I was tackling a subset of your argument initially. If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that we need to have the core technology first before trying to piece together something out of it first, and any research without that core technology is useless.
I'll expand point by point.
ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES. I wholeheartedly agree that this is a huge point. However, to draw an analogy to civil engineering - cement is important (and is an enabling technology), but it's not required to make advances in architecture.
ENERGY STORAGE. Suspend it by wires for now, limited-mobility robots are useful in some industries.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE + CONTROL SYSTEMS. This was the core of my previous argument. A lot of what someone perceives as "hard AI" problems are actually "hardware-assisted, AI-guided" problems (your example of control and path planning come to mind). In your video, it showed the operator not being able to move the robot fluidly & fluently. This is the aspect that this DARPA initiative is tackling. Separate the AI (human operator for now) from the hardware-assisted aspects. (Please note that humans can typically take over the "hardware-assist" and manually move, but try writing with your non-dominant hand or run in reverse)
PROCESSING / NEURAL COMPUTING. See above.
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES / DEVELOPMENT AND SIMULATION TOOLS. Sure, I agree - but this is a problem that can be tackled right now.
I agree that there are a lot of areas that need to be improved for a "true robot". However, we can improve some subsets right now, and they may be useful in the future.
It's somewhat like arguing that developing advanced image-processing concepts & algorithms was pointless 50 years ago, because neither the software nor the hardware of the time could do anything with the idea. It's quite common in this field that an old algorithm becomes practical due to hardware and software capabilities.
I'll expand point by point.
ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES. I wholeheartedly agree that this is a huge point. However, to draw an analogy to civil engineering - cement is important (and is an enabling technology), but it's not required to make advances in architecture.
ENERGY STORAGE. Suspend it by wires for now, limited-mobility robots are useful in some industries.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE + CONTROL SYSTEMS. This was the core of my previous argument. A lot of what someone perceives as "hard AI" problems are actually "hardware-assisted, AI-guided" problems (your example of control and path planning come to mind). In your video, it showed the operator not being able to move the robot fluidly & fluently. This is the aspect that this DARPA initiative is tackling. Separate the AI (human operator for now) from the hardware-assisted aspects. (Please note that humans can typically take over the "hardware-assist" and manually move, but try writing with your non-dominant hand or run in reverse)
PROCESSING / NEURAL COMPUTING. See above.
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES / DEVELOPMENT AND SIMULATION TOOLS. Sure, I agree - but this is a problem that can be tackled right now.
I agree that there are a lot of areas that need to be improved for a "true robot". However, we can improve some subsets right now, and they may be useful in the future.
It's somewhat like arguing that developing advanced image-processing concepts & algorithms was pointless 50 years ago, because neither the software nor the hardware of the time could do anything with the idea. It's quite common in this field that an old algorithm becomes practical due to hardware and software capabilities.