00100	
00200	NOTES ON A VISIT TO M.I.T  3 - 4 - 5  JULY  1969
00300	
00400					B.G.Baumgart
00500	
00600	I was most impressed by Richard Greenblat.  Although he is
00700	basically inarticulate  -  he is excellent at demonstrating
00800	things in great detail  -  from midnight to four he demonstrated 
00900	and mumbled about the following:
01000	
01100	A plausibly good edge finder based on taking gradients of the
01200	intensities of a whole image.  Greenblat apparently developed
01300	the edge finder by getting a feel for the data and partial
01400	results using good diagonostic display on the DEC 340. For
01500	example one display showed the input image in eight intensity
01600	levels over which he could run a box which selected an area
01700	for detailed examination of the gradient vector field within
01800	the box  -  A second display consisted of a line segment
01900	which he could translate and rotate over the image in order to
02000	select a domain for his local-edge-detecting function which
02100	was monitored by two cartesian graphs and a list of eight quantities
02200	of merit to be maximized, minimized or set to good values  -  e.g 
02300	averages, maxima, ratio of maxima to neighbors, area under curve from
02400	half maxima thru maxima to half maxima, etc.
02500	
02600	Greenblat apparently has contrived an edge operator by selecting or
02700	rather by tuning the values of various cheat-factors, bias-constants,
02800	fudge-variables and petty heuristics (if such&such then forget about
02900	computing mumble).  The operator selects likely edge-points with no
03000	concept of straightness or corners  -  Another operator goes around
03100	fitting the edge-points into lines.  And Greenblat was going to do
03200	corners, etc. ,but  he had to first make some diagonostic displays.
03300	
03400	"Are you attempting to creat input for Guzman ? "  ,  I asked.
03500	"Yes, but I will rewrite Guzman in machine code.", he replied.
03600	
03700	Richard further demonstrated for me many features of operating the
03800	two image dissectors: Focusing, Zooming (with the zoom lens and with
03900	the dissectors internal resolution)  as well as much trivia.
04000	Then he demonstrated and explained chess & its debugging displays - 
04100	Greenblat has no new version to export at the moment.  Chess is probably
04200	a prime love of his, attempts to change the subject were ignored in the present
04300	but turned out to have been accurately and thoroughly queued. 
04400	
04500	So there were displays of Chess Alpha-Beta Stuff, Evaluations, etc.
04600	Greenblat would say: " power is inversely weighted queens low
04700	pawns high in this place here (he points to a dense flickering CRT)
04800	...and here (he points to a listing that looks like 7-bit ASCII printed
04900	on a Flexowriter) "   His technical statements would be terminated by
05000	a "you know ? " and an expectant look.  I would answer mostly positively
05100	with a nod, smile, "yes", "a-ha", etc ... I would occassionally
05200	answer negatively and generate a question "No I don't understand
05300	the  Queen's Mummble  -  tell me about it."
05400	
05500	Later we demonstrated the Color Display - it works but isn't being used
05600	- point mode rather than a vidicon raster scan; Music - plays from
05700	core in real-time has good translation package of middle-C-sharp
05800	notation to cycles per second with harmonics notation; Microlights -
05900	the arm has little lights for visual tracking - no code yet; as well
06000	as the MIT model railroad telephone exchange controller  -  "See the
06100	train is coming to switch 17, so I punch 17 here and ..."
06200	
06300	Richard has worked gung-ho full time for the past two weeks on 
06400	doing the TOWER-COPY-DEMO which he thinks will be a plateau or
06500	temporary stopping place for Robot Research at M.I.T.  -  since he
06600	says A.I. types would really rather do other things such as chess
06700	or natural languages or mathematical A.I. theory.  Richard will
06800	go back to chess of which he is quite fond and still has many ideas
06900	for further improvements.   The color-hydraulic slide box
07000	doesn't work and isn't being used, but it is considered interesting and
07100	is not available for transcontinental loan just yet.
07200	
07300	I believe that Greenblat is an exemplar AI worker who can be followed.
07400	His method and attitude include:
07500		1. SHUT-UP-AND-DEAL-WITH-THE-CODE ism
07600		2. SUPER-DISPLAY-DIAGONOSTICS - take an incremental
07700			step forward and then see what things look like from
07800			there.
07900		3. INCLUSION-PLAGARISM attitude  -  most AI types seem to have
08000			one good idea (if any) with which they try to conquer all
08100			parts of all problems  -  Greenblat will take any and all
08200			ideas that are around and use them.  This passes over rather
08300			than solves the problem of getting people to Work together.
08400		
08500	A final consideration is what sacrifices have to be made in order to
08600	be a greenblat-programmer, I will relate my subjective thoughts
08700	on this to any would-be's.
08800	
08900	GOSPER can demonstrate  picking up cubes.  He's against 
09000	"human-wave-robot-research", likes Time-variant displays, thinks
09100	Time-Sharing & Robots are related but that it is unnecessarily difficult
09200	to research & develope both together.  He anticipates getting one processor
09300	dedicated to the Arms while the other does time-sharing LISP & editing.
09400	He doesn't think Guzman's program is useful  -  no one can generate input
09500	to Guzman and he can't see how the output would be useful - Minsky
09600	however is working on a paper about Guzman pathology (or something) titled
09700	"See" - Minsky likes Guzman's because it does so well and knows so little,
09800	Gosper thinks Minsky is too partial towards elegant mathematical solutions.
09900	
10000	Gosper believes what we really need to work on is Cerebellum
10100	functions  -  such as physical coordination & visual lobes processing
10200	rather than Cerebrium mathematics and intellect.  That 
10300	our programming instincts are misleading and wrong in that we think in
10400	terms of minimal, clean logical solutions rather than processing thru
10500	redundant data and then forming a conclusion when it is demanded
10600	ready or not. 
10700	
10800	Gosper, admires Nick Horn's energy with respect to cataloging
10900	Robot diseases and real-world distortions.
11000	
11100	Random Gosper Comments:
11200	i) Slowness of the image dissector is not screwing us  -  if we were
11300		really doing vision we would be compute bound anyway.
11400	ii) The image dissector is not likely to be damaged by excessive light,
11500		the so-called 29-craters(non-responsive pinpoints) were
11600		probably there at delivery and were caused by particles of dust.
11700	He is said to have a kludgy line follower and to be doing incremental
11800	work on block stacking.
11900	
12000	DAVID SILVER  is a real live intelligent high school dropout and radio
12100	hacker:	i) he has done a computer controlled mouse that herds balls of 
12200	paper around the floor using vision to see "Blobs" of paper.  ii)  He
12300	is working on a Garbage-Collector which picks up wads of paper, puts
12400	them in a waste basket, dumps the basket out and then starts over. iii) He
12500	is considering motion by pointwise subtraction iv) He interfaced the Color TV to the
12600	PDP-10, The color TV works I saw spacewar and a number of demo displays -
12700	color mixing is negligible, display points don't allign properly.
12800	
12900	WITT DIFFIE  Math - Lab Lisp guru, has made drastic revision to the LISP
13000	compiler (a copy of which I have on a DEC tape) wants to leave MIT for
13100	STANFORD, I told him to call John McM. or Les.
13200	
13300	HOLLOWAY is working on the over head arm system. HOLLOWAY, LEVITT & 
13400	EASTLAKE are in a small, company Systems-Concepts-Inc. which is marketing
13500	multi-terminal-graphics and is trying to move to San Francisco.
13600	
13700	TOM BINFORD is working on a perspective line follower, regions, local
13800	homogeniety (similar points are grouped together) edges - theory.
13900	
14000	FREDKIND - Triple I administrator who tried to reorganize and to 
14100	discipline AI work at MIT and isn't seen around much anymore.
14200	
14300	KRAKAUER  is studying intensity contouring of curve surfaces such 
14400	as fruit  -   with a single light source the intensities are a clue to
14500	depth perception.  I saw recognizible cal-comp contour maps of
14600	a pear  -  this requires the intensity precision of which the image dissector
14700	is capible.
14800	
14900	NICK HORN has a focusing routine that does local focusing for the sake
15000	of depth perception  -  using a fourier transformation (Greenblat says
15100	he will use it)  -  the idea is solidly based on considerible analysis which starts as follows:
15200	a point on the object reflects light which is gathered by the lens and focused
15300	to a point on an in-focus image plane  -  now if the image is out of focus
15400	the light for a single object point form a circle and the unfocused image
15500	is the summation of such circles  -  in order to focus the
15600	image you transform,  attenuate (multiplication),  and then transform.  I
15700	have the paper on this and will try some of it and would appreciate
15800	help ( At the ARPA junior achievement conference I learned on the bus
15900	that at Utah transform-attenuation-transform is used for enhancing x-ray
16000	pictures ).
16100	
16200	DAVID WATTS  demonstrated a pressure sensitive hand - deformations
16300	of a soft coaxial cable caused reflections of a pulse  -  a program
16400	could display pressure and locus.
16500	
16600	RICHARD ORB is a summer worker attempting to eliminate shadows from
16700	Guzman data from characteristics of vertices & intensites of regions
16800	local to a Guzman Anamoly or around inconsistent places in the input.
16900	
17000	ADOLF GUZMAN complained that he couldn't get his drawings inputted  - and
17100	considers his problem to be to get some real input.
17200	
17300	MARTIN - math lab, not very talkative.
17400	
17500	EUGENE CHARNIAK  calculus word problems & story abstracting.
17600	
17700	TOM JONES electric baby strategy - AI stagnation work  - goals,subgoals,
17800	5 and 10 cent psychology, plausible moves, etc.
17900	
18000	CARL HEWITT - PLANNER: A language for manipulating models and proving
18100	theorems in a Robot  - A man and a paper in LISP unbound to reality.
18200	
18300	MINSKY is working on Guzman anamolies & perceptrons.
18400	
18500	PAPERT was observed leaving his office - he is known for being
18600	hard to reach and no one was too sure about what he was doing.
18700	
18800	
18900	
19000	I have a listing and a DEC tape of MIT's Incompatible Time Sharing
19100	as well as afew selected MIT-AI-Memos.
19200	
19300