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Robots Learn To Follow
Roland Piquepaille writes "Three years after the development of robots that act like rats, UC Davis engineers have designed a control system for robots allowing them to pick up on cues that the leader is about to turn, predict where it is going and follow it. This system mimics the human ability to capture signals — consciously or not — from drivers on the road or people walking in the streets to predict what they're about to do. As the team leader said, 'Robots that are better at following could be easier for people to work with.' With this system, a hospital robot could follow doctors during their rounds."
That sure sounds like Roland to me.
...when pigs follow!
i wanna be the first kid on the block with Stalkerbot 5000!
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
As said the team leader, 'robots that are better at following could be easier for people to work with.' With this system, an hospital robot could follow doctors during their rounds."
Cool. Sounds like we're not far from the development of a real life H.E.L.P.eR.
H.E.L.P.eR. has a wide range of devices in him and knowledge. He can perform surgery (as he once did to retrieve a kidney each from the boys), can fly the X-1, and holds a number of various gadgets in his body -- enough that Dr. Venture could even use him as a makeshift kidney dialysis machine.
Loose lips lose spit.
I for one welcome ou....hey stop following me!
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I, for one, welcome our new robot followers...
-- My Sig is a P228.
With this system, an hospital robot could follow doctors during their rounds.
As if the hordes of medical students weren't enough! Now robots are going to get in the way too?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Robots Master the Conga Line"
No.
Hospital robot = sounds much too practical and boring. Unless they can turn me into Darth Vader, I want no part of it.
Mechanical Squirrels on the other hand is where all the R&D should be at. High tech enough to follow me wherever I go; through water, lava, speeding down the road at supersonic speeds. The sheer volume of applications would be tremendous.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
So if they learn to follow really well, we can dance partners for those that don't have any rhythm or rhyme to their dance moves at all. And finally someone(thing) that can dance like Usher. Sweet!
Anything and Everything about the Net
Supporters to the john....
Dream on. We all know it's true. Even Jon Stewart:
Barack Obama: He completes us!
That's downright hilarious. I really love the juxtaposition of images of the all the animals bowing down to the Lyin' King with the slobbering and drooling over The Messiah at Invesco field last week. The image of Barack Obama superimposed on top of the baby Simba in Disney's "The Lion King" is dead-on. Even the big baby-lion floppy ears match up perfectly with Obama's jug handles.
:-)
Best single line: "Barack Obama: ready enough-ish to lead!"
Even Bill Maher says about the news coverage Obama gets:
I think there is a problem, though, with the media gushing over him too much. I don't think he thinks that he's all that, but the media does. I mean, the coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him.
and there was a radio shack version as well, Robie Jr.
and the japanese had a version, called "charmmy"
the remote had an ultrasonic transmitter, and you input fwd, back, left & right commands which were transmitted
inaudibly, but as the robot had two microphones on his sholders- he followed commands.
then you flipped the 'follow me' switch- and he just homed in on the remote--- using 'stereo'
this was back in the 1980's
what's the big deal? can't the doc carry something that can be tracked from two points on the robot?
imagine, a doctor has a nambadge with an rfid on it (likely already does-even if he doesn't know it) and the robot has
dual RFID readers.... Ping!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I was always precise, fast, and prone to crashing at work; but what really set me apart from the crowd was, being half German, I was a "born follower". I *hate* leading, what with all the decisions and vague metrics of success. I much prefer basking in the flawless execution of my assigned tasks, even when they were morally ambiguous or made no sense at all. I make a great programmer because computers also demand you do things "their way", even it only a tiny fraction of the population can stomach it.
It's only a small step from following leaders physically to following them figuratively. I can only hope that *some* company sticks with the current approach of producing software that treats me as the spineless meat-bag that I am.
Let's just hope that the leader has not turned to the dark side.
Not only will it follow you, but it can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until....
Well, you know the rest.
You'd think following robots would be a no brainer. Put an infrared beacon on the human & program the robot to always be within a certain distance of it.
Thanks, but I already have cats.
Oh sure following is what they WANT us to think they're doing! They start a comfortable 10' away at first, and then over the weeks slowly begin to follow closer and closer until....wait for it... BAM, robotic piano string around your neck with the soft whirrring sound of hydraulic motors tightening their metallic arms pulling the wire tighter and tighter around your neck until they toss your lifeless corpse in a mass grave.
load "$",8,1
i can build my mechanical yeti.
When robots are taught to lead.
Where's R. Daneel when we need him.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Strange. I see no ads on his site... (I opened it for the first time, to check if it really was that ad-laden.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
OMG! I LOVE you, Firefox! :D
I had AdBlock Plus enabled. And I will leave it that way, never knowing how much ads are there. Sorry Roland. No cookie for you.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
In the annual RoboCup@home league they have robots following humans all the time and have been for the past few years. It's one of their standard challenges, e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKfP_Cz9oa0
Let's hope they don't follow Roland.
... we can teach them to love.
"Robots Learn to Swallow"
then I reread it
imagine my disappointment
"But when the robotic "rats" were put into a rectangular arena like that used for experiments with real rats, the robots showed a new behavior. They scuttled along the walls and repeatedly bumped into one corner, but favored one wall. Instead of stopping in a corner they kept going, circling the arena."
BUG in code ???
This is old news if you play Golf in Australia thanks to Shadow Caddy
This is what happened in Terminator. Best destroy them now methinks.
How precisely does following a leader based on signals they give qualify as mimicking a human ability? Ants, bees, and sardines can do this without colliding with whoever is in front or those going in the opposite direction, with bees and sardines managing to do it in three dimensions. Anyone who has seen ducks and geese migrating in neat triangular formations knows that birds also follow leaders quite happily, possibly because nobody's bothered to tell them that it's a human ability which creatures with tiny brains like theirs aren't capable of.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Come here, d0g! Good boy!
Or persue?
In Soviet Russia, the robotic overlords follow you.
America, Home of the Brave.
So now if we can just teach a robot to play the flute, we can have robot pied pipers followed by robot rats all over the place. Then at last humanity will be fulfilled.