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Meet Lucy, The Orangutan Robot

Posted by michael on from the watch-out-when-it-picks-up-a-thighbone dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Lucy is not an ordinary robot, driven by software. She's a pure product of artificial intelligence (AI). And after a three-year long training, she's now able to make a difference between an apple and a banana, which is quite handy for an orang-utan, even if she doesn't eat them. Her five microcontroller chips wouldn't like this... In "A Grand plan for brainy robots," BBC News Online tells us that Lucy is the brainchild of Steve Grand, an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology. And why did he choose an orang-utan design? "I made Lucy as an orang-utan because, can you imagine how scary it would be if she looked like a human baby?," said Grand. More details and references are available in this overview which also includes the cover of Grand's last book, 'Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps,' which was already reviewed on Slashdot."

7 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Lucy's home page by morcheeba · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lucy's home page is an even better place for technical details, including an anatomical overview and scrapbook pictures

    --
    HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
  2. The Japanese do it right by macshune · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know if this is a trend exhibited by the majority of Japanese android/robotics researchers, but from what I've seen they tend to follow a no-face design ethic that I'm most pleased with. I think it's safe to say that most people would find anthropomorphic robots that don't look 100% identical to people (there's something off with that one) very creepy.

    And besides, these Japanese robots look way cooler and have this implied subservience about them, at least to me. It's a lot harder to humanize and attach (scary) emotion to something that's faceless and non-human looking, rather than something that looks like a hairy/scary-ass rendition of a planet of the apes extra.

    1. Re:The Japanese do it right by Kiyooka · · Score: 2, Informative

      This has been noted before by Carl Jung (see his little-known theories of "uncanniness", can't find a link) and by a robot designer in Japan (can't find link to story on /., can't find anything today!) When something vaguely resembles a human it's amusing and cute, but when it reaches a certain threshold of similarity (which is to say it looks too much like a real human) people suddenly and severely dislike it.

      If you want people to like it, you have to keep pushing the similarity until people can't tell the difference anymore. Otherwise, it's like you're talking to a slightly defective human, which is very very unnerving. Imagine talking to a robot that's in every way exactly like a human, except that it stares at you and never blinks. Or every now and then it turns it's head 360 to look out the window, or bends its elbows backwards to pick something up off the ground. Freaky!

  3. Re:Are there any... by devnull17 · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's all kinds of great stuff available, even if some of it is very old. You can even get an implementation of SHRDLU with the mechanical components replaced by a 3D Java layer.

    SHRDLU, like most AI projects written in the past 40 years, uses LISP, so it's actually not that hard to read. (Incidentally, SHRDLU is more than a bit unstable, but if you can get it to work, it's pretty amazing, especially for something written in the 70's.) Definitely worth a look, if only for the "coolness" factor.

    One of the greatest things about AI is that most of the work on it comes from academia--virtually everything is available for free, if you know where to look.

  4. Re:Are there any... by asavage · · Score: 2, Informative

    It isn't free, but the MATLAB neural network toolbox is really nice and you can see and modify a lot of code. They have some nice demos like appcr1 which is a neural network that takes images of letters and can tell you what letter is being shown. It tests it with random noise being added to the image and it works quite well.

  5. Re:Are there any... by tanksalot · · Score: 1, Informative

    You can also check out JOONE

    It is a java based open source (developed on sourceforge) Neural Network Framework.

    --
    "I am not denying the existence of stupidity, or of stupid people." - phyruxus
  6. Re:King Louie's head on a toaster oven. Creepy. by jaxdahl · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you read Star Wars books like any respectable slashdottter, you'll find that C-3P0 was designed to be as neutral as possible to a wide range of cultures, it has eyes, fixed arms, neutral mouth with no teeth, open gesture.