LivingCreatures- The Beginning Of 'I, Robot?'

An Anonymous Reader writes "LivingCreatures.com has released several new photos of the humanoid robot platform that it developed for the USC Interaction Lab. The yet to be named robot is about the same size as an 18-month-old child and will serve as a human-robot interaction (HRI) testbed for studies involving imitation, learning, and the effects that interaction with humanoid robots has on children."

Comments

Re:Ready.. get set..

[NanoGator]

"You realize it was a book, right?"

You realize it was a short story about a robot named Robbie, right?

Re:Not named? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

This wasn't meant to be modded "Interesting." It's suppose to be "Funny." Twiki is the robot from Buck Rogers.

Re:Antimatter thoughts

[delibes]

Anyone got any suggestions how a positronic brain works exactly? The Star Trek TNG writers gave Data one too, probably as a nod to Asimov (spelled with an 's' BTW). I've never seen even a vague excuse for a description of how one works. However we can do some maths to try and see how much energy is involved.

A single positron/electron has a rest mass of about 0.511 MeV (million electron volts). A proton is in the region of 938 MeV. Converting electon volts to Joules (with Google) tells me "one electron volt = 1.60217646 x 10^-19 Joules".

So, one electron/positron annihilation will release (2 x 511) MeV == 1.63742434 x 10^-10 Joules. Assuming the positronic brain has a few billion of these, then allowing them all to react with each other will release a few joules of energy - this will take the form of gamma rays anyway, so things nearby will get irradiated, not blasted by a big explosion.

Interestingly, this might explain something in one of Asimov's robot stories called Victory Unintentional. A robot interacting with life forms on Jupiter (Asimov didn't have the benefit of modern space probe data) apologises to a native Jovian for killing some bacteria-type samples in a lab as a result of the robot emitting radiation.

Re:Antimatter thoughts

[linzeal]

For a brief synopsis of the positronic meme, see here.

Re:The economic effects of humanoid Robots.

[The_reformant]

Its depatable if AI outperforms us in very limited domains which are tailor made for heavy computations (chess AIs can compete against strong human opposition but in go AIs can barely beat amateurs)

I think its a somewhat naive view that AI will ever develop to the point that it outperforms humans at arbitrary and varied tasks.

Re:Humanoid Robots

[mikael]

We already have oil-rig drilling pipeline construction robots. After the Piper Alpha disaster, the oil companies looked at ways of reducing their insurance costs. One way was to automate the construction of drilling pipes. Instead of having entire crews of men handling drill pipes on a platform 100 miles off the coast, they funded research into using machines. Essentially, they got the process down to a single guy operating a crane to pick up and move drilling pipes and a control system to accurately place the pipe and automatically fix it into place.

Re:Robot?

[freshmkr]

Robots are single function machines like the ones ford uses. The multipurpous ones shaped like a humanoid are called androids

I disagree.

I'm getting a graduate degree in robotics. My school has a few humanoids. We call them robots. We've got arms. We call those robots too. Same with the trashcan-shaped research robots, the Segway-platform robots, the AIBOs, the helicopters, the farm equipment, the cars, the blimp, and so on. All robots. Nobody here thinks the term "robot" refers to "single function machines", huge arms, industrial robots, or anything you find in an ordinary automated factory. It's a much more general category.

"Androids" are, I guess, a subset of "robots", but nobody here uses that term very much. I suspect it won't be very popular until we have robots that are more like Data.

Until then,
--Tom