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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!
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/
1. A robot may not injure a cockroach or, through inaction allow a cockroach to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by cockroaches except when such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Scary...
Because a rover on mars has about the same chance of reproducing as an average /.'er?
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?
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
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
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
Uh, I sincerely hope that you are trolling!
I don't care what software runs on the rovers embedded computers because:
* these robots won't reproduce.
* the poluting materials (ie rover bodies and lander) are already there.
* current AI techniques might just about make a desicion about whether to take a photo or make a soil sample, given a preprogrammed embodyment, but will *NOT* be creating any novel, intelligent behaviours.
I wouldn't worry about AI just yet.
Autonomy will just cut out the 5 minute lag between action and effect on any data sent to and from mars. Think about that next time you feel like your internet connection is too slow.
"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.
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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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)
... 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?
To my knowledge, cockroaches are easy to get close to and step on.
...
I have empirical evidence which is different from that. A good trick, though, is to have a 'honeypot' shoe on the floor where they will hide and then
CC.
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
... just in case it bumps on Beagle 2
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
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
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.
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.
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.
...I'd like to see some discussion of sending the robots out in teams, so they can rescue or repair each other.
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.