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."

Comments

Re:I can see it now....

[nofx_3]

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

Looks more like Weak AI ...

[foobsr]

"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.