Terrence McKenna once activated, according to a story he told, on one of his trips, the ancient visual ability to recognize the path of least resistance when walking over uneven terrain, the lazy man's way.

I walk through the park and over 5 or 6 creeks, every few weeks, with an older relative who has trouble crossing the stepping stones across the creeks. So I have had to slow down and walk just a few steps in front of him and try to force myself to limit my path recognition capability to what I think he could reasonably do.

Having to switch like this in my head makes me think that that would be a good software to have, one that could take a first person video and find the best stepping stone path across a creek within the limits of what a person could do. It would have to involve all sorts of cool learning and prediction stuff and 3D visual stuff.

Just the topigraphic piece and finding the ballence between the length of the path one would have to take over a terrain and the energy that would have to be expended going up and down inclines and declines would be great too.
-- JesusHChrist, Nov 22 2015

This sounds a bit like one of those DARPA challenges: build a robot that can cross a stream without falling into the water.
-- Wrongfellow, Nov 22 2015


And here I thought the Idea was about stepping on particular flagstones leading to a house door, to unlock it. In the "Computer" category, a smart house could be set up with small transmitters on flagstones, such that a particular set of them used, in a particular order, was a useful combination.
-- Vernon, Nov 22 2015



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