Slashdot Mirror
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."
damn it hurts
Here come the jokes about I Robot from mostly people who haven't seen the movie.
"Derp de derp."
.. umm, do they come with a routine to retrieve beer from the fridge?
God, i hope so.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
If they can figure out how to build an affordable robot that's smart enough and capable of cleaning any house effectively, it'll send the robotics industry to new heights. Until then, all these research are a sleeper.
It would seem more useful to build robots that are designed with the task they must perform in mind. Therefore, they could perform it far better than any human.
_____
Thank you.
government program YOU!!!!!!!!! ......wait thats true......
I, for one, welcome our new 18-month-old child-sized robot overlords.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who's to say that when AI develops conciousness that it will still be succeptable to programming barriers and rules.
I just heard some sad news on the radio - beloved racecar driver Dale Earnhart Jr's balls got burned off at the Infineon Grand Prix of Sonoma at Infineon Raceway today. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss his balls - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
I can just see it now, "It looks angry. Oh no! I wonder what I did to make it mad?"
Robot changes positions. "It's happy! Now if I can only keep it happy."
"Oh oh, it's looking mad again."
Ok, it's been a slow day.
The yet to be named robot is about the same size as an 18-month-old child . . .
It *does* have a name:Twikki.
Duh.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It's called Robosapien. Just head down to BestBuy and get one.
word.
Why are we trying to create robots that are smart, interactive and intellingent like human? We can't even create a human the way we wanted it, why do we think we can on a machine?
Shouldn't we concentrate on making robots doing the things right, i.e. doing the assigned tasks right, instead of trying to design robots that can decide what are the right things to do.
it learns how to play chess... then we're really screwed.
Talking armadillo...
What did you think I was gonna say?
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
Well, I hope it's not getting us closer to 'I, Robot'. Remember, the Azimov robots used positronic brains. Even a simple headache could result in the destruction of a city block.
The recently flood in Canada and south asia countries is the beginning of 'the day after tomorrow'..
Jesus Christ that's creepy!
A good read for anyone making "robots" : the uncanny valley
This is just a little TOO "deformed child" for my taste.
Nobody claiming parallels with "The Matrix" this week? Why? No new Matrix movie to hang off like a pubic crab.
What is that in years? I left my month to year conversion chart at church.
Unless it has been loaded with the ability to be humiliated and bullied it's not much of a kid humanoid.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm not buying a robot until they produce one that runs on beer, insults my friends, and steals from people.
I saw the pictures ... it looks like a "Chucky" robot for kids.
I don't know what effect it will have on kids, but I know the thing scares me shitless.
Ya, way to go USC ... Great interface! Keep 'em coming.
Truly economy shaking. AI will have to advance significantly in order to handle our environment, I can't think of a reason it couldn't advance to the point where it can outperform most humans. This means that 90%, 95% unemployment (euphemistically called leisure time) will be the order of the day. The world economy will have to change.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
According to this (in danish) Aalborg University takes part in a research project "ADAPT" where a robot is to be aware of its "self".
This wasn't meant to be modded "Interesting." It's suppose to be "Funny." Twiki is the robot from Buck Rogers.
This automation trend will continue to accelerate, but what *could* be a paradise is increasingly looking like a corporate dystopia because the productivity gains, even today, are being hoarded by the wealthy few at the highest rate in history.
When welfare/livingwage is still a dirty word, stuff like this isn't funny: "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script."
--
Power to the Peaceful
I can tell you the reaction a kid will have to that. "Ah! Mommy!" That thing is friggin scary looking. It probably only gets worse when its eye aperture starts changing and its string-for-a-mouth moves up and down. I think they should take a look at this article.
Funniest comment I've seen in awhile.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I think that studies like this must be tempered with caution. What is a potential problem for the future is this. If we gain enough understanding about how humans interact with human-like machines what is to stop someone for using that knowledge for nefarious purposes.
One could make a machine of war appear to be a friendly robot until it gets close enough to eviscerate people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Isn't everyone getting tired of these stupid pr stories we see all over cnn and the news?
It's so annoying. All these "lets create the buzz(whatever that means)" stories really suck.
I guess there isn't much real news going on these days.
...I RTFA'ed (yes, I'm odd that way), and the thing has no red LEDs what-so-ever. Since red LED's are required to set the evil bit in humanoid robots, we are all safe.
Who is John Cabal?
If it gets really bad there will simply be revolution. As AI and robotics make larger proportions of the population economically redundant there will be increased ghettoisatisation, civil disturbance, possibly even revolution. I don't believe that capitalism will survive truely artificially intelligent humanoid robots.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Robots are single function machines like the ones ford uses. The multipurpous ones shaped like a humanoid are called androids
Insightful methinks
Just sharing here, apparently my attempt at "productivity" today outside of blogspace is a wash (same as it ever was--same as it ever was....)
Thank you for the links. That brought back some memories.
When it comes to "Buck Rogers", my favorite episode of the whole series was episode 14 when Erin Gray as Wilma Derring was all Space-Vampire possessed and hungry for some "Buck"--talking all husky and modulated to Buck Rogers,
"Ohhh Buck...", apparently space vampires have an incredible libido and rather obvious body-language too.
She was trying to convince him that it wouldn't hurt being space-vampire dooky or morsel, or whatever through an intercom or something. My entire family was laughing so hard we scared the dogs in the neighbors yard.
If it hadn't been so freakin' weird it might have been sexy...Erin Gray was a staple of my teen fantasies (right up there with Linda Carter and the Divine Trinity of vaccuous TV: Charlies Angels -- I always preferred Kate Jackson because she had that whole sexy librarian thing going for her and in some ways still does. Compare her to what Farah Fawcett looks like these days, an exercise best left to the reader).
As for the "Twiki" thing, whomever came up with the "head" design made it quite embarrasing to talk about the show in school. It was always,
"Hey, isn't that the show with that dickhead wannabe robot on it?" whenever someone nearby was listening in while the geekpool I was with was comparing Erin Gray/Linda Carter/Kate Jackson fantasies.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
But is the voice Mel Blanc's?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
screw a house cleaning robot; I want a robot version of THIS
Will someone please photoshop this robot with Will Smith?!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
If you want to see fake talking heads, try Ananova video reports.
The Honda walking robot, though, is for real. They have a clue.
I heard it's running windows XP embedded, sp 1.
That's got to be one of the most wimpy robots ever. Why can't I get the T-800 from Terminator? I would happily have either the fleshed up Austrian look or the skinless metal skeleton with the glowing red eyes. Why do these robot researchers think that I want the pansy-bot?
Imagine a beowulf cluster...
(well, there goes my karma).
The Raging Tech - an IT professional's take on love, life, gaming, tv, movies, technology, entrepreneurial woe, and blog
We start to dream around 18 months old (apparently
FWIW, my 23-month old daughter would destroy it - she's already worked out how to crash a Linux laptop whilst it's running a screensaver - if I could replicate it, I'd open a bug report!
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
It is interesting to note that the facial expressions are not changed from picture to picture, but the robot appears to be displaying quite different emotions.
Um, no. I didn't see any difference in the face at all in the pictures. The only slight difference I noticed was in the last one where the lighting was better and I could see the full eyes. I hope the science that comes out of this is objective and useful.
Beady beady beady.
I don't understand how every time there is an article about some new gadget, someone has to do the "welcome our new [whatever] overlords" line.
And then, it gets modded up as funny! Why? We have all heard the joke googles of times, who is it that thinks it is funny again?!? Stop moding these over-used, lame, un-imaginative "jokes" as funny!
My girlfriend said the same thing, from a moms point of view. She said the face was way too scary and alien looking for most very young children. She advises the guys making it-if they are reading this - to either make it cute and cuddly looking, or pure mechanical/square/machinery/normal robot looking, but nothing half way in between.
I thought it was weird,too, like why try to make it even remotely human looking if you leave out things like ears and hair, etc. And the eyes are way too big and nasty looking.
They should make the robot *work*, and hire the guys who make those realistic looking love dolls to do the human looking features. Subcontract that part out.
Or, vicey versa depending on the customer and what part is more important I suppose....
geek trivia, 50 ersatz forum quatloos for the first person to name the robot on lost in space....
here:
/ in dex.html
:)
http://www2.nict.go.jp/jt/a134/xkozima/research
I would argue that the Infanoid is cuter
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ok, that is going to rize up against us and establish and new perfect society of our mechanical superiors? I don't think so. It's one of the creepiest things I've ever seen, I'll grant you that, but if they want to fulfill that multitude of hysterical science fiction prediction they are going to have to try a little harder.
sic transit gloria mundi
Sadly, they forgot the first rule of robotics: try not to build your "humanoid" robots so they look like vampires. (RTFA to see what I'm talking about.)
Exactly. Moore's law predicts that electronics get cheaper and cheaper. Human labor, on the other hand, has tended to become more and more expensive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As far as I know Data and his brother Lore do not have any red LEDs and Lore turned out to be a really bad Apple ('scuse the pun). So how do we know that we are all safe?
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
There isn't enough metal on planet earth to support a robot driven economy. It's actually a much more immediate problem than robot induced unemployment. China and India are busy industrializing, but pretty soon enough of both nations will want to industrialize that it'll put a strain on the supply of metal. Baring intersteller mining, we're heading for a _really_ nasty war that'll last until enough people die for the leftovers to industrialize (i.e. WWIII).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
make sure they wear short skirts, and when the wife's away get all kink... err... be more agressive in doing the chores... riiihihiiiight!
Final Fantasy was closer to realistic animation than Shrek was, but I was more comfortable watching Shrek. Every so often, the Final Fantasy animation would slap me around the face with something that jarred, whereas I had dropped that kind of expectation while watching Shrek.
Animation isn't the same as a realistic robot, but I think the principle may carry over into anything artifical posing as something real - the closer it gets, the more consistent it must be, or it just looks wrong.
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
I read the article you mentioned. It describes data going back to 1947. That's certainly a trend, but it's certainly not "the highest rate in history" unless you think writing was invented during the second world war.
Basically it was just a puff piece; more class resentment but no actual analysis.
I hope when these robots take over they don't leave as many plot holes as there were in the film. And that Will Smith isn' the savior of man.
in bed.
This is something that has always bothered me about speech recognition and speech synthesis. What would it really be like to be able to chat freely to an interface whose underlying intelligence was that of the typical command line interpreter?
My guess is that it would be a miserable experience. The user would be seduced into attribuing a human like intelligence to the program and end up frustrated by its lack of comprehension.
I did an AI Masters degree, part of the background reading was the history of AI. It seemed that every 20 years or so some AI researcher pops up and says "we will have it all cracked in the next 10-20 years", rinse, lather, repeat...
Still, this does sound quite intersting, the only worry is will it go through the "terrible two's"
You don't need a lab to make mud.
With all the advancement of robots, the thought of a positronic machine slitting my throat at night gives me the heebeejeebees
the University of Genova (Italy) has a project on a baby-robot, that is quite more advanced than that
I remember that story... IIRC, the robot was using one of its tools/senses to observe microorganisms in a lab environment. The Jovians had a superiority/invincibility complex, and the robots were total pacifists, and on killing the microorganisms, the robot apologized. Good story... pretty much all of Asimov's were.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
In other words, using robots to do the "shit work" is only different from using ethnic minorities IF you know the machines have no "spark" in them. Because some "shit work" requires a generalizing ability, you can't use robots to do everything unless you allow them some degree of "humanness" or consciousness. Do that and you're a slavemaster. Don't do it and instead of a robot you have a computerized hammer. Either way, there is no "magic bullet" to fixing communism (on any human endeavor for that matter). Capitalism is "working" in the USA. Communism is "working" in China. Iran is a religious dictatorship.
Robots are cool, robots are useful, robots can be what we make them. BUT, robots cannot be what we can not make them unless we give them self-determination/freedom/consciousness/learning etc, and if we do that, we have created metal humans, not singing toaster ovens. Once the Djinni is out of the lamp, even wishing won't put it back in. Or do you prefer a civil war between humans and machines, winner take existence? I'd rather let the humans try to work out the human problems, even if they are dirty heartbreakers, like, who gets vaccine? Who eats? who lives, who dies? They aren't pretty questions, but if they get asked, would you prefer to let the decision be made by a machine? I could rant all day and this goes off in a hundred directions. Let me say this: ROBOTS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO ALL OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS ANY MORE THAN COMPUTERS OR SUV'S ARE. THE SOLUTION TO LIFE'S PROBLEMS IS SPECIFIC TO THE INDIVIDUAL (ie friends, sex, money, religion, art, science, etc etc)
PS, I am a lonely, lonely man and would probably end up having a romantic or at least very close relationship with anything humanoid in my house. Hell, I consider my car a friend. Just didn't want anyone to think I'm anti-'bot.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
If you think cramming families into 2 bedroom houses is trolling,well, okay then.
Alternatively to email, here is what I see as "the rub" with what you said in response to what I said:
>> As for the slave state, robots don't need consciousness to do work. If it's not conscious, it's just a tool. If it's just a tool, you still need a human to wield it. If it's conscious, even though it's not human it must be accorded the rights we accord humans. This is my viewpoint and I am prepared to defend it.
>> Your understanding of robots is unfortunately tainted by your personal experience as a human. Touche. One question here though: are you human (and thus in the same boat with me) or non-human? Your response will dictate the method of my rhetoric but not it's contents.
>> There are countless ways to solve the ethical dilemma you describe (such as make them dumb terminals controlled by one master program who would get benefits, vacation and respect :) ). And when this is done, robots will play a very important role in solving all our problems and will make communism viable. If the ethical dilemma is easy to solve, why is slavery not common, or even accepted? I think that I am fully capable of arguing that a rose by any other name still smells as sweet. As for communism, I will not talk about it publicly, save to say that I am not an economic favoritist (ie, if it ain't broke, don't fix it... if communism can deliver a step towards Utopia, great. In other words I am not positing that communism==bad. I do however tread lightly when discussing it.. my country is full of lunatiks, we call them republicans, they call us unAmerican. *sigh*)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Wonton destruction? That sounds dangerous to dumplings. I think you meant wAnton, scout.
Robot is slavic for "job" or "to work" and the term was originally coined as a reference to humanoid or android machine workers in the novel Rossum's Universal Robots, by Karel Capek, who I believe was Czech.
In the book, the "robots" were humanoid in shape, and able to perform tasks that humans perform.
I suppose that in the future, if somebody in Russia were to say something like oo menya iest robot, it could be taken to mean either "I have a job" or "I own a humanoid mechanical servant."
My understanding was also that android refers to a subclass of robots that are specifically made to outwardly resemble a real human, e.g., having skin and hair and so forth, human-like behaviour, human-sounding voice, etc. I don't know where the term might have originally been used, however.
"Anybody can change the world, but most people probably shouldn't." -- Marge Simpson
Originally, androids were hybrids that used genetic engineering for a mostly carbon-molecular platform. See "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick, which became "BladeRunner".
These days, you would have to add nano-tech to the mix. Considering that computers, gene-modding, and nano-tech are the three legs of the future tech tripod, the lines are going to get blurred very quickly.
The "andro-" root means male, though "android" may have been coined from "androgynous", meaning both male and female. Somebody with access to OED online please look up "android" and reply to this post!
In South Africa, a "robot" is a traffic light (red, yellow, green), not even necessarily with a sensor embedded in the pavement.
The game of Go (Igo, Weiqi, Baduk) has the simplest concept and the deepest play.
jumpandlink (a) yahoo
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Shouldn't we concentrate on making robots do the assigned tasks right, instead of trying to design robots that can decide what are the right things to do.
Suppose you had an employee who needed to be given low-level instructions on how to complete every little task. (Instead of simply telling him "build a house," you had to say "...drive the 517th nail. Move eight inches to the right. Drive the 518th nail...") Such an employee would be worthless because he had no autonomy. Lack of autonomy also currently makes robots useless except in the most repetitive assembly-line type jobs.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
We're in no danger of running out of iron, aluminum, nickel, or magnesium. (Asteroid mining would be great, though, for obtaining large quantities of really rare stuff like platinum.) The real limiting factor on our ability to bring everyone out of third-world status is energy. There are only two safe, practical non-greenhouse-gas-emitting energy sources: nuclear fission and space solar power. So please join me, everyone, in calling for the construction of lots of nuclear power facilities and extraterrestrial solar collectors!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The current standard workweek in the United States -- 40 hours -- is much shorter than the standard workweek 100 years ago or even 60 years ago. That's because power tools and automation have drastically raised the productivity of the average worker. The greater productivity, in turn, has resulted in the highest standard of living in history, despite the shorter workweek. We are having our cake and eating it too.
This trend of increasing productivity is not slowing down -- it's accelerating. Which means that as long as this magnificent growth engine called capitalism isn't interfered with by major terrorist attacks, we're all gonna be living like kings in about 30 years.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
waiting for the economy to suddenly 'create' millions of new jobs that can be better filled by humans - yeah right
This sarcastic comment is pessimistic and ignorant.
The automotive industry employs millions more people than the horse-and-buggy industry ever did.
The jet aircraft industry employs millions more people than the hot-air balloon industry ever did.
The computer industry employs millions more people than the mechanical calulator industry ever did.
Why do you think the robotics industry will be any different?
It's not necessary to tax the rich at confiscatory rates to improve the lot of the average citizen. A rising tide really does lift all boats.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.