Andy Oram, an editor at O'Reilly Media, recently talked to Geoffrey Gordon of the CMU Center for Automated Learning and Discovery. The details of their conversation about robotics at CMU can be found in Andy's weblog. Topics covered include a comparison of mesh networks to hierarchical trees for multi-robot communications. They also talk about the Sony AIBO, medical applications of robotics, and the DARPA Grand Challenge. Geoff notes at one point that robotics and AI are fields where "big breakthroughs often seem imminent, only to prove much more difficult than researchers expected."