My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robots Project

[Bud]

People who are fascinated with human skulls -I consider them mentally ill.

That is quite possibly one of the most deranged things anyone has said in this entire thread.  And that's saying something!

The skull...

I knew there is going to be more than one ill people in this tread.

[shabaz]

I think possibly wobbly didn't see the context and commented on a biological perspective only, i.e. not seeing the wood for the trees.

I hope most right-thinking people always have best wishes for any family going through difficulty, but the OP is (to put it extremely mildly) unstable it seems, or is still maturing, and it's not possible to have a normal discussion without him interjecting and now blaming such things on sin. If it were up to me, I would wish he was banned.

[artbyrobot]

@shabaz

You say "I hope most right-thinking people always have best wishes for any family going through difficulty" --- You assume that because I acknowledge God sends diseases as a result of sin to families that this means I don't have best wishes for said families.  That's a lie.  So here you bear false witness against me proving yourself to be a wicked person.  No follower of God has anything but best wishes for all men.  I wish all men to obey God and be blessed.  And when I see someone being punished for sinning, it is sad to me. 

Another key issue you and that girl chose to completely ignore is that I clearly stated that in some cases, cancer or disease can be caused by someone poisoning another person as opposed to just a flat out judgement from God.  So I already said sin is not always necessarily the only cause.  I laid out some different potential causes.  But you are not arguing in good faith and neither is that girl who came on here with her filthy mouth.  You just hate God apparently.  The Bible says diseases are sent by God for sin.  I think God is perfect and righteous and so any punishment He sends is for good cause and done with motivation to bring correction and improve people's lives in the long term.  When your dad spanks you, he does it because he wants you to learn to obey.  He loves and cares about you and wants to teach you right from wrong.  Nothing can be further from "failing to have best wishes for any family".  Punishing a family for sinning is something that can be done with best wishes as the motivation.


You say "the OP is (to put it extremely mildly) unstable it seems, or is still maturing, and it's not possible to have a normal discussion without him interjecting and now blaming such things on sin." --- first of all, this is a thread on a robotics project from a technical perspective.  Other forum members brought up cancer in children as proof God does not exist.  I laid out some viable reasons why this type of thing happens based on the Bible and based on testimonies I have heard during my theological studies.  I presented facts.  Then I got attacked unfairly by some lady when I did not send cancer to anybody and don't even know her.  She was completely out of line.  And now you attack me and call me unstable and immature.  More false accusations from you.  God HATES a false witness. 


You say "If it were up to me, I would wish he was banned." --- once more you show how much you hate God and hate people who defend the Bible and God's actions as punishments for sin.  You blame ME for God punishing sins.  I am not God sir.  You want to shoot the messenger and it is pathetic.  Just man up and say yes, I can understand that if there is a God, he may want to punish sins and that is fine by me.  God can do so.  I trust he's smarter than me and has genius strategies behind what he allows to happen or orders to come to pass or whatever.  If someone believes in God and thinks God makes no mistakes, good for them.  They would not be the first.  Clearly Artbyrobot is a stand up guy and trying to address comments coming his way while also trying to stay on topic of robotics and technology despite people bringing off topic stuff up alot.  He is doing his best.  He should not be banned but anyone who is a sinner should be silent and stop being a sinner.  I am so glad Artbyrobot trusts God and is so nice to all of us sinners despite us being God's enemies.  He really does obey the Bible.  What a great asset Artbyrobot is to this forum.  He also even tries to stay on topic despite people derailing it into religion.  Despite being religious and enjoying discussing God's justice, Artbyrobot keeps it short and sweet, defends God well, and steers discussion back to the robotics project. 

[Halcyon]

@kim

You say "As someone who has lost more than one family member to this disease I say this to you, "Artybyrobot",
Fuck you!" ---- well with that filthy mouth you are clearly a sinner.  And God hater.  On your way to hell in fact.  I imagine you come from a wicked family with all this news of them being diseased.  God speaks of disease He sends as punishment throughout the Bible.  The firstborn of child of every Egyptian family was killed on the Passover.  All that rage you just directed at me for explaining the Bible as a pastor is wicked of you.  You in your blindness and pride think you would govern the universe better than God.  And you attack people who obey God and fear Him and keep His commandments rather than humbling yourself and repenting and trusting God's justice system.

Deuteronomy 28:58  If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God— 59He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses. 60He will afflict you again with all the diseases you dreaded in Egypt, and they will cling to you

Whilst you can believe in whatever you like, I'd suggest that most people on this forum aren't religious, nor does the word of some book apply to everyone. Let's keep things civil and not weaponise religion to make some kind of a point.

[artbyrobot]

@halcyon

You say "Whilst you can believe in whatever you like, I'd suggest that most people on this forum aren't religious, nor does the word of some book apply to everyone." --- Let me correct you on this.  I, Halcyon, don't subscribe to any particular religion at this time in my life because I suppress the truth in unrighteousness as a God hater.  However, I acknowledge that if the Bible is God's Word, which I currently deny in my life, then it 100% applies to everyone because if the Bible is legit, it literally addresses everyone constantly and is basically a letter from God to all mankind to read and obey.  So my claim that it doesn't apply to everyone was made in bad faith and I apologize.  It does apply to everyone but I choose to ignore it because I hate God right now and I realize this is wicked of me but currently can't be bothered to repent.

You say " Let's keep things civil and not weaponise religion to make some kind of a point." --- Let me correct you again.  I, Halcyon, acknowledge that Artbyrobot has been keeping things civil despite some God haters claiming God doens't exist and challenging the existence of God with some controversial question relating to cancer in children.  Artbyrobot, I see you gave the correct answer from a Biblical perspective and I respect it.  I also acknowledge that girl was foul mouthed and personally attacked you for zero reason, somehow deluding herself into blaming YOU for her family getting cancer when you did not send cancer to them and merely pointed out that sin can cause God to punish people and according to the Bible, disease is one possible punishment God sends.  I respect that you pointed this out to address the Christopher Hitchens atheism argument against God's existence.  it is accurate according to the Bible and from that worldview, is a definite possibility to consider when you find disease in people - are they being punished by God.  This is a logical conclusion.  I also acknowledge that Artbyrobot did not do anything uncivil and did not even bring up cancer.  So putting any blame on the sensitivity of the topic of cancer has to be placed squarely on the shoulders of Christopher Hitchens first and the man quoting Hitchens in this thread second.  Artbyrobot has the right to address a challenge to his religion and did so very respectfully and matter of factly and did not personally attack anybody other than rebuking people for cussing and lying.  Which is righteous to do of course.  He was very civil in this.  He did NOT weaponize religion and my bringing up such a claim is clearly done in bad faith and I apologize for that.  Artbyrobot, I see you just stand on the Bible and I respect it.  You did prove that it teaches God sends diseases as punishment for disobedience.  So people getting diseases may be getting punished by God for their sins.  Thanks for being so helpful and giving us food for thought and thanks for caring about sinners enough to share scripture with them even though they don't like to hear it.

Oh yeah, and I, Halcyon, am sorry for adding to the increasing number of posts that are not on the topic of robotics which I acknowledge is disrespectful to the OP and to this forum which is supposed to be on projects, designs, and technical stuff.  I acknowledge that Artbyrobot is staying on topic while I and other posters are not doing so.  We will try to get back onto the topic of your project when posting in your thread. 

[Halcyon]

We will try to get back onto the topic

That would be nice. It's a long weekend where I am, and I'd rather not be spending my time moderating some silly back and forth between users. Let's keep things on-topic from here on in.

[wobbly]

Does this robot have a name?  Perhaps you mentioned it before and I missed it.

[artbyrobot]

@wobbly

You ask "Does this robot have a name?  Perhaps you mentioned it before and I missed it." --- yes, its name is Abel.  I initially set out to build a robot named Adam and built many fiberglass bones by hand for Adam.  But one day I decided to just use a PVC medical skeleton as a shortcut to save time.  I did not want to throw away all my hard work on Adam so decided that the PVC medical skeleton based robot would be a entirely new robot project named Abel.  The fiberglass bones I already made for Adam will be finished up by Abel when Abel finishes building Adam for me.  Abel and Adam will most likely make Eve as the next robot in line.  Cain I don't plan to make because he was too wicked to make a robot named after him IMO.

[MK14]

@MK14

You say "Robot, I'm in the bath, please don't use the camera." --- I don't think the robot will betray me by sending images of myself unrobed to strangers.  And I'm hoping hackers won't tap into the camera system man that'd suck.


You say "Robot, "I would, but Windows11, has decided to perform a very minor update, so you will have to wait a few hours, before I can move again, and respond". --- I disable updates so that won't be an issue.  Also I plan to only use windows 7.

Let's say your robot is rapidly walking, within a home, and some completely unexpected event, such as a massive, very big and heavy dog, suddenly decides to run and jump (at the worst possible moment), crashing into the Robot, and sending it badly off-balance.

If the Robot does nothing, it will violently fall to the ground, possibly hurting the dog (who has just made an innocent mistake), other people, very nearby in the same room, damaging useful/valuable objects during the fall, and possibly damaging the Robot as well, during the impact.

Therefore, the Robot, has to handle this sudden and unexpected incident, very rapidly, (the exact time scales are debatable), but literally milliseconds may make the difference, between being able to stay on its (the Robot) feet and avoiding worsening the accident, or it being too late (as regards the laws of Physics), and the big Robot, tumbling down to the ground.

Therefore, some or all of the Robots systems, would need to be proper real-time software (and associated operating systems, as required/designed).

Windows 7, may NOT listen to your application(s), for a period of time (e.g. hundreds of milliseconds, but off-hand, I'm not sure of the exact delays), because it has decided to write to a disk, or access the network, or perform garbage collection, etc.

Also, Windows 7, is getting increasingly dated.  More and more things, no longer support windows 7, drivers for the latest parts may no longer support it, and it is getting less and less secure, when the internet is accessed.

But if the overall system, is properly designed, it may be able to handle stuff like the potential accident, I just described, without relying on the Windows 7 part of the system.

I.e. I can't definitively say, that you CAN'T use Windows 7.  As it would still be possible.
Just harder, and it could exceed the development experience and skills, of whoever ends up developing this, e.g. a team of programmers.

But there are operating systems (or even none at all, as such, just do it as an embedded software development), which would be much better suited, for Robot developments, and wouldn't have these issues.

[nali]

Oh yeah, and I, Halcyon, am sorry for adding to the increasing number of posts that are not on the topic of robotics which I acknowledge is disrespectful to the OP and to this forum which is supposed to be on projects, designs, and technical stuff.  I acknowledge that Artbyrobot is staying on topic while I and other posters are not doing so.  We will try to get back onto the topic of your project when posting in your thread.

This bot seems to have gotten itself a bit confused, writing in 3rd person and now thinks it is Halcyon

[artbyrobot]

@MK14


You say "Windows 7, may NOT listen to your application(s), for a period of time (e.g. hundreds of milliseconds, but off-hand, I'm not sure of the exact delays), because it has decided to write to a disk, or access the network, or perform garbage collection, etc." --- I disagree.  You can set your application's priority status within windows 7 with a couple lines of code so that it takes precedence over everything else.  So as long as you set the priority status high enough, delays would never exceed a sufficiently negligible amount to make the program for all practical extents and purposes a real time operating program.

You say "Also, Windows 7, is getting increasingly dated.  More and more things, no longer support windows 7, drivers for the latest parts may no longer support it" --- it works for the latest hardware last I checked.  At least consumer grade gaming pc level hardware.

You say "and it is getting less and less secure, when the internet is accessed" --- I am not an expert on that but have no concerns there.  I haven't had any issues ever in that area and just hope I stay under the radar on that front forever.  I think hackers attack their enemies or banks or w/e.  I should be fine if I continue to treat everyone with respect.

You say "But if the overall system, is properly designed, it may be able to handle stuff like the potential accident, I just described, without relying on the Windows 7 part of the system." --- No it wouldn't.  The Windows 7 part of the system would be heavily relied on for most of all the situation you described.  It would determine the correct course of action based on its options and morals/values system (which would be based on the Bible) and it would execute accordingly sending out movement commands to the microcontrollers who would then forward that to the motor control circuitry.

You say "I.e. I can't definitively say, that you CAN'T use Windows 7.  As it would still be possible.  Just harder, and it could exceed the development experience and skills, of whoever ends up developing this, e.g. a team of programmers." --- no just myself and the robot's AI itself helping me develop itself.  No other humans helping.  ALTHOUGH I will say that my AI will interact with 3rd party AI for assistance or to ask it questions so that my AI will not be isolated or solely depending on myself for guidance.  And it will read online and books and w/e to learn too.  And watch youtube to learn.  But the coding itself will just be the two of us.  Although its research is in a way coding it esoterically speaking.  In the same way watching kids cartoons codes your kids in a way.

You say "But there are operating systems (or even none at all, as such, just do it as an embedded software development), which would be much better suited, for Robot developments, and wouldn't have these issues." --- they might not have the same issues but would bring their own issues.  Many more issues in fact than just staying with windows 7 where I'm comfy already as a coder.



@nali

You say "This bot seems to have gotten itself a bit confused, writing in 3rd person and now thinks it is Halcyon" --- I disagree.  First, the person writing all posts under the user account Artbyrobot is a human as has already been thoroughly discussed in this thread repeatedly.  Second, there is no confusion involved.  I am merely typing out the appropriate response for forum users to have posted were they to have posted a well written and very logical, kind, and honest response in my view.  To the degree to which they responded differently than my proposed response for them, they would have responded unsatisfactorily in my view.  By doing this, I'm giving food for thought for posters as to a better suggested response for them to use in the future. 

I guess I came up with this idea from working with chat gpt alot.  I say things like chat gpt, I want to tell my wife she's fat without hurting her feelings.  How can I phrase this in a tactful way?  And it would give me a super sensitive and loving way to tell her my concerns that would not be offensive.  I'm kind of giving that same guidance to posters here in my thread.  I think it is a cool way to help people see how they can improve their interpersonal communications in the future.  It is good food for thought.  it is like "this is what I would do if I were you".

[MK14]

@MK14


You say "Windows 7, may NOT listen to your application(s), for a period of time (e.g. hundreds of milliseconds, but off-hand, I'm not sure of the exact delays), because it has decided to write to a disk, or access the network, or perform garbage collection, etc." --- I disagree.  You can set your application's priority status within windows 7 with a couple lines of code so that it takes precedence over everything else.  So as long as you set the priority status high enough, delays would never exceed a sufficiently negligible amount to make the program for all practical extents and purposes a real time operating program.

You say "Also, Windows 7, is getting increasingly dated.  More and more things, no longer support windows 7, drivers for the latest parts may no longer support it" --- it works for the latest hardware last I checked.  At least consumer grade gaming pc level hardware.

You say "and it is getting less and less secure, when the internet is accessed" --- I am not an expert on that but have no concerns there.  I haven't had any issues ever in that area and just hope I stay under the radar on that front forever.  I think hackers attack their enemies or banks or w/e.  I should be fine if I continue to treat everyone with respect.

You say "But if the overall system, is properly designed, it may be able to handle stuff like the potential accident, I just described, without relying on the Windows 7 part of the system." --- No it wouldn't.  The Windows 7 part of the system would be heavily relied on for most of all the situation you described.  It would determine the correct course of action based on its options and morals/values system (which would be based on the Bible) and it would execute accordingly sending out movement commands to the microcontrollers who would then forward that to the motor control circuitry.

You say "I.e. I can't definitively say, that you CAN'T use Windows 7.  As it would still be possible.  Just harder, and it could exceed the development experience and skills, of whoever ends up developing this, e.g. a team of programmers." --- no just myself and the robot's AI itself helping me develop itself.  No other humans helping.  ALTHOUGH I will say that my AI will interact with 3rd party AI for assistance or to ask it questions so that my AI will not be isolated or solely depending on myself for guidance.  And it will read online and books and w/e to learn too.  And watch youtube to learn.  But the coding itself will just be the two of us.  Although its research is in a way coding it esoterically speaking.  In the same way watching kids cartoons codes your kids in a way.

You say "But there are operating systems (or even none at all, as such, just do it as an embedded software development), which would be much better suited, for Robot developments, and wouldn't have these issues." --- they might not have the same issues but would bring their own issues.  Many more issues in fact than just staying with windows 7 where I'm comfy already as a coder.

Thanks.
I'm reasonably happy with your responses, to my questions/post.

I still think you would be better off, using proper real-time embedded operating system(s).

[artbyrobot]

@MK14

You say "I still think you would be better off, using proper real-time embedded operating system(s)." --- there could be some advantages there perhaps, but they would not outweigh the disadvantages IMO.

[MK14]

Second, there is no confusion involved.  I am merely typing out the appropriate response for forum users to have posted were they to have posted a well written and very logical, kind, and honest response in my view.  To the degree to which they responded differently than my proposed response for them, they would have responded unsatisfactorily in my view.  By doing this, I'm giving food for thought for posters as to a better suggested response for them to use in the future.

No, I'm sorry, but you should NOT be doing that.

What the original poster said, is what they said.  You can't rewrite it to your liking.

Accuracy and traceability, can be very important in engineering.

If you rewrite what they said, any misunderstandings that you may have had, will tend to be put into your 'quote' of what they said.

If someone said, use a "2N3904" transistor, you can't (or shouldn't) rewrite that to say they said, "Use a MOSFET".  Because it is NOT what they said, and could be technically, flawed and wrong on many levels.

[wobbly]

Windows isn't an RTOS.  It cannot be relied upon to behave deterministically in the time domain as MK16 mentioned.

Simply setting the process priority to the maximum will not make it suddenly deterministic.  Doing that can have many side effects that adversely affect performance.

Don't forget also that process priority is only a "suggestion" to the Windows kernel.  The kernel is free to ignore the developer's chosen priority at any time if it keeps the OS stable.

[MK14]

@MK14

You say "I still think you would be better off, using proper real-time embedded operating system(s)." --- there could be some advantages there perhaps, but they would not outweigh the disadvantages IMO.

It is true, that the tools and software, which you have become very familiar with, over the years.  Seem to be the best and most efficient ones, to use for stuff.

But, for real-time embedded systems, other operating system choices, are usually better.  Otherwise it can end up harming (worsening) the item, in various ways.

I.e. It is best to use a proper, designed for real-time use, operating system.

But, choosing the best one, can be a complicated process, as there are many pros and cons.

As the Robot gets more and more complicated, the strain and loading on the operating system(s), can increase dramatically.  Proper real-time embedded operating systems, would have the capabilities and facilities, to cope with these difficulties, but Windows 7 may well be lacking, in various ways.

It is a complicated subject area, perhaps a book(s) on such things would help you?, but I suppose internet articles and YouTube videos, would help as well.

[artbyrobot]

@MK14

You say "No, I'm sorry, but you should NOT be doing that." --- I disagree.  It sets an example for them of the highest quality to set the bar high and bring self reflection. 

You say "What the original poster said, is what they said.  You can't rewrite it to your liking." --- I disagree.  Rewriting what they said in a better way sets a example.  We do this to bring correction to our children often.  For example, lets say I see my kid hit my other kid and say give me back my toy!  My wife will say "no, don't hit.  And don't use that tone.  Instead, say "can I please have back my toy, I was using that and would be happy to share it with you later when I'm done with it".  This doesn't replace their original response.  It suggests a better one.  And comparing the original response with the suggested one can show the glaring issues with the original and this is educational and convicting if the original was sinful.

You say "If you rewrite what they said, any misunderstandings that you may have had, will tend to be put into your 'quote' of what they said." --- it isn't being represented as a quote.  It is being framed as a suggestion for a better response, not framed as a quote.  In other words, it seems you are inferring that I'm deliberately misquoting people to cause confusion.  That is completely false.  I'm explicitly bringing a suggested improvement on how they aught to have spoken IMO.

You say "you can't (or shouldn't) rewrite that to say they said..." --- I did not rewrite what anybody wrote to say they said something else.  I am not misrepresenting what they said, I am suggesting what they AUGHT to have said.  HUGE difference.  I acknowledge what they did say, word for word quoting what they said with no changes, and then I write a suggested better version and I make it clear it is my suggested improvement and not what they said in actuality.

You say "As the Robot gets more and more complicated, the strain and loading on the operating system(s), can increase dramatically" --- I agree, however, tackling this strain effectively within windows 7 can be done by using FPGA as a intermediary for streaming video processing and simplification before it hits your windows pc, or offloading certain processing tasks to a separate machine that works as a partner, or making your code more efficient, or running multiple threads as needed so that different processor cores handle different tasks and the load is more spread out, or using the videocard to offload heavy processing using openCL.  With enough tactics like this, implemented as needed, one can play nice with windows so that windows doesn't feel the need to interrupt critical processes that are time sensitive.  Also, simply upgrading your processor and videocard and ram and SSD as new tech comes out can be a way to compensate for the growing complicated coding.  Better hardware better accommodates increasingly resource intensive software.





@wobbly

You say "Windows isn't an RTOS.  It cannot be relied upon to behave deterministically in the time domain as MK16 mentioned." --- It can be relied on plenty.  In the event the operating system was so interrupted by your resource hungry application set to max priority status that it HAD to come up for air and pause your program, this would first indicate your program is not taking sufficient breaks in between resource hogging runs and so is not well programmed.  As long as your program is playing nice and taking breaks to let the operating system breath, then the operating system should not EVER feel the need to interrupt your program in the times your program takes the wheel and insists on zero interruptions.  Further, these zero interruption total takeovers should be relatively quickly over with and the baton passed back to the operating system as your program takes a short respite.  That respite can be defined and kept very short as well.  So with even a tiny amount of care, windows can be 100% relied upon for real time applications like this.  Only noobs would struggle.

[wobbly]

...there could be some advantages there perhaps, but they would not outweigh the disadvantages IMO.

Under windows (and vanilla Linux to be fair) user-land applications are so far removed from the actual hardware that it would be a constant uphill struggle to gain low-latency access to bare-metal peripherals.  Also, Windows has very limited support for external interrupts - and what support it does have typically requires special hardware (PCIe cards etc) and drivers.  And still it would be impossible to service the interrupts in a deterministic manner.  Making an ambulatory humanoid robot would require extremely complex PID algorithms (or similar) that would take up a lot of CPU cycles.  It would be a nightmare.

Building a biblical robot is such a niche application that I think it's unlikely that there is any particular real-time operating system (RTOS) that would be ideal.

You'd be better off writing the firmware from scratch - this way you can guarantee time-deterministic performance from the outset.

[artbyrobot]

@wobbly

I don't like interrupts.  My main loop on windows 7 would query the microcontrollers for updates to what is going on and query the video cameras for what is going on visually on its own time.  And this would be done on various different threads as the program won't be in a single thread.

[wobbly]

It can be relied on plenty.

No, it really cannot I'm afraid - not at the timescales and processing rates that your robot will need to maintain all the time.

I'll give an example.  Last year I built an inverted pendulum balancing "robot" (if I can call it that).  That's a system with only 2 degrees of freedom (not dozens like a humanoid).  It required highly accurate and consistent interrupt handling right down at the level of microseconds.  Windows isn't able to do that even in the region of 10 milliseconds reliably 100% of the time.  It's not designed for that.

Only noobs would struggle.

I'm glad you're ready for this eventuality.

[wobbly]

I don't like interrupts.  My main loop on windows 7 would query the microcontrollers for updates to what is going on and query the video cameras for what is going on visually on its own time.  And this would be done on various different threads as the program won't be in a single thread.

Interrupts exist so you don't have to poll things - that's the whole point of them.

You're just making this so much harder than it needs to be.  Why throw obstacles in your own path?

[artbyrobot]

@wobbly

I don't believe it needs very frequent information about the body.  consider driving a car.  You can look away from the road to look at a passenger or at your phone sometimes and as long as you keep glancing back at the road on a swivel, you are good.  Same with walking.  You can briefly look away from where you are going to look at a pretty girl walking by without crashing or falling.  In the event you detect you ARE crashing - like the big dog jumping onto you, yes, as soon as that is realized, you need some intense processing time to make a ton of decisions very fast and execute quickly on a plan.  But along with that plan is a series of predictions and a full animation of the entire planned falling sequence.  windows is not needed after that as the whole falling sequence is sent out to be carried out so the windows system can have a break as the sequence is carried out and broken down by the microcontrollers.  So windows isn't being pulled or interrupted or relied upon during that timeframe anymore except maybe say 2-3 times to just make sure everything is going to plan still.  I am convinced windows would allow this burst concentrated processing as long as you then run a Sleep(1) command to let windows do its clock updates and whatever background processes it needs to do while your main loop on windows is trusting its minions to do what they were told when they were last in contact.  So there is low level workers in my plans that take pressure off the main loop on windows to be as consistently involved.  Sort of like muscle memory does a good amount of the work passively without your active mind needing to think about your step taking as you walk.  But when falling down, your active mind needs to make a plan and get involved.

You say "Interrupts exist so you don't have to poll things" --- they are bad.  They should NEVER have been invented.  They interrupt the flow of your loop.  You loop should not ever be interrupted.  It is designed to run uninterrupted.  An interrupt at the wrong time can introduce unplanned for errors that only appear if that interrupt happened at just the right time to interrupt at just the wrong time leaving some process or variable untended and in a state unplanned for and this can cause intermittent bugs that cannot be reproduced and may even be mystery bugs because they only occur if the interrupt happened at a certain point in time.  I would suggest you stop using interrupts if you want to be a better coder.  Polling is NOT burdensome or something to be avoided.  Not sure where you got that idea.

[wobbly]

@wobbly

You say "Interrupts exist so you don't have to poll things" --- they are bad.  They should NEVER have been invented.  They interrupt the flow of your loop.  You loop should not ever be interrupted.  It is designed to run uninterrupted.  An interrupt at the wrong time can introduce unplanned for errors that only appear if that interrupt happened at just the right time to interrupt at just the wrong time leaving some process or variable untended and in a state unplanned for and this can cause intermittent bugs that cannot be reproduced and may even be mystery bugs because they only occur if the interrupt happened at a certain point in time.  I would suggest you stop using interrupts if you want to be a better coder.  Polling is NOT burdensome or something to be avoided.  Not sure where you got that idea.

I think most people around here would completely disagree with all of that.  Please correct me, people, if I'm wrong.

The main loop of an embedded system that uses Interrupts (sometimes many different types) needs to be written in such a way that Interrupts are not disruptive.  This is a well understood practice and widely adopted.  Once achieved, this allows very rapid response to external (or internal) stimulus.  It also means that polling is not needed - this saves valuable time in the main loop because polling is waiting for something to happen.  Repeatedly asking is it ready... no...is it ready... no...is it ready... yes... is wasteful of time and CPU resources.

Polling absolutely is burdensome, and should be avoided in time-critical systems such as the one you are contemplating.

[artbyrobot]

@wobbly

You say "polling is waiting for something to happen.  Repeatedly asking is it ready... no...is it ready" --- actually, you'd say is it ready and if the answer is no, you proceed to move on to other tasks in your main loop and only come back to poll again after doing other stuff while you wait.  You are referring to blocking and I'm referring to non-blocking.  I am against blocking.  If anything were blocking, I'd open a dedicated thread for that and let the main while loop be on a new thread or process.

[wobbly]

Furthermore there are some things that cannot easily be polled.  Take a relative position rotary encoder for instance.
It is common for such devices to output a pair of quadrature signals (square waves).  You CAN poll this kind of device, but you'd have to be perfectly sure that you are able to detect all the edges that occur on those square waves.

In normal operation only one of the two square waves changes at a time.  If your main loop misses an edge on one of them then the next time you poll the encoder, it will look like BOTH square waves have changed at the same time - this means you don't know which direction the shaft turned!

With interrupts set up to handle both square waves, you'll never miss an edge and you haven't wasted any time polling.

Fair point about "blocking" though, but even doing a single polling operation is a blocking operation, even if you do other things in between.  Doing other things in between simply reduces your sampling resolution and that has its own problems.