Posts Tagged ‘AIHardware’
[DotJs2025] Code in the Physical World
The chasm between ethereal algorithms and tangible actuators has long tantalized technologists, yet bridging it demands more than simulation’s safety nets— it craves platforms that tame the tangible’s caprice. Joyce Lin, head of developer relations at Viam, bridged this divide at dotJS 2025, chronicling how open-source orchestration empowers coders to infuse IoT and robotics with JS’s fluidity. A trailblazer in hardware-software symphonies, Joyce demystified the real world’s rebellion against unit tests, spotlighting Viam’s registry as a conduit for browser-bound brains commanding distant drones.
Joyce’s epiphany echoed Rivian’s rueful recall: OTA firmware’s folly, bricking 3% of fleets via certificate snafus—simulation’s simulacrum shattered by deployment’s deluge. The physical’s peculiarities—unpredictable pings, sensor skews, mechanical murmurs—defy CI/CD’s certainties; failures fleck the field, from rover ruts to vacuum voids. Viam’s virtue: a modular mosaic, JS SDKs scripting behaviors atop a cloudless core. Joyce vivified with vignettes: a browser dashboard dispatching drone dances, logic lingering in tabs while peripherals pulse commands via WebSockets. Serial symphonies follow: laptop-launched loops querying quadrature encoders, fusing firmware’s fidelity with JS’s finesse.
This paradigm pivots potency: core cognition—path plotting, peril parsing—resides in reprovable realms, devices demoted to dutiful doers. Viam’s vista: modular motions, from gimbal glides to servo sweeps, orchestrated sans silos. AI’s infusion amplifies: computer vision’s vintage, now vivified by low-cost compute—models marshaled, fleets federated, data’s deluge distilled into adaptive arcs. NASA’s pre-planned probes pale beside this plasticity; vacuums’ vacuums evolve, shelves’ sentinels self-optimize.
Joyce’s jubilee: tech’s tangible thrust—from wearables’ whispers to autonomous autos—blurs bytes and brass. Viam’s vault: docs delving devices, SDKs summoning synths—inviting artisans to animate the ambient.
From Simulation to Sentience
Joyce juxtaposed Rivian’s reckoning with Viam’s resilience: OTA’s overreach underscoring physicality’s pitfalls—cert snares, signal storms. Browser-bound bastions: WebRTC webs weaving commands, logic liberated from latency’s lash.
Orchestrating the Observable
Viam’s vernacular: registries routing routines, JS junctions juggling joints—gimbal gazes, encoder echoes. AI’s ascent: models’ maturity, compute’s cascade—rover reflexes refined, vacuum vigils vivified.