A Gesture Toward Change

Ron Wilson, Intel FPGA
August 10, 2017

Recall for a moment a scene—you’ve probably witnessed something like it at trade shows or on video dozens of times. A robot arm moves purposefully from its rest position. It swoops down on an object—a sphere, say—plucks it up, holds it aloft, replaces it, and then returns to rest. Each motion is fast, smooth, and, well, mechanical.

Now imagine, if you will, another scene. It is 1937, in a darkened theater in London. A young Laurence Olivier, legendary career still ahead of him, reaches out, hesitates, but reluctantly, as if under a regretful spell, takes from another player a skull.

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew, him, Horatio …”

One a motion. The other a gesture. This article is about the difference, and the profound change that difference has triggered in the architecture of motor control.

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