[Haskell-cafe] I for one welcome our new Robotic Overlords

[Jeremy Shaw]

When the robots take over, do you want them to be developed using a  
sane language like Haskell or Agda? Or some dangerous untyped OO  
language? I think the answer is obvious.

The question is, "How?". The robots will not be developed by us, but  
by the children of today. So, we must reach their pure minds before  
they have been unsafely coerced by the evil unbelievers who do not  
worship the gods λ, Π, and ω.

My long term vision is:

A company which produces an extensible robotics platform for children  
and adults ages 8 and up. The platform would be very open, extensible,  
and hackable.

The robotic programming languages would be based around concepts like  
functional reactive programming, dependent types, etc.

Children would begin with a simple FRP language to control the robot.  
They would solve simple problems like "go forward until an object is  
encountered." As the young masters grow, they can tackle more  
difficult problems such as maze solving. Even later they can delve  
into more advanced subjects like computer vision, speech recognition  
and synthesis, or mind control rays.

The short term vision can be summarized in one word "leverage".

We need to find an existing robotic platform which can be easily  
targeted somehow using Haskell or Agda. Perhaps something that can be  
targeted using atom or lava? Maybe something Arduino based?

I have created a wiki page here to record your suggestions and ideas:

http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/RoboticOverlords

The requirements now are something that is:

  - hackable/open
  - easily obtained
  - reasonable in price
  - can easily be targeted via Haskell

The only candidate I know of so far is lego mindstorms via the NXT  
package on hackage, Though some could argue that lego mindstorms are  
not reasonably priced.

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/NXT

Let's here your ideas!
- jeremy