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There’s of course construction equipment end effectors (excavators, drills, bulldozers) but they’re not really the delicate sensor-actuators our mouths are. No tongue for one. Closest tool is a stand mixer/food processor
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The hard part would be lips/cheeks/tongue… workholding/manipulation/sensing elements in/around a mini machine shop
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If you see animals, their mouth is probably their most sophisticated end effector. Food processing is only one of the functions. Even opposable thumb hands aren’t strictly superior. No chemical sensing. No efficient dough-balling etc.
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This is an interesting example of a low-dimensional mouth. Two teeth-like machining ops (axial stripping and transverse cutting) and one tongue-like transport op (axial movement)
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I went down the rabbit hole reading about how harvester heads work and now I'm glad they're not controlled by AI.
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I need to make a definition for mouthiness of an end effector. Scale of 0-100. An ordinary 2-3 finger gripper would be like a 5. The tree logger and vocalizer would each be about a 15.
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Replying to @jaschawilcox
What makes the mouth interesting is the efficient convergence of functions around a basic mass intake. Machine shop, chemical pre-processing, mining equipment, weapon, mass spectrograph, threat detector (bitter=poison), vacuum cleaner, blower, speaker/resonator, mass transport...
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The video shared by Lex evokes the opposite reaction in me. It’s too simple and functionally decomposable for AI to add much. To really unleash AI havoc you need a high-dimensional generalized converged mouth. I’d like to design one and AI-ify it. Working name: Smartmouth
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