[From Bill Powers (970108.1600 MST)]
Richard Thurman (970108.1140)--
How about submitting a SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) proposal
to one of the Federal Government Agencies.
Rich, this is a brilliant idea and I'm going to try to get something going.
Unless there's someone on the net who would like to join in. We need, of
course, an established Small Business which would actually make the
application and oversee the project.
I've had some preliminary contact with Marc Raibert, who runs Boston
Dynamics, Inc. He's the guy who wrote the book _Legged Robots that Balance_
and whose work at MIT was featured in a Discovery video that Dag Forssell
sent me. He is now in business for himself. When I emailed him he said "Oh,
yeah, I remember your book -- we discussed it in graduate school, but I
can't remember which side I came down on." I steered him to the demos on the
Web page, but haven't heard from him since. This is a perfect excuse to get
back in touch.
Would you like to be involved? Any suggestions? I'm really excited about
this -- maybe I will finally get to build that cat I talked about long ago.
A fitting memorial to our old cat who had to be euthanized two weeks ago.
Best,
Bill P.