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Scientists Try To Make Robots More Human
mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press has an article about a robot named George that plays hide-and-seek. Impressively, the robot can actually also find a place to hide, and then hunt for its human playmate. Scientists are calling this 'a new level of human interaction'. The machine must take cues from people and behave accordingly. Researchers aim to imply humanity in robotics by creating technology that can connect with humans in a more 'thoughtful' way. The places to first see this technology are in the most human-oriented fields — those that require special care in dealing with the elderly, young and disabled." From the article: "'Robots in the human environment, to me that's the final frontier,' said Cynthia Breazeal, robotic life group director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'The human environment is as complex as it gets; it pushes the envelope.' Robotics is moving from software and gears operating remotely - Mars, the bottom of the ocean or assembly lines - to finally working with, beside and even on people. 'Robots have to understand people as people,' Breazeal said. 'Right now, the average robot understands people like a chair: It's something to go around.'"
Why can't robots being more feminine?
Do we really want "hunting robots"? :)
:)
100% success rate in hide and seek today -- 100% kill rate tomorrow!
Robots will kill you
Hyperom.com
Yup, instead of having humans take care of people, we need robots to do it "with a human touch." How much dehumanized can we get? ( A _lot_ more, I know.)
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Come on. How useful is this thing ever going to be? The idea of making robots more human is ridiculous. Why? Because robots will never be better than humans at being human. And it's not as though there is any shortage of humans, there's over 6 billion of us. Why create inferior copies of ourselves? How about making robots do something USEFUL that humans have a hard time doing? Then I might just applaud their work.
Researchers aim to imply humanity in robotics by creating technology that can connect with humans in a more 'thoughtful' way.
Translation: We're working on making a sex-bot.
Robots that track us down? Well, at least the world's scientists have been smart enough to not attach machine guns to their heads and make them enjoy the taste of human flesh
...
Oh, damnit...
Finally after trying for more than a century to make humans more robot like we seem to do it the right way around.
"I didn't know Mr. Crank was in the washing machine, honest, Lena."
Table-ized A.I.
Ah but silly me, you got the real choice all people like you make, complain about the lack of human care but refuse to do a single thing about it.
I once seen a (dutch) documentary in which researchers handed over some Aibo-dogs to elderly people:
;).
Whereas I thought they would immedeately reject it (scary technology and such) I was amazed that not only did they accept it, they also embraced it because of its multiple functions an 'ordinary' pet couldn't offer.
For one, it didn't need any care that one, once forgetting starts to be a daily part of life, tends to forget (hell, some even forget feeding themselves once dementia has been set in).
Also, whereas normal pets could be too exhausting, the Aibo with its 'react-to-impulses-from-the-owner'-mechanism, was much easier to comprehend and adjust to.
It was endearing to see how some of them used the doggy to attract other people's attention in the elderly home, who normally they would have shyed away from talking too; But once the curiousity broke the formality-barrier, they would be socialising very quickly with them. I was amazed how some of them really started treating them as real pets (calling it names, talking to it as if it really understood them), and were shattered when, at the end of the research, they were taken away from them.
I really -do- think there is an opportunity here, where we could start some more research in this area as to start to make the last stages of life more enjoyable for the less fortunate... Hell, we should be donating Wii's to kids -and- elderly homes
AI is making computers behave like they do in movies.
I read that somewhere.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
(emphasis added) " a robot named George that plays hide-and-seek. Impressively, the robot can actually also find a place to hide, and then hunt for its human playmate. " ...in addition to playing hide and seek, it can hide? and seek? madness!
The trouble is, scientists aren't artists. They generally don't follow any sort of asthetic principles when developing robots. Take the mighty steam shovel for example. Few people know that it was intended to be the most human like robot ever built, however the 'Nanny bot 1.0' proved to be terrible at changing diapers and doing anything that didn't involve crushing people to death and using its giant arm to bury the evidance. Later on its robotic brain was removed and it was remarketed as a novelty arm wrestling device. It wasn't until two years ago that the patent was bought out by the CAT corperation and it was put to use as a hydrolic digging machine.
It's an unusual success story overall but it's a good example of how scientists are almost pre-disposed to be terrible at making robots humanlike.
I have my doubts about any claims they're making right now.
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
can anyone tell me how is this all different from the AI in 1970s and 80s (SHAKEY etc)
Things fell apart when researchers tried to scale beyond LEGO examples (hide and seek case in the article sounds similar). A reasonably "artificially intelligent" robot would exhibit "intelligence" using components which are themselves tough unsolved problemsGrow up ppl...a simple electro-mechincal piece of hardware layered with cute-teddy-bear-look and all above critical components hard-coded is not anything new..
Neither this article or nor the recent documentary on Nova says anything about any new technical development.
I have been noticing that MIT Media Lab tries to generate media attention every few months for no real reason.I hope no robot understands me like a chair - I don't want any robots sitting on me :-)
"You still don't get it, do you? He'll find her. That's what he does. That's all he does! You can't stop him. He'll wade through you, reach down her throat, and pull her fucking heart out."
- Kyle Reese in 'Terminator'
"Hide and Seek" is the first half of Seek and Destroy...and we've already got robots that can do the latter.
I for one welcome our new hide-and-seeking overlords
Last night I spent 5 minutes trying to kill a fly with a flyswat. That little sucker sure had good self-preservation instincts (better than any robot playing hide and seek). And the fly can find food, breed etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I really only care about this news topic when the headline is, "Scientists Create Inexpensive And Amazingly Lifelike Robots With Which You Can Have Insanely Great Sex."
SexBox?
//Woah!
"Impressively, the robot can actually also find a place to hide, and then hunt for its human playmate"
Hunt...? HUNT? Oh my God we are going to DIE!
Looking at the computer face in the article freaks me out like the robochild in that episode of the Outer Limits where the scientist puts the mind of his deceased son into a little boy robot.
Disney World's Hall of Presidents, Showbiz Pizza, Chuck E. Cheeses...will the nightmares ever end? *shudder*
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Sarah Connor?
So they were able to code in a way to identify shapes and act certain ways around them. I do begridgingly yeild to the fact that it is a damn hard thing to do, but putting this aside-
Well whooptee freaking do. What is here that hasn't been seen before in rudimentary form with APPLE?
>>The Associated Press has an article about a robot named George that plays
>>hide-and-seek.
Shoulda named it Michael.
Military tries to make humans more like robots
..."Robbie", the "I Robot" opening story? A pity they named it George!
We're a bad copy of God trying to make a bad copy of ourselves.
I can't see why everyone thinks this is so great. My TV remote control has been playing hide and seek with me for years.
Yes, but many robots have a pre-programmed kill limit. Just send wave after wave of men to battle them, and eventually you'll win and be awarded a medal.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
TAG!! YOU'RE DEAD!!
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Oh, and his last name is "Lucas"...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
"[...]the robot can actually also find a place to hide, and then hunt for its human playmate"
The "hunt" word scares the hell out of me! What if he suddenly mistake the _hunt directive with _kill, since I don't recall saying anything about Asimov's laws?...
Hide and seek is all very well, but when are they going to teach robots to do useful things like build cars?
The researcher is telling George to "go hide", although there already is a "go lose yourself" in the canonical robot instruction set. This is an implementation of Nestor of the Asimov short story "Little Lost Robot". Modern robotics now shows the hiding functionality to be a feature and not a bug.
Apparently, the scientists have defined that "being more humane" is equal to "having better understanding of war tactics"
Why do we needs robots when the World is over populated in the 3rd world and the 1st World has so many illegal invaders?
If you want wide spread adoption of robots, don't make the too human and do not use terms like 'hunt' when talking about how is can interact with people, espcially children.
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Slashdotter relizes old people aren't stupid and can actually accept new things!
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Geeks building robots to replace women wuold build the ideal women.
The fact that you use the term 'date' tells me you don't relize what we're talking abuot.
A robot that can nearly beat you at any game, give you oral pleasure, clean the house, never change the way they look, and the looks would be completly changeable.
Which will come as a shock to women when they relize that:
a) a lot of men don't mind a little weight on a women
b) this means it's there attitude that kept men away, NOT there weight.
Man, if I didn't have the worldest greatest wife, I would totally go the robot route.
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Judicous application of diamonds, saphires, and emeralds seems to help hide the nag screen...
Also, oral pleasure.
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a robot named George that plays hide-and-seek. They should have name him Robbie... I guess Asimov wasnt that far off on this one.
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. -- Carl Sagan Sh!fty
I know a poorly coded AI named George who plays hide-and-seek with imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction. Keep working at it, the current unit can't find shit.
What about the AI in video games that allows the computer to participate in human activities against human oponents such as capture the flag, etc.? Seems like computers have been engaging in human activities as long as video games have been around. This is just a matter of interfacing with humans in a more direct way.