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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.
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.