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| Sunday, 4 December 2005 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Advanced types of robots Continued from November 13
The personal computer revolution has been marked by extraordinary adaptability. Standardised hardware and programming languages let computer engineers and amateur programmers mould computers to their own particular purposes. Most robots todate have been more like kitchen appliances. Roboticists build them from the ground up for a fairly specific purpose. They don't adapt well to radically new applications. This situation may be changing. A company is pioneering the world of adaptable robotics hardware and software. The company hopes to make a name for itself with easy-to-use "robot developer kits". The kits come with an open software platform tailored to a range of common robotic functions. For example, roboticists can easily give their creations the ability to follow a target, listen to voice commands and manoeuvre (move) around obstacles. None of these capabilities are unique from a technology point of view, but it's unusual that you would find them in one simple package. The kits also come with common robotics hardware that connects easily with the software. The standard kit comes with infrared sensors, motors, a microphone and a video camera. Roboticists put all these pieces together with a powered erector set - a collection of aluminum body pieces and strong wheels. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most exciting fields in robotics. It's certainly the most controversial (disputed): everybody agrees that a robot can work in an assembly line, but there's no agreement on whether a robot can ever be intelligent. Like the term "robot" itself, artificial intelligence is hard to define. Ultimate AI would be a recreation of the human thought process - a man-made machine with our intellectual abilities. This would include the ability to learn just about anything, the ability to reason, the ability to use language and the ability to formulate original ideas. Roboticists are nowhere near achieving this level of artificial intelligence, but they have made a lot of progress with more limited AI. Today's AI machines can reproduce some specific elements of intellectual ability. Computers can already solve problems in limited areas. The basic idea of AI problem-solving is very simple, though putting it into action is complicated. First, the AI robot or computer gathers facts about a situation through sensors or human input. The computer compares this information to stored data and decides what the information signifies. The computer runs through various possible actions and predicts which action will be most successful based on the collected information. Of course, the computer can only solve problems it's programmed to solve - it doesn't have the ability to analyse general issues. Chess computers are one example of this sort of machine. Some modern robots also have the ability to learn in a limited capacity. Learning robots recognise if a certain action (moving its legs in a certain way, for instance) achieved a desired result (navigating an obstacle). The robot stores this information and attempts the successful action the next time it encounters the same situation. Again, modern computers can only do this in very limited situations. They can't absorb any sort of information, like a human can. Some robots can learn by imitating human actions. In Japan, roboticists have taught a robot to dance by demonstrating the moves themselves. Some robots can interact socially. Kismet, a robot at M.I.T's Artificial Intelligence Lab, recognises human body language and voice changes and responds appropriately. Kismet's creators are interested in how humans and babies interact, based only on the tone of speech and visual cue. This low-level interaction could be the foundation of a human-like learning system. Kismet and other humanoid robots at the M.I.T. AI Lab operate using an unconventional control structure. Instead of directing every action using a central computer, the robots control lower-level actions with lower-level computers. The program's director, Rodney Brooks, believes this is a more accurate model of human intelligence. We do most things automatically; we don't decide to do them at the highest level of consciousness. The real challenge of AI is to understand how natural intelligence works. Developing AI isn't like building an artificial heart - scientists don't have a simple, concrete model to work from. We know that the brain contains billions and billions of neurons, and that we think and learn by establishing electrical connections between different neurons. But we don't know exactly how all of these connections add up to higher reasoning, or even low-level operations. The complex circuitry is difficult to understand.Because of this, AI research is largely theoretical. Scientists form theories on how and why we learn and think, and they experiment with their ideas using robots. Brooks and his team focus on humanoid robots because they feel that being able to experience the world like a human is essential to developing human-like intelligence. It also makes it easier for people to interact with the robots, which potentially makes it easier for the robot to learn. Just as physical robotic design is a handy tool for understanding animal and human anatomy, AI research is useful for understanding how natural intelligence works. For some roboticists, this insight is the ultimate goal of designing robots. Others envision a world where we live side by side with intelligent machines and use a variety of lesser robots for manual labour, health care and communication.A number of robotics experts predict that robotic evolution will ultimately turn us into cyborgs - humans integrated (combined with) machines. They believe that, people in the future could load their minds into a sturdy robot and live for thousands of years! In any case, robots will certainly play a larger role in our daily lives in the future. In the coming decades, robots will gradually move out of the industrial and scientific worlds and into daily life, in the same way that computers spread to the home in the 1980s. |
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| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
More advanced competitive robots are controlled by computer. Soccer
robots, for example, play miniaturised soccer with no human input at all.
A standard soccer 'bot' team includes several individual robots that
communicate with a central computer. The computer "sees" the entire soccer
field with a video camera and picks out its own team members, the
opponent's members, the ball and the goal based on their colour. The
computer processes this information at every second and decides how to
direct its own team. 
