🚀 go-pugleaf

mohit@apollo.psrc.ncsu.edu (mohit bhatnagar) writes:

>excellent survey!!
>can any of these people who built juggling-machines juggle? I know
>claude shannon was very fond of juggling (partly that's why I got
>addicted to it!!). does it matter if person building the machine can not
>perform the task herself? or is it just a matter of getting right kind
>of sensors, control mechanism etc. without any human insight in the
>process itself?

I hear that Claude Shannon also has a tilted air-hockey table on which to 
juggle in effectively lower gravity. (Which seems a great way to learn, 
to me: in particular, it forces you to throw from the middle, rather than 
throwing and catching in the same motion.) 

I think Buhler (who worked with Koditschek) is Joe Buhler, of the siteswap
mathematical paper, and has taught many famous mathematicians to juggle
(such as John Horton Conway of Life fame).

I got the impression from talking to Koditschek that he had very weird
ideas about juggling (i.e. that an experienced juggler wouldn't have). 
I don't remember precisely what, now; one thing I do remember is that 
in the robotics applications they were after, it was much less important 
to be able to juggle many, than to be able to recover from really grievous 
error. And indeed, their machine could fix situations no human could.	
								Allen K.