This is actually very interesting idea you had. I watched the demo and played with it and I am looking for a link to repo - I would like to know how did you implement the system achieving the outcome.

This is cool! I think it would be interesting to expand the language of the world. Right now the interaction with the bell or door is limited (basically binary). Even with binary it would be cool to say ring the bell three times or play shave and a haircut and then a mechanical device that could generate that frequency would be created (for ex a simplistic one would be to skip every other ring for ringing the bell). I guess that would require the world&#x2F;the objects to account for interactions over some recording period.

Disney&#x27;s research lab did something along these lines some years ago for making a point follow a path. You draw a path, and it generates the linkages required to match that path as closely as possible. They&#x27;ve had a lot of follow-up work since, but I remember this video for it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;DfznnKUwywQ?si=F-5NZxKu4hP_mand" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;DfznnKUwywQ?si=F-5NZxKu4hP_mand</a>

It seems people think alike. Something that inspired me in the past also had a similar implementation.[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;publication&#x2F;motion-guided-mechanical-toy-modeling&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;publication&#x2F;motion-...</a>

Hey all —Sharing a thought experiment I put together. The premise: what might declarative programming feel like for the physical world?We’re already familiar with this paradigm in software land (eg SQL etc where we declare what we want and the execution engine figures out how).I didn’t have access to an actuator so I mocked up the concept in software. The way it works is you demonstrate the effect and the system figures out how to achieve it. So say you want to ring a bell and you have a crank. The system will find a way to connect the two. If you add obstacles it figures out how to work around them (runs a constraint solver runs behind the scenes).I think what’s interesting about this is being able to think about the problem at a higher level of abstraction, with the system figuring out a way to achieve the intended effect.Anyways, curious to read reactions, feedback, and interesting ideas on how to extend this!

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Show HN: Impossible Machines: declaratively program the physical world

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