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Robotics: the next revolution.

11:46 / 19.02.02

Gather me here links on cybernetic life, oh Laboratory readers!

Inspired by this Boston Globe review of MIT Robotics whiz Rodney Brooks' new book:

quote:Brooks, the director of MIT's prestigious Artificial Intelligence Lab, says we're already seeing the early stages in the evolution of three types of robot species.

One variety is super-sophisticated bots that operate on their own, performing dangerous tasks like repairing highways and mundane ones like cleaning up after us. A second kind would be remotely ''possessed'' by a human, allowing a furnace repairman in Framingham to fix a balky valve in a Finland basement via robot, just as today programmers in India develop software for Silicon Valley companies. Finally, there will be hybrid-bot humans with robotic appendages and implanted microchips.

At first, prostheses and processors will help restore mobility and treat neurological disorders, but it won't be long before duffers are shelling out for systems that lengthen their golf drive, and politicians are getting chips installed that grant them perfect name-and-face recall.

Brooks' book, out this month, suggests that in the not-too-distant future, researchers will create robots that think, feel, repair themselves, and reproduce. Some of these next-generation machines could rival or surpass human intellect. Brooks refers to this possibility as the third assault on humans' special place in the universe, after those put forth by Galileo (Earth isn't the center of the action) and Darwin (we're not so different from animals after all).

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:08 / 19.02.02

Like fusion power, thinking machines are only five years away...and may remain so for decades...

However, interesting stuff - have some links if I can find them...

13:36 / 19.02.02

quote:A second kind would be remotely ''possessed'' by a human, allowing a furnace repairman in Framingham to fix a balky valve in a Finland basement via robot, just as today programmers in India develop software for Silicon Valley companies. Finally, there will be hybrid-bot humans with robotic appendages and implanted microchips.

these, to me, aren't robots, unless they're capable of autonomous action

otherwise a car or someone with braces would be a robot. A car that drives itself is a robot, but that's different.

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

06:57 / 21.02.02

quote:A second kind would be remotely ''possessed'' by a human,

I've got one of these. It is about half a foot long, has four wheels, a plastic outer shell in the shape of an audi and a big aerial poking out the top. I 'remotely possess' it with a little handset which has two little levers on top, and another aerial.

Artificial Emotional Creature project

Rodney Brooks seems to have forgotten about pets, along the lines of Aibo and tamagotchis. I reckon these will take off first.

[ 21-02-2002: Message edited by: K=}[Karika] ]

[ 21-02-2002: Message edited by: K=}[Karika] ]

Lazlo Woodbine [some call me Laz]

16:34 / 21.02.02

It may be a childs toy, but the SONY AIBO is possibly one of the freakieist things i have ever seen.
I have been working on a shoot with one for the last couple of days and they fit right in here.
When they are taken out of their box, they can do nothing, you have to teach them how to walk, they will LEARN which voice command means what, it knows when it is being scolded and what for, it knows when its being praised.
It has the abillity to display 7 emotions:
-Joy
-Sadness
-Anger
-Fear
-Affection
-Distaste
Can't remember the 7th.
The more commands you give it the more it knows, the more attention it receives the faster it grows.
How you treat it will determine its personallity, also no two AIBO personallities have been the same.
It can also be spontainious, if you ignore it, it will wonder off and do something untill you give it attention.
THIS IS A TOY !
SONY call it an autonomous entertainment robot.
I call it life.
Imagine if this were combined with the chess playing computer 'Deep blue' , you'd have a mobile problem solving emotional being, surely?

18:51 / 21.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Buttered scones...:
Can't remember the 7th.

Boredom?

Glad I'm not the only one to look at Aibo and gasp about it being artifical life, marketed as a toy.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:55 / 22.02.02

That begs an interesting question- how do you define life? Personally, I wouldn't call the little muttbot "life," because it doesn't fulfil certain of my criteria. More like a life analogue, a model. (Then of course you have to start asking: How good does the model have to be before it becomes equivalent to the original?)