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Robotic Space Workers of the Future
Roland Piquepaille writes "In an article named "Puckish robots pull together," Nature describes the work done at the Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory (PRL) of the University of Southern California on self-reconfigurable teams of robots. There, Wei-Min Shen and his colleagues simulate the absence of gravity by creating a 2D representation of space by using an 'air-hockey table.' With jets of air flow blowing on the surface, the 30 cm-wide robots, working in pairs, evolve in a frictionless environment, pick elements such as girders to assemble structures like if they were in space. NASA will use these teams of autonomous robots to build space systems like 10 km-long arrays of solar panels and other huge spatial structures. You'll find more details, illustrations and references in this overview."
These hocky puck things remind me of another robot devoloped by nasa. They both like floating around in space, but nasa's has more of the little buddy going for it.
I think that this is great - low-cost zero gravity, or a 2-D version - it may open up more possibilities for people who want to experiment with the robots or the AI. Pesumably, more people will build the hardware, which would (hopefully) be good for the AI people as well.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
First I never said capitalism is good. What I'm saying is capitalism and robots can not co-exist. Humans become absolutely useless once robots become efficient. Yes at first robots increase jobs and productivity, but soon the knowledge and intelligence level required to continue to program/repair/ or stay above the robots will become too much for the average human to handle.
Can we all have A PHD from MIT/Harvard/Yale/etc? Competition with humans in the third world is enough, and the population keeps increasing every year meaning competition keeps increasing. How the hell are we supposed to compete with each other as 6 billion humans along with the machines?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Indeed, humans make their own mistakes. Darwin had a theory (mostly accepted) about how humans have develop the "instincts" that help them improve their performance and in some cases keep them alive. Some experiments in AI based on similar principles seem to have held promise (e.g. see When Robots Play Games). Perhaps the key is to have multiple teams of robots with slightly different designs such that an error by one team is less likely to be replicated by all.
I am glad to see that people living through telescopes will always be immature little boys living in a fantasy world.
. ht mla p.ht ml
Has it ever occured to you that astronomy is vital to human life? These boys playing with their toys have done far more to advance human knowledge. I for one find much practical value in knowing the state of the actual universe, instead of the fantasy universe you live in.
Take, for example, the advances in sensor technology made as a result of astronomy. Thanks to the new CCD's and optics invented, advances in medical and other fields are possible. Lives have been saved due to these "immature boys". What have you done that was remotely equivalent in impact?
http://www.lbl.gov/supernova/supernova-spinoffs
http://www.ihateglasses.com/html/vision_wavem
Thanks to adaptive optics, many people have gained superb vision, being liberated from glasses and contact lenses. Have you improved anyone's sight?
I am personally very grateful to these "boys" who happen to live in the real universe and are discovering its secrets.
So is this a true swarm relationship (as described, albeit badly, in Prey by Michael Crichton), or is it pair-only?
And can they get a divorce if one of the robots is cheating?
Stanford has had air-bearing robots to simulate space operations for over a decade. Theirs, though, carry an air tank and work against a flat granite slab.
How long before the AI is advanced enough for the computer/robots are able to identify flaws in their design and reprogram themselves accordingly. This kind of intelligence will allow 'robots' to evolve, superceding humans as the dominate species on earth. The will have all the assets that belong to humans, ie technology, brainpower, but none of the weaknesses, such as the neccesity of oxygen to exist.
Probably not in our lifetimes, but then the pace of technological development seems to be increasing exponentially...put it this way: take all the scientists that lived from year x to 1900: there are more scientists on earth today than in this total period.
Do you need a website upgrade?
Well, it's going to happen sooner or later; one day it might even be cost effective in the general case. I hope we can come up with a better way of dealing with it than you when it finally is; that's probably giving humans a bit too much credit though.
"what the hell is the average human useful for"? Who said we had to be useful anyway? We have to survive (well, not really, but let's pretend); whether we do that working our asses off or having fun while our technology does our work for us doesn't make a whole lot of difference.