Slashdot Mirror
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."
http://efil.blogspot.com/
While the parent was modded funny, this could be a serious issue with so-called AI. Imagine a tiny unforseen deviation between the expected result of the robots reactions, and its actual reactions to an alien environment. This could cuase the rover to do any number of unwanted things. The truth of the matter is that no matter how much the AI is tested on earth, the whole point of the rover is to explore an alien world, and in doing so we don't know exactly what the rover will find, so to let a multi-million/billon dollar rover make its own decisions on how to handle a situation could cause some serious problems. For instance image a rover missinterprets a hole in the ground as a shadow from a rock and considers it safe to drive through, you can kiss the rover goodbye. I think for now, having an actual human interpreting what the rover see's before it moves makes a lot more sense when we are dealing with such great distances and costs.
-kaplanfx
Visualize Whirled Peas
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
"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)
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
I do a Ph.D. in an AI-related field at the moment...
I also work in a related field, autonomous systems...
First, the "I" in AI really shouldn't be there. When people talk a difficult 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?"
I think there has been (was) a view that neural nets were the solution, that's obviously not the case, but they've been over used and there is a backlash in the community against them right now. Basically, they've gone out of fashion. However, they can come in very handy at times and I've solved several otherwise very complex problems by using them, that would have otherwise been computationally expensive.
If there is a hard AI solution, which of course is arguable, neural networks will be part of it.
When you put something in, you merely evaluate a rather simple nonlinear function. There is no intelligence involved!
Well that really depends on how you look at it, how did training take place? What is intelligence? You're vastly simplifying the arguements here, perhaps intentionally? I'm sure the hard AI faction would argue that we (human beings) are just a sum of a great number of simple nonlinear functions, out of which there is emerging complexity.
I don't know whether I agree, but the arguement can't simply be dismissed by waving you arms in the air and saying "non-linear functions". Which isn't to say I entirely disagree that this is a (possibly) effective counter-arguement, it's just (as it stands) intellectually weak. I think I'll track down my PhD student, it's almost morning coffee time, he's probably about by now, and see if he can argue his way out of this one to my satisfaction..
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Please don't underestimate the living creature who is said to have the highest chances of surviving an all nuclear war break-out?
:). But you get my point.
Intelligence is not merely defined as "processing power" where processing is making calculations involving numbers, scientific formulas etc. Intelligence encompasses much more than that.
Nasa would make itself proud if they can really build a robot who, like a cockroach, can see what's ahead and around of it, determine a route of access and follow it. The one that will have the ability to sense an incoming danger and very quickly (in a franction of second) determine it's nature, determine the direction it is coming from and then manuever itself to evade the danger. And possibly attack the source of danger to eliminate it. One intelligenet enough to figure out where to hide from danger and how taking into account the nature of danger. One who could the visual data to identify objects, their nature, their shape, their type, whether it's living or not and whether it is interesting for whatever purpose they have in mind.
Cockroaches are capable of a lot more "intelligenet" behavior than I can elaborate in the margin of this comment
Osho
The fact that NASA is "boosting" AI does not mean that they're going to be doing rovers that can evaluate themselves whether a dark spot on the ground is a hole or a shadow! I doubt most people realize how conservative NASA is when it comes to AI.
I went to a lecture held by one of NASA's AI team leaders who was talking about the AI of the current rovers... there is virtually none! He said that the most complex AI is actually on earth to help scientists create a "mission plan" that they send to the rovers once every 24hrs. These mission plans are on the form: "move forward 2 meters, turn left 22 degrees, take picture of ground, move forward 1 meter" (very simplified).
I talked to this guy after the lecture and asked him if they really had no AI on the robots themselves and specifically asked about such things as correctional AI for the rover movement. To clarify this, imagine that you instruct the rover to "move forward 1 meter", all it will do is turn all wheels equally so that the rover would move forward one meter if it were on perfectly even ground. This is of course not the case on Mars and you'll have rovers turning when they should move forward and not turning enough and so on. So when I asked him about the correctional AI (to have AI on board correct these environmental issues, for example take pictures of the environment and calculate the "offset" to find out if it's drifting) he said there was no such thing. The only AI on the rover is something that actually makes it panic! That is, it evaluates if there are any deviations from what the guys down on earth told it to do and expect and basically shuts down if there are.
So AI to make sure that the rover moves in a straight line when the scientists instructed it to do so would be incredably beneficial and IMHO would even increase the level of security by making sure that the rover actually does what it's told to do! I asked him if this was something that NASA was considering to add to future rovers and he said they were in the process of convincing "upper management" that this would actually pay off. These are multi-million dollar scientific tools, not toys, so any addition to them needs to go through strict approval processes.
But according to this article it seems that approval for such things as the "movement correctional AI" has been granted, but as I said, I think people should not be fooled into thinking that this is some sort of an "I, Robot" type of AI!
You don't think enough... therefore you better not be!
I think there has been (was) a view that neural nets were the solution, that's obviously not the case, but they've been over used...
Yes. That's true. It's funny in a sad way: I'm using cluster weighted models in my research. In all truth, those are just neural networks with radial basis function that, in addition to providing an output, also provide a covariance matrix for that output, which can be used either as a confidence bound, or to estimate a PDF instead of a point estimate. However, nobody in their right (?) mind is calling these models "neural networks" anymore in publications. I think this is exactly because of the backlash you describe. The reaction is like "Neural networks, ow, that's so 1990...".
Well that really depends on how you look at it, how did training take place? What is intelligence? You're vastly simplifying the arguements here, perhaps intentionally? I'm sure the hard AI faction would argue that we (human beings) are just a sum of a great number of simple nonlinear functions, out of which there is emerging complexity
Yes of course, that is true. But like I said in another post: this "just" is the problem. In mean: 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.
The devil in in the interaction here.
I don't know whether I agree, but the arguement can't simply be dismissed by waving you arms in the air and saying "non-linear functions".
I think a little explanation is in order here, particularly regarding the public of my first post. Of course you are right in saying that I'm severely cutting corners by shouting "just a nonlinear function.". I knew that cutting the corner like that might trigger (or even offend, in which case I apologise) some real AI researchers. However, my comment was mainly meant for the "clueless hordes" that are engrossed by the word "Neural Network", to let them know that neural networks are not quite the awsome things many people seem to think they are.
Populism? Yes, guilty as charged ;)
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!