A space ship glides through an interstellar cluster heading for an asteroid belt. Navigating through such dense rocks and planetary fragments will be almost impossible. At the heart of the ship is its navigation system: a dance floor upon which a man, dressed in a dinner suit covered in sensors, waltzes to perfection with a woman, dressed in a beautiful ball gown, also bedecked with sensors. A thousand cameras are also trained upon their almost perfect dance; the images and movements translated, transposed by the computer into the expertise needed to pilot the ship safely through the million pieces of rock.
In a factory, a machine operator is about to set to work on his water-jet cutting machine. He inserts his hand into a black rubber glove which is covered in two hundred and twelve sensing devices. He takes hold of an equally sensor-covered kitchen knife and proceeds to cut a piece of cheese upon which fifteen cameras are trained. His expert movements, gained from over twenty years of experience, are processed by the computer visioning and sensing software and hardware and translated into the almost perfect cut of a large sheet of metal. Better quality performance is achieved than any comparable automated or robotic technology. The operator’s expertise at cutting cheese is transposed into metal cutting competence.
Paul Levy 