app though. http://stretchpaper.com
30.
Ask HN: Would you pay for instant devops help?
12 points by colinator 8y ago|10 comments

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