Open Source Robot for Household Tasks

bednarz brings us a NetworkWorld story about the development of a robot through an open source project. The objective of the project is to "take robotics from research into homes." Quoting: "One of its immediate goals is to build 10 robots and make them available to university researchers as a common platform that can be tinkered with and improved. Willow Garage will also supply 'an open-source code base integrated from the best open-source robotics software available,' President and CEO Steve Cousins said. In Cousins' video presentation, the first version of the robot could be seen vacuuming, picking up toys off the floor of a living room, taking dishes out of a dishwasher, and most importantly of all, using a bottle opener to crack open a cold, refreshing brew."

Comments

One step closer to the singularity

[religious freak]

Ah, I can't wait...

Re:One step closer to the singularity

[Anonymous Coward]

The singularity is bullshit. In order for an AI to have human level intelligence it's going to have to use inductive reasoning simply by virtue of the fact that there's very little that can be accomplished by deductive reasoning alone. Any entity that has the capacity to use inductive reasoning also has the capacity to make incorrect inductions.

Human level AIs are never going to be practical for real world problems because they'll have just as many ways of going wrong as human geniuses do. People who are capable of making intuitive leaps don't always make the right ones and even when they do solve problems, they may not be solving the problems you asked them to.

Re:One step closer to the singularity

[baboonlogic]

The real problem with singularity is that it implicitly assumes that the intelligence of various entities forms a totally ordered set and that we will soon discover or create some superior intelligence. That kind of a claim needs evidence and we have none. And on top of that we display a significant cognitive bias while looking at intelligence. An octopus's intelligence might be better than ours at the ocean's floor. As a species, our intelligence might be lower than that of chimpanzees (they didn't cause global warming). Can we compare human intelligence to that of HIV? To that of T-Rex? What does intelligence mean? Whatever it is, we don't seem to have objective criteria for defining it. We just seem to be content with some circular definitions that use human intelligence itself as the prototype and then claim that our intelligence is superior. That and the evidence-less concept of a total order in intelligence lies at the heart of "singularity".

Singularity is likely going to remain in the realm of "coming soon" forever.

Anyone

[artichokesquid]

... tested out the suction on one of these yet?

Re:Anyone

[anagama]

Who cares about suction. As long as it doesn't nag, whine, or yell, it sounds like bliss.

No one would need one of these

[CrazyJim1]

I see a world market for maybe five robots.

Re:No one would need one of these

[megaditto]

People who can't get a woman to marry? That's gonna be half of slashdot, at least, so considering we are up to 7-digit UIDs now, it will be more than five.

Also, FTFS: "vacuuming, picking up toys off the floor of a living room, taking dishes out of a dishwasher, and most importantly of all, using a bottle opener to crack open a cold, refreshing brew." I would think the most important of all would be the price of the thing... and/or the ability to understand spoken double killer select delete select.

Open Source Robot

[ChengWah]

I for one welcome our beer-cracking overlords

What is intelligence?

[CustomDesigned]

The root of the word literally means "to chose between" (inter[between] lego[to chose] -> intellego[to comprehend]). Intelligence is the ability to make choices, and is not directly related to powers of deduction, induction, or perception. These later simply put more choices within reach of the controlling intelligence. You don't have to be a genius to make a conscious choice. "Sentience" would be the word used in sci-fi.

Re:What is intelligence?

[hkmarks]

Sci-fi unfortunately got in the habit early on of using the wrong word. "Sentience" derives from Latin "sentire" which means to feel. Sapience (sapere, to be wise or to know), on the other hand, suggests intelligence and judgement.

So a dog is sentient but not sapient. But I guess you could say a dog is more sapient than a trout. (My dogs at least can figure certain things out ['If I go to my food dish but don't eat, the humans will figure out that I want a treat'] and make choices ['Should I chase squirrels and risk getting my paws wet?']. Dogs are pretty darn social, after all.

Re:Hire a housekeeper

[QuantumG]

it doesn't need years of training No, just decades upon decades of research and development.

Which costs money.

Which has to be recovered from customers.

just a software upgrade. Whereas if I want my housekeeper to do something different this week I just tell her, and with minimal explanation, she does it.

crack open a cold, refreshing brew?

[Dr.Altaica]

Article: "and most importantly of all, using a bottle opener to crack open a cold, refreshing brew."

Human: "I didn't know robots neede to drink"

Robot: "I don't need to drink. I can quit anytime I want to."

All in a day's work

[Tablizer]

It took out the garbage, washed the dog, mowed the lawn, loaded the dishwasher, ironed my pants, and erased Vista from my harddrive.

Re:All in a day's work

[ch-chuck]

It'll probably be run ON Vista, in which case it will try to anticipate what you want and then mow the dog, load your pants, iron the lawn, take out the dishwasher and wash the garbage.

Re:OOPS

[Tablizer]

And someone will write a virus, which will make one of them wash the garbage, load the dog in the dishwasher, wear your pants around its head, and start bumping its torso against your computer in a rather rhythmic pattern.

Those exist already. They're called "toddlers".