487
submitted 10 months ago by toaster@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If your robot moves around, then it needs a wireless connection. And it doesn't really get any more reliable than wifi. I'm certainly not going to outsource that to a Verizon cellular connection.

And even for things that can be wired - ethernet is far from reliable. Cables are easily damaged or simply unplugged.

Wifi can work really well, especially with high end networking gear (and not, for example, the wifi access point you get for free from Verizon).

[-] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago

I think you've missed the point.

Anything automated that could be a threat needs to have safeguards. Needing constant wifi to prevent death or injury is not an acceptable safeguard.

Consider consumer/professional drones. If they lose connection they have on board protocols to mitigate hazards. Even then they are still governed by laws to isolate then from people because even those safeguards aren't good enough. Suggesting that a robot could completely rely on wifi is preposterous.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 30 points 10 months ago

I think the point is that that sort of safety critical stuff should be on board, not relying on a wireless connection.

[-] XTornado@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yesh it should be self contained. Although to be fair there shouldn't be a way for a human to be there to begin with.

[-] neclimdul@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

As someone using various wireless standards over over twenty years and in IT dealing with wifi instability on basically a daily basis. No.

Wifi is a series of compromises to be convenient. It's "good enough" for most of those but generally and increasingly in newer standards, the compromise is to drop stability for things speed. You'll see this to be the case in a lot of professional wifi gear that will transfer you to a lower standard if it sees weaker signals to improve stability.

To make that concrete, a problem with wifi in an office is an embarrassing "I'll call back on my phone" but a factory floor that could be millions of dollars of downtime to restart an entire chain of machines. Hardened industrial wiring and connections is well established and wifi is just not at that level. The poorly formed example of the robot was trying to convey their intention to start addressing that level of hardening.

All that said, based on my experience reading ieee articles this is all exaggerated. in reality we're probably just getting more stable video calls at higher bandwidths. Still a win for the help desk techs everywhere and people with a heavy wall making Netflix flaky.

this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
487 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

59436 readers
1533 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS