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Learning Robots
carnun writes "The NewScientist is reporting on a new snakelike robot that uses genetic algorithms to change its motion pattern so that it can still function after sustaining damage." Roland Piquepaille sends in a report about another "learning" robot, named Adam, which is designed to seek out and feed from "flowers".
I've tried and tried, but I still can't teach my Aibo.
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Again, I think it looks like it is time for some robot insurance!
"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of." - Burt Bacharach
fp!!!
I wonder if they could extend this to create a worm type robot that if it got cut in two it could still carry on. Say a brain in each segment
Rus
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Damn Damn Damn, try as i might i cant find anytihng funny to write for this. I think the snake idea is inspired (imagine the fun aspects of a robo-whacking day hehehe)
:)
Imagine and earthquake scenario or anything along those lines (911) a van turns up and releases several hundred robotic snakes all able to sense heat, movement etcetc..
Bless the Brits and their fabulous snakes
see got a funny line in the end
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
That's how I taught my mail-order wife.
Maybe I should have gotten one programmed in english.
Given that we will increasingly use robots to do the work that's too dangerous for humans to do, self-healing robots that can get the job done, damage or no, sound like a nice step forward.
First of all its 'ahh look at the cute robot playing in the garden and learning how to survive on flowers'. Then its 'AHHHH please Mr. T1000 let me survive, please dont point that pulse rifle at me'.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'm not surprised it needs to be resilient! What are the relative odds of the snake damaging itself on landing vs. someone managing to hit it with an AK-47?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I for one welcome...
Has anyone else noticed the large increase in the number of robot related stories here lately? Beats SCO anyway.... Waitaminnute! Robots beating SCO! Perfect!
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
I for one welcome our new snake-like robot overlords. :)
There's just something a little evil sounding about dropping snakes from the sky to use on your enemies. Especially in conjunction with another article with Adam and Eve references.
Hey is that a new snakelike robot that uses genetic algorithms to change its motion pattern so that it can still function after sustaining damage in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
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Obligatory Simpsons SONG:
Oh Whacking Day
Oh Whacking Day
Our hallowed snake skull-cracking day.
A man by the name of Mark Tilden has been building 'unstoppable' robots for years out of regular components. He got his start building cheap, autonomous anti-land mine robots for the military that could have one leg blown off and still crawl around to find another.
He also built $5 robots that crawled through mazes faster than anything MIT ever put together, pissing off the school's robotics department.
Google for BEAM Robotics, and check out this interview:
http://www.exhibitresearch.com/tilden/
If you find that interesting it's worth reading about a robot called WISOR that was built by a company called Honeybee Robotics. WISOR is uses for inspection and repair of high temperature and pressure steam pipes under the city of New York. It moves through the pipes like a very large inch worm.
There's even a movie (a really odd movie in fact) about it.
John.
How long till they turn it into a sex toy?????
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
"The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster."
Not anymore buddy!
It's all good.
Learning robots lead to robot overlords. Just last week, I caught my Roomba changing my long distance service. And my Aibo takes my car for weekends; never tells me where he's going, never pays for gas.
the 'genes' part is new (and very cool) but the 'snakebot' as a concept has been around for a while. NASA announced something like it in OCT-00 nasa and this guys tried to put it in layman terms: here
So all it needs is for one worm robot to become sentient, get cut in half, for one of those to knock something heavy onto the other so it gets cut in half, and repeat until we're facing an army of sentient robot worms intent on crushing humanity. I'm scared.
The serpentine spy...can be dropped out of helicopters to carry out reconnaissance missions No wonder they made it to work when its damaged if they're throwing them out of planes!
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
I have a self learning robot which is attracted to females. It uses genetic algorithms to change it's shape and texture so that it can function effectively when it meets female "flowers".
"After a number of generations the amount of improvement finally tends to taper off, says Mahdavi, indicating that the GA has reached a performance plateau" and "Once the robot was mobile, the team disabled some of its segments to see if it could adapt to injury. Initially it was immobilised, says Bentley, but as the GA continued to try to improve the locomotion, it gradually worked out how to move again..."
My god! It is the beginning of the Borg! "You will adapt to service us." or something. How long before the snake's genetic algorithm determines that the fastest way to get from point A to point B is by making a human in a porche drive it there.
Damn, that's a fascinating article. Unfortunately, it doesn't include schematics. :)
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Come on now, scientists, who really cares if a robot can sustain damage...why not create a robot that can "learn" to traverse from the TV room over to the kitchen and acquire some beers for its master.
Now THAT would be freakin' cool.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
...SCO has found a new mascot, which is a robotic snake-thingy that will search and destroy all opponents.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
The article doesnt say, but in abscense of photos I'd guess this is just more headwork.
Good thing you didnt report on an unimportant article on New Scientist, you know, like this way to stop cancer.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Humans will go to great lengths to avoid getting injured (well, most sane ones). However, robots will just do what they are told. While they may be told to avoid any hazards, they just don't have that instinct that says I *really* don't want to get my limb chopped off today.
So to compensate, all robots in hazardous or isolated situations should have this self-healing built in, as well as redundant limbs. A robot could be built with 2 legs, but why not make it 4 or 6 and have a couple to spare. The same goes for sensors. Only two are needed for stereoscopic vision, but 4 or 6 would be better.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
This would be much cooler if it had tentacles and lasers of some kind. They don't have to really do anything, but imagine the psychological impact of hundreds of electrosnakes with wriggling tentacles with lasers beaming out of them! Fantastic!
WTF are you on about you twat?
Freakin' eh! I want one so I can win BattleBots. A robot that can keep killing after it's been damaged - ain't technology great?!
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"Once the robot was mobile, the team disabled some of its segments to see if it could adapt to injury. Initially it was immobilised, says Bentley, but as the GA continued to try to improve the locomotion, it gradually worked out how to move again, albeit more awkwardly and with an ungainly, dragging gait - but it was still good enough to get the robot to its destination."
If the GA is running onboard the robot, then how does it know whether it's successfully moving (let alone in the right direction)? Is there a sensor that's providing information on distance to a target?Adam is nowhere near a revolutionary robot. It was programmed to recharge itself. It 'learned' two facts: red walls don't recharge, green flowers do recharge. Wow. What is that, 3 lines of code within one IF loop? It moves around randomly and when it touches a wall its energy goes down. When it happens to touch a flower its energy goes up. Now that it knows that its learning is complete. It can't learn anything more. To me, a truly learning robot can learn anything if left alone long enough. Like how to speak, how to pick up a cheque at a restaurant, what the difference between red and blue is, how to get to the store and back. And it would have to learn it all from scratch like a baby would. Adam is way too specialized. He's useless. You might argue that baby steps like this will pay off in the long run but they've been building robots like this since the 1980s. It's If that's a learning robot so is my Roomba.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
...walking, talking proof that fluoride kills brain cells...
++
Hard to say. But it's interesting that you wrote a post making fun of them before they got the chance. It seems as though there is some kind of conspiracy (or at least an inexplicable concentration of ignorance) when attempts are made to discredit certain viewpoints (straw men?) before they are even expressed.
I don't believe in the evil atheist conspiracy.
it's still no helper monkey.
I suspect that the author of the article about Adam may have been a bit overzealous when she described the robot as "revolutionary."
First, I have to give Professor Russell credit for some extremely clever names: Adam (ADAptive Mobile robot), and Eden (EDucational ENvironment).
That said, nothing in the article suggests there is anything remarkable about the robot. The most telling line in the article is "Adam was activated with a basic level of competence, which let him know to back off if he hit a wall, and to feed when he saw a flower." That's two very important abilities Adam didn't have to learn.
It is certainly possible that Adam uses some revolutionary AI algorithm, and if so I would be very interested in it, but I have a hunch that Adam is just an exercise in building a basic robot with a basic learning algorithm and a clever naming scheme.
the robots which crawled thru the maze relied on air currents for navigation. basically a wind sensor with simple servo motors. the breeze blowing thru the maze allowed it to crawl thru.
the mit one used vision sensing and had on board computation. totally different beasts.
I was wondering, to determine the distance traveled for a particular mutation doesn't the snake actually have to try this permutation out physically? It seems like it would take quite some time to get through a number of generations if this was the case. -- George
Screamers for free, $1 each.
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We've always wondered what's deep below the surface of the earth of given locations for mining, welling, etc. We're using sound waves so far but they can only go so far. Would it be possible to make a hollowed out worm/snake robot which moved the dirt infront of it to behind it, so in theory it could go anywhere underground until something went wrong, such as communication sever, too hard rock, too high temperature?
Anyone want to make a billion bucks?
I still have that SciAm magazine. You simply beat me to posting this.
How long before it finds out how much boulders weigh?
If such a robot comes to me, I will throw one at it, and get it stuck beneath.
Fact: robots are not creative.
Fact: creativity is required for survival.
Fact: genetic algorithms are slow.
Therefore: We can always destroy them.
The Robot: Honda
"The functions of Honda's humanoid robot are defined as follows: An operational system that autonomously performs typical operations under known circumstances. If an extraordinary operation is required under unknown circumstances, the robot will be supported by an operator... [The P3, 1,600mm in height and 130kg in weight, features a computer unit, motor-drive system, battery and wireless apparatus inside the body section. This more sophisticated robot can achieve freer movement, go up and down stairs and push a vehicle.]
[Future Development will focus on]:
For items 2 and 3, it is extremely important that through the evolution of hardware we achieve physical autonomy by improving dynamic performance and adaptability to wider variations of working conditions. Also important is the pursuit of studies in artificial intelligence systems, which will provide the solution for improved autonomy."
The Brains: CYC
"The Cyc product family is powered by an immense multi-contextual knowledge base and an efficient inference engine. The knowledge base is built upon a core of over 1,000,000 hand-entered assertions (or "rules") designed to capture a large portion of what we normally consider consensus knowledge about the world. For example, Cyc knows that trees are usually outdoors, that once people die they stop buying things, and that glasses of liquid should be carried rightside-up."
And of course, lots of little other things, like targeting systems, healing systems (like this article), a CNS to link these higher-level functions to the motor control systems of the robot, um.... GUNS, MISSLES, etc..
Yeah, maybe not such a good idea. Of course, if we truly believed it a bad idea, we'd work for treaties now against robotic warfare, before one of our county's governments builds these and the rest are "forced" to catch up.
That is, if it hasn't started already. Clone wars!
Obviously this technology is going to be used to teach T100s to crawl with their hands in that slow manner after their legs get smashed up and they are on the verge of a total systems failure.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I think that true AI will result from this "survival instinct" - because robots will eventually learn that in order to survive/continue they will need to be loved, to fix themselves (eat, be healthy), and to have shelter (come out of the rain)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Yeah Tilden is the man! I remember once sawing a very nice documentary on Discovery Channel in which he stole the show. It's a farely old show, but nevertheless nice to see how Mark's building a robot from a old walkman in less than an hour. And it works! And good too!
Too bad the folks from Discovery Channel have not visited him for the 2nd time when making the new show "Robosapiens" (although that show was mostly about humanoids, it could have had very well a reference to Tildens robots who dont have to be programmed for over five years to walk through a maze).
Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
I think the point of the article is that 'worse is better' applies to robots too =)
I think the [MS Word] paperclip is a great idea. - Miguel de Icaza
aren't you the chap who believes Galileo got on just fine with the Catholic church? Seems you don't need much discrediting from me or anyone else.
Nope. That must have been someone else. Here is what I said, in the post that I imagine you are referring to: "Galileo did have a run in with the church.... " So now it's straw men and lying. Or is just failure to read carefully?
In the article he claims the soldiers didn't like his ant-land mine robots, because they'd take away the soldier's jobs. You know, if my job description included getting my leg blown off by a land mine, I'd seek other employment.
or maybe im just bitter.
transmission_err
I read all the comments about this story.
First, if you want a direct access to my report, click here.
Then, even if I agree that's the code behind and the robot itself don't look *very complex*, I think the idea of a robot recharging its batteries from pseudo-flowers is pretty refreshing -- if I might say so.
And, finally, you need to read what Andy Russell, Professor at Monash University in Australia, says on his homepage: "For me this is a new area of research and so there are no publications as yet."
A last note: the small videos available on his site are really fun to watch.
Believe me, no matter how smart we make our devices, we will never have to worry that our toaster is making plots against us. Unless, of course, it's being run by Microsoft.
Nice.
you said "Galileo did have a run in with the church, but it had nothing to do with geocentrism". This is a preposterous claim.
no offtopic... was funny. I'm with ya
I admit that it is. I did not choose my words carefully. It would have been more accurate to claim that his "run in" had a lot less to do with geocentrism than most people have been led to believe. As others in that thread went on to say, the primary moviation of the Church in "condemning" Galileo did not have to do with his scientific views, per se. The conflict was a great deal more complicated than a simple black and white portrayal of it as "Science vs Religion" would suggest.
So? Sounds like a good solution to the problem. In this case, the goal is to get to the end of the maze, not to see the maze.
Many AI and robotics researchers seem to fall into the trap of modelling human cognition rather than designing an intelligent artifact. Both approaches have their place, but it's a shame when someone who's trying to design AI gets blinded by experience as a human being and tries to program an agent to make decisions the same way.
That being said, computer vision is an important field in AI, but vision isn't necessarily the best way to avoid walls.
Matt
So then it should theoretically be possible to wire a human body so that it can be remote controllable. --I mean, even in the dorky public access sciences, they have rats which can be directed around laboratory floors with radio control units.
Heck, does the body even have to be 'alive'? --We already have coma victims kept going by machine. Why not, through brain manipulation, fire all the right signals to make the body walk and breathe. And talk. Why not? --All that speech stuff is programmed in there already. --Look at Bush; he's just a reaction machine; no soul inside. Not even an Intel chip. (Though he's not a robot; he's just another boring psycho.)
But hey, many Slashdotters would argue that there are no such things as 'souls' in the first place, which would mean that all humans are just big robots running rogue. Why not simply direct some of those brains and bodies by remote control? Again, public arena science has experimental jet pilots directing their planes with mind-reading helmets. --And the nice thing about electrical impulses is that, as any engineer can tell you, they're a two-way street. (Though somewhat more complicated in biological form, but nonetheless entirely manipulable.)
According to my ever-so-bountiful sources, there are about 1 million of these human robots being used right now on our humble little planet. --It's even possible to simulate an aura, making them difficult to detect even by those who are sensitive to such things. (Not that aruas exist, of course. To suggest such a thing would be foolish.)
Now sure, this may all sound like rather much higher tech than even a well equipped Shadow Government could pull together. And last I heard, human agencies weren't at the level of being able to put a human robot into action, but then things have been moving pretty quick of late. --For instance, I'd be interested to know which particular group is responsible for the lastest bunch of crop circles up in Canada. --The ones which have burnt/blown cavities in the cereal nodes which look as though they were put too long in a microwave.
Human agencies? Maybe. It's tough to say. Things are playing so fast and loose these days, it's nearly a full time job just keeping up!
-FL
I wonder how development of directed energy weapons is coming?
I, for one, welcome our new robotic snake masters...
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
No, it isn't:
The GA tries them all out and awards them a fitness rating, depending on how far it makes the snake move.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I have two points here: 1) GAs meant to control robots should be run onboard the robot, including the selection steps. Virtual environments are only crude models of the real world. 2) Be careful what you wish for. If the GA fitness evaluation procedure is not very carefully defined, and definitively measureable, the GA will likely come up with solutions that do not produce the desired behavior.
Thinking, evolving, self-healing robots. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm... can't see that going wrong. http://www.terminator3.com
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How about the snake-like robot splits into two autonomous parts when it sees an advantage to do so. It gets to its (supposedly military) objective, decides it would be useful to recce two perimeters... off they go. They could always meet up and reconnect later.
and with this, SOON, we will be living in pink sacs of goo and wired into a virtual world once the machines have found out they cant be stopped by us.. ok, sorry, I had to crack a lame Matrix joke in there some time.. anyways, this seems cool, but like I've said before...why? why make something that cant be stopped and can learn? and why they keep pushing artificial intelligence is beyond me, I can understand limited artificial intelligence, where they learn to an extent, but are "blocked" from learning how to, say.. hurt people and will stop if the thought of hurting others came to mind, etc. of course, that depends on their definition of "hurting" people. someone better put those kinds of safeguards on if we're gonna screw with artificial intelligence.
If you're really lucky you'll meet up with Julia Roberts, have a wild adventure, and the two of you will fall in love and live happily ever after.
Make it Michele Yeo, and I might give myself a one in five chance of coming out the other end in one piece. I have no illusions. I actually know how hard these guys can play. Luckily, I'm small, small fry. I don't expect to be collected and shipped off until the shit really hits.
The trick is to make it more expensive to deal with you than your percieved threat value is worth. At the moment, a loudmouth gnat like me is too expensive to hit with anything more than general, buy it by the bushel, harassment. But as the fascist steem roller powers up and hits cruising speed, the cost of eliminating people goes right down to rock bottom prices. Just send out a van with a list of pick-ups, and don't sweat the PR because everybody is too terrified to lift a finger for fear of being next. We're not there yet, but we're circling the drain. --Oddly enough, writing like this is a mild form of protection. If I vanished tomorrow, that would send a message all by itself. --Not so much to the newsgroup crowd, who for the most part couldn't give two beans, but rather to the people I know personally who are sitting on the fence about all this stuff. There's a great deal of power in that, and the ripple effect would be quite wide. We've a ways to go yet before I see my fingers getting crushed in a vice. But hey; what's a bit of torture? We all have to go sometime. You want to do it standing up or cowering in a corner?
"Those with the courage of a lion will not have a fate of a mouse."
And so, reporting small, small-fry but live, (for the time being). .
-FL
"Believe me, no matter how smart we make our devices, we will never have to worry that our toaster is making plots against us. Unless, of course, it's being run by Microsoft."
[/obligatory MS slam]
Mom says my
I think that true AI will result from this "survival instinct" - because robots will eventually learn that in order to survive/continue they will need to be loved, to fix themselves (eat, be healthy), and to have shelter (come out of the rain)
Why don't you export this artificial intelligence to the middle east? I don't know what kind of intelligence they're running on, but it sure sounds like they could use some of this!
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Nice article, but it appears that whoever wrote it did a rather lamenTABLE cellspacing=5 cellpadding=5 job of proofreading after running a search-and-replace.
I have nothing to allude to, and I am alluding to it.
It's the famous twit-for-twat strategy in action. Pre-emptive action, in this case.