Fast Navigating Guessing Robots

holy_calamity writes "A new navigation technique for robots allows them to make predictions about what's around the corner based on where they've been already. It works well in repetitive environments like office buildings. If this were a Japanese project I'd say it'd be useful for robotic secretaries new on the job, but since it's an American one I suppose it'll be used for automated SWAT teams."

Comments

First Person Shooters

[Ohreally_factor]

I could see this being applied to game technology before it gets applied to law enforcement. This is an interesting approach to an AI (or AI-like) problem. The implementation just happens to be (and is well suited for) robots.

Expect the unexpected

[Silver Sloth]

From TFA

But the method does have limitations, Lee says: "It works well in indoor environments, but wouldn't be very good in less-repetitive outdoors environments." So maybe a hybrid? Whilst in structured environments expect what you know, otherwise expect the unexpected. No one single answer will ever solve all problems (except 42)

Re:Looks like a twist on behavior-based robotics

[timmarhy]

the reason is they lack the ability to put things into context. computers compute, therefor they calculate numbers and stats very well, but the context of a number, that elusive subtle meaning that a number has completely escapes them.

example, say i presented you with the number 42. on here you might associate it with hitch hiker to the galaxay or maybe something else depending on the infinte number of ways i could put it in a sentence.

Been there done almost that

[noddyxoi]

In my project called DATMO (Detection And Tracking of Moving Objects) i've made a tracker that followed people that could "guess" where the people would appear next, using an industrial laser scanner, check the video at http://miarn.sourceforge.net/videos/pv3d_peopletra cking_and_scene.avi