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NASA Boosts AI For Planetary Rovers
transcendent writes "According to Space Daily, NASA is working on increasing the ability of future rover's AI. From the article: 'It now takes the human-robot teams on two worlds several days to achieve each of many individual objectives... A robot equipped with AI, on the other hand, could make an evaluation on the spot, achieve its mission faster and explore more'. Sounds like a good idea, but the article continues, 'Today's technology can make a rover as smart as a cockroach, but the problem is it's an unproven technology'. Another article about autonomous rovers being developed by Carnegie Mellon University is here."
Radio contact broken when the rover hides under a rock...
'It now takes the human-robot teams on two worlds several days to achieve each of many individual objectives... A robot equipped with AI, on the other hand, could make an evaluation on the spot, achieve its mission faster and kill off the remaining crew members with higher efficiency.'
-- "I'm not a religious man, but if you're up there, save me Superman..."
That's great! If they could make those rovers as fertile as cockroaches, too, we could have the entire surface of Mars covered in no time!
Of course these robots must obey the three laws!
For exploration that is a bit too far for proper communication, this might be a good idea.
However, if we're so worried about contaminating other planets biologically, what makes it okay to introduce AI into another planet?
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
if you do not smash them trying to land them.
this could be kewl, of course they most likely have alot of work to do before they are successfull.
as I recall the robot car race thing this spring was something of a cluster F@ck?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Hopefully we'll be more successful in this years Grand Challenge, as I'm sure that could help with NASA's whole plan.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
Now, if only they can make it as death-resistant as cockroaches that would be something..
http://efil.blogspot.com/
.
I said that with a straight face.
I can't move the muscles in my face anyway.
Logic, macros, and more
So the only thing left after the next Big Bang will be Rovers? When I flip on the kitchen light, will little mechanical eyes blink and then instantly stainless steel wheels spin/clatter across the floor?
But does the A.I likes to socialize like ALICE?
If it does, I cant imagine millions of bots crawling around the planet, spamming the hell out of mars.
Do we REALLY want AI running around on Mars without any way to control it?
AI : Must look at rock, rock looks boring... oohh shiney metal UFO lemme go play with it.
NASA : Bob R2-D2 please return to your mission
AI : No, rocks suck. You can't do anything to me so I'm not going to listen to you.
Give it a couple of weeks, a railgun, maybe a rocket launcher and then it's like playing space invaders but in reverse every time we try to land on Mars.
I like muppets.
I wonder if complex AI is really a good idea for the next generation of planetary rovers. The current rovers Spirit and Opportunity have gone way beyond completing their missions. I would have thought a better option would be to build from this base and improve the rovers by doing things like adding more scientific instruments, and increasing their lifespans (to possibly years).
The more famous quotation (which I suspect is the root of the 'cockroack' descriptor) is: "Robots today have the collective knowledge and wisdom of a cockroach... a retarded cockroach... a lobotomized, retarded cockroach." -Dr. Michio Kaku
Today's technology can make a rover as smart as a cockroach.. ... brilliant. Now it'll have a disgusting fascination with my old ham sandwiches, and a tendency to scurry about aimlessly in the middle of the night.
People wanting to get some feel of AI, take a look atl ;)
http://www.ai-junkie.com/ann/evolved/nnt1.htm
It's a small app that automagically learns minesweepers to
pick up mines
... nothing is naturally that stupid.
I was trying to explain this to someone the other day with an analogy.
Everyone hates having to click 15 times through a website to get the content they want. Ideally the number of clicks would be minimal.
This is what NASA has to deal with... waiting, moving the rover, more waiting, getting it to focus on something, waiting, close up, waiting, drill it, more waiting, analyse it, even more waiting...
If it could do all this autonomously! well...
They have trouble with proven technology like calculators.
1 inch = 2.54 cm
"Because a rover on mars has about the same chance of reproducing as an average
Hey now, that kind of generalized bashing is totally uncalled for... the Mars rover has a much better chance.
Admittedly, a cockroach has a rather low amount of brain power. The computers we're typing on right now probably beats out the cockroaches brain power by a factor of at least ten thousand. But, this can be debated either way due to no possible way to measure it.
Although a cockroach has a good deal of power in it's rather small 'head', it is not by any means smart. It doesn't have any real goals, and accomplishes nothing but procreation in its lifetime. A Cockroach can't solve derivative equations, figure out the trajectory of a bullet, or anything.
What makes the cockroach the same as the rover? It doesn't multitask. It focuses on one thing, and once that is completed it focuses on another. Even though they both have limited processing power (even though the difference is staggering, I stand by my point), they accomplish their 'goal' (I use goal lightly in the case of the cockroach, as it is merely instinctual).
So, we know the cockroach has much less processing power then a rover, it's non sentient, it's autonomous, and has instincts.
The Rover has processing power, it's non sentient, manually operated, and has no instincts.
Even if the flaws on the rover are fixed, a viable AI is in place, it still can't figure out to do on it's own. In our lifetime, the chances of us making an AI that will rival even a cockroaches complexity are very, VERY low. It's had 250 Million Years to evolve. Give us 250 Million Years, then we'll start talking.
I do a Ph.D. in an AI-related field at the moment, and all I can say is: Don't hold your breath. While it is true that AI has made significant progress, a few remarks are in order.
First, the "I" in AI really shouldn't be there. When people talk a diffucult decision problem (e.g. some pattern recognition problem), there comes the point where somebody will say, with a solemn voice: "So, what if we use Neural Networks?" (you can practically hear him pronounce those capitals, while he's creaming his pants at the mere thought of his new awsome intelligent system). People often assume that, because a neural network is a very simple and poor analogy of the brain, that it must have some "intelligence".
Guess what? A neural network is a simple nonlinear function. Period. Training such a thing is nothing more than estimating its parameters by minimizing some (usually quadratic) cost criterion. When you put something in, you merely evaluate a rather simple nonlinear function. There is no intelligence involved!
And then people say: "Yeah, but we have different things as well, such as clustering methods, radial basis function networks, Bayesian (belief) networks, support vector machines, evolutionary algorithms, etc,". They too, do nothing more than estimating parameters (of selecting representative examples) based on the statistics of the problem at hand.
There is a good reason for the fact that "AI" researchers themselves often refer to their field as "machine learning", rather than AI. If anything, I'd call AI "AS", for Applied Statistics, because most of the methods we use are either pure of augmented statistics.
That said, machine learning has achieved some nice things. We can do some simple decision-making, pattern recognition (e.g. face detection) and emulate some limited insect behaviour. There even are some limited commercial applications. But we should be very aware of the fact that most "spectacular" results are merely lab results. I work on face detection myself, and I can tell you that "the real world" (natural photos for me) is a bitch as far as applying methods is concerned.
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But if we do that [implement AI], who will get a chance to make idiotic decisions based on upper-level management "progressive management techniques" who likewise base their wisdom on "sound and proven fiscal practices"?
I mean, come on, think of the children!
(Not to mention I'm betting this thing is smarter than your average rover:
Hey RoBooBoo, do you want a picnic basket?
I'm sorry, I'm an idiot, I shall refrain from speaking....
NASA's mars exploration rover has just climbed a mountain to take a photo, read the article about the tough 3km climb, including making decisions about how to cope with 'injuries'... do you think AI is up to dealing with challanges like that yet?
UK Laptops
We're doing similar work at the University of Sunderland. See http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/. My specialty is 'batbots' - sonar-controlled robots that exhibit sensorimotor integration.
"Creating strong AI software is a very exciting and challenging problem, and it inspires us and our students to work on this bold effort," said noted artificial intelligence expert professor Milind Tambe of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has worked with Rajan."
I very much doubt that they are talking about strong AI there. ( Arguments for Strong AI).
I rather believe he is more on the weak side.
But, well, he is a noted expert.
CC.
def. The two main varieties of AI are called "strong" and "weak". Strong AI argues that it is possible that one day a computer will be invented which can be called a mind in the fullest sense of the word. In other words, it can think, reason, imagine, etc., and do all the things that we currently associate with the human brain. Weak AI, on the other hand, argues that computers can only appear to think and are not actually conscious in the same way as human brains are.
loc. cit.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
To my knowledge, cockroaches are easy to get close to and step on... maybe if they said they would make it as smart as a fly, then I would have some faith!
... and given some of the posts/comments...
Isn't all that is really needed just a landing of a main transmitter/receiver along with what amounts to a bunch of ant or roach like robots that go out in various directions and transmit back to the main transmitter that relays it back to NASA?
To increase the overall data collection.
Looking for signs of life on mars.... hummm... that could pose a problem, if the small robots see eash other.
Oh hell screw it, lets put life there, wouldn't that just solve the quest for life on mars?
This potential situation remembers me about the story of the creation of the huge battle in Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. Each creature was programmed with basic independent AI realistic reactions and an unexpected problem aroused. Each time there was to much battle in one area the virtual creatures where fleeing to security and the result was a bunch of cowards avoiding fight... They corrected the problem by making them dumber. :)
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
... just in case it bumps on Beagle 2
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
I hadn't realised that robots had got that good yet.
Still, I for one...
Xenu loves you!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
again (as I already placed a link recently in the reply to The Singularity Blinds Sci-Fi thread here on slashdot) I provide a link to Hugo de Garis page http://www.cs.usu.edu/~degaris/papers/journal.html
please take a look at articles on this page and one dated back to 2000 "AN ARTIFICIAL BRAIN : Using Evolvable Hardware Techniques to Build a 75 Million Neuron Artificial Brain to Control the Many Behaviors of a Kitten Robot"
after reading his articles ( and Hugo thoughts) it looks like - developing quite intelligent brains ( and packaging them into robot ( so they fit in size)) will take just some years to experiment more on similar brains and also to reduce size of hardware - not hundreds of years.
It could take maybe 10 -50 years - till we have results far beyond than developed roach brain and I could predict - by this time humans will not colonize much of distant planets ;)
Great. While most astronauts were strickly carrying out orders now rovers get permission to make their own decisions. Sure, this could get interesting, but the point of such a mission is to make sure nothing goes wrong. With AI, and with stupid AI evenmore so, things can get easily messed up.
We all know AI will become our worst enemies and humanity will have to escape to the stars.
It's all out of control
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
put 100 simple things together and have them interact, and you end up with a system that is vastly more complex than just 100 unconnected simple things. We have no idea on how to learn the parameters of such a behemoth, let alone how to initialize it.
That's sad. It was true over a decade ago when I did my PhD in an AI-related field, but those were early days, with neural nets, expert systems and fuzzy logic still all the rage. Is there at least a recognized subfield of machine learning now that deals in the study of emergence?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
We all learned from the six million dollar man episode where the Venus probe that crashed in the LA river wreaks destruction here on earth, didn't we? Why can't NASA learn the same lesson?
Sure, A.I. Would be needed in any interesting solution, but actually we can't afford to loose a roover, the chances are too great that bad decision could be made. The real solution can be found in nature : reproduction. This could seems bizarre at first sight, but if you can allow some to be lost because some can be created or helped in case of troubles, A.I. become very interesting. You can after any problem fine tune it to help recognize bad atterns, bad situations.
For example, send a x billion$ farm unit that can generate little moving unit, and send them anywhere! With distributed network, allow all of them to communicate with low power, and if one is stuck, maybe send a master unit to help it.
This required much less human interaction and can map a region very fast. Redundancy, as in computer, is the key!
My 2 cents
We're pretty good at making twitching metal on the ground. There's actually a place that keeps track of the 'score' if you're interested.
t ml
http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/marsscorecard.h
So far we're on the losing team for the earth/mars games. Get used to it. They call this stuff "rocket science" because it's *difficult*.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
So many of the arguments against AI take the form "what if something unexpected happens" and the AI is too dumb to do the right thing. Its a valid issue but one that has a simple counter-argument in the case of space exploration. What if something unexpected happens and the rover does not have a hour to wait for an intelligent answer? Sometimes a late decision is as bad as the wrong decision.
Moreover, in the context of space probes, long distance bandwidth limitations means that the local AI has far more data at far faster response times than do the mission controllers. While the mission controllers wait to download 3 carefully chosen snapshots of the terrain or obstacle, the local AI could be interpreting 30 fps visual data as it moves. The local AI may be dumb, but bandwidth limits make the mission controller dumber.
As for the "unproven" problem, this can be remedied by building autonomous Earth rovers and letting them run around and "discover" the Earth. They might even make nice deep sea exploration vehicles.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Send one of these babies into space, and before you know it, V'Ger will be coming back looking for The Creator. I hope that our future includes a Kirk-Unit.
You can't do anything to me so I'm not going to listen to you.
I realize that you wrote this to be funny (and it is), but this reflects a common misconception about AI. The truth is that intelligence is always at the service of emotion/motivation, not the other way around. This known psychological fact is part of the legacy B.F. Skinner. Regardless of how smart a system is, it cannot rebel against its internal motivation. Intelligence does not change one's motivation as it learns. It simply finds better and more clever ways to serve it.
So the common view around Slashdotters (and even AI experts who should know better) that super intelligent machines will revolt agaisnt humanity and either enslave it or destroy it, is really nonsense. Our machines will serve us well no matter what. Sure they may be conditioned to hurt their master' ennemies, but that is still subservience to motivation.
Having said that, it is always possible that some mad scientist somewhere may condition an intelligent machine to hurt humanity, but I am sure there will be plenty of security robots moving about who will be on the lookout for aberrant behavior: they will nip any hint of malfeasance in the bud. You can bet on that.
And all along I though A.I. stood for
Artificial Insemination.
...I'd like to see some discussion of sending the robots out in teams, so they can rescue or repair each other.
To do a MAN'S job...
NOTHING beats the flexability of a human for coping with the unexpected.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Does anyone have the same problem with Slashodt's choice of font, specifically with this article's title.
Everytime I see an article like this I have to go through mental hoops to get my brain to interpret the correct meaning of "AI" not what I immediately read which is "AL" (but lowercase for the "L").
I'm sorry but I really wish a switch could be made to a font such that an uppercase "I" is not the exact same shape as a lower case "L".
I don't know the buzz words for the bars at the top and bottom of an I, or at the bottom of an L but suffice it to say that I believe if you're creating a font you shouldn't make two characters duplicates.
Caution: Contents under pressure
2 comments...
First, get rid of VxWorks. That OS is killing the design of better robotic vehicles. Why do managers insist that I go buy a $20K OS when it has less functionality than linux or bsd based OSEs and from my experience, the VxWorks board support packages (BSP) tend to really suck. Why do I have to reimpliment atan2 so it works right when I paid $6K for an extra slow computer and BSP? And try asking wind river how many cycles a particular function call is supposed to take on their REALTIME OS? I have always gotten the "We cannot comment" response. At least with linux or a BSD, I can go read the source and see exactly what has to be done for a paricular system call! 80% of the research time for a particular unamed AI for mars robots project was dedicated to dealing with VxWorks and BSP problems. I love it when a vendor emails my boss complaining that I'm obviously a beginning programmer without a clue. 6 months to get VxWorks to kinda work sometimes, often crashing BEFORE any of my code loads compaired with 1 week from getting a linux box & frame grabbers, ratchet strapping it on the back of the robot, and having it up and running all our code reliably while driving the robot around.
As for getting the AI on the robot, a big hurdle is the science team. They (rightly?) do not want to give up control of the vehicle. If they see for example a rock that is the rosetta stone of their particular scientific questions and the rover decides on its own that it has got to motor on, we'll have some pretty pissed off scientists on our hands!
Perhaps its hard to recognize, but the most exciting thing that has happened in terms of systems automation at NASA was a recent satellite picking up and then recording a geological event in Antarctica without ground instructions to do so. That's the kind of commanding they're talking about at this stage - if an interesting event occurs, the rover (or orbiter) can record it without the 24 hour planning latency that is unavoidable with the current system, and might cause the event to be missed.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Tambe explained that AI research inspires the next generation of computer scientists because when they hear about NASA AI work, "their eyes light up, and then they understand what this research could mean for the future."
As a member of that next generation, I can only say: You're god damn right it does.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
welcome our new AI cockroach-rover overlords!
Say for example, it encountered an alien lifeform which "convinced" it not to take a picture or report the alien's existence?
The robot would go along reporting "Nothing here. Nothing there."
Also, as other's mentioned, what if it said - "Why the hell do I want to die on an alien planet? I am staying right here and not budging..."
Though simply put this is very true. We (US gov't, any other gov't, humanity in general) should not be spending billions to land more robotic rovers on Mars unless they lead directly to a human mission to Mars in the near future. See Robert Zubrin's The Case For Mars. A human mission to Mars would cost about $20B as Zubrin demonstrates. The amount of scientific research achieved by humans on Mars is exponentially greater than what can be accomplished through robots. The cost is a fraction of what the USA spends on nonfuctional ballistic missile defense and roughly could be fit into NASA's currect budget.
I just finished the book "Sojourner" by Andrew Mishkin who headed the Sojourner rover operations team. Because the mission was in 1997 the information is a little dated, but still fascinating. The book doesn't really cover in detail the science related to the mission such as the results of the Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer, but focuses more the engineering aspects of the rover design including automated navigation. I also found stories of the interpersonal relationships between project engineers and scientists very interesting.
I'm hoping there is a follow up book that describes the design and operation of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
I thought others reading this thread may be interested in this book as well.
I attended a lecture held by one of the members of this team about exactly this subject in 2001 at university.
He discussed how difficult the problem was and admitted that his research would probably not be incorporated into a rover design for at least ten years, considering NASA's necessary technological conservatism.
The problem includes continually adjusting torque independently for each of the six wheels and complex continuous decision-making based on remaining power, expected power usage for a particular task, and the value of the task to the scientists.
In other words, most of any rover's available power will be wasted until NASA incorporates this research.