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GRACE Exceeds Expectations!
smashr writes "GRACE, the robot mentioned earlier on slashdot, has succeeded in the AAAI challenge at the conference in Canada. Her creators are saying that GRACE exceeded their expectations. The entire competition went well with only several minor hiccups (GRACE cut in front of a judge in line to register, and then demanded a conference badge several times). The team is looking forward towards refining GRACE for the competition in Mexico. Stories at: CNN.com, Yahoo, and the Edmonton Journal."
Cutting in front of a judge sounds like something I would do, and if the robot imitates me, it must be doing something right, don't you think?
Seriously though. By those criteria, half the human race might fail.
Its an interesting paradox that the nerdiest of computer geeks are programming robots to interact socially... These people are the most qualified and least qualified at the same time!
Has this robot got maps of the location
a priori or does it have to figure out this
stuff itself ?
Point two links to the same AP story in two places (CNN & Yahoo) doesn't really accomplish anything. Or do you think CNN or Yahoo could be slashdotted? At least the Edmonton Journal story was different.
I find it interesting that people on /. seem to think that grad students
are somehow less sociable than the average computer
geek.
Actually, as I look around at my particular institution, I would have to say, that on the whole, of my friends who have achieved a BS in Comp Sci, those who've gone on to graduate school are no more antisocial than the rest.
In fact, a lot of the grad students I know are far more normal than the average undergrad computer geek.
I think people overlook one of the keys to successful academic career: the importance of being able to communicate your work effectively to others. Being good at coding, maths, etc is also necessery, but can almost be secondary. If noone understands your work, it doesn't matter how good it is. So if you're antisocial, you learn to deal with it and work on inter-personal skills. Otherwise you subvert your own work.
--
The CNN article states that the robot bumped into a judge, rather than cut in line. That's a significant difference. Cutting in line indicates a tempramental personality, with some true intelligence perhaps. Bumping into a judge indicates that the programmers in charge of GRACE failed basic obstacle avoidance -- which boils down to the following for loop:
for (int i = 0; i<num_sensors; i++)
if (sensor_distance[i] < 5 inches)
motors = off;
I'm involved in a lot of robotics work, and while I believe that robots should eventually attain very intelligent behavior, I also believe that the first priority in programming a robot is to ensure it does not harm humans. By bumping a judge, GRACE has shown that it is not capable of functioning safely in society. If it bumps a judge, what's to keep it from running a judge over and killing him? Standard robots the size of GRACE are 300 lbs, quite capable of inflicting significant damage.
As a side note, most robots have touch sensors on their side panels that automatically shut off power to the motors when they are triggered. I'm willing to bet that this is what kept GRACE from running over the judge.
Look how far we're coming, and how much quicker we're getting there. Five years from now who knows what this robot will be able to do. How long will it be before robots are serving us? How long before they're as intelligent as we are? How long before they're creating our music, our films, our art? I don't think humans could compete with a machine that knows all the right buttons to push.
And yeah, to feed the paranoid, how long until they surpass us, and realize that we're nothing more than a liability? I've said it before, and I'll say it again: down with technology, we should have stopped at the wheel!
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers