Denver Couple Unveils Homemade Service Robot

An anonymous reader writes "Jim & Louise Gunderson, owners of a Denver-based computer software tool development company, have finally unveiled their autonomous robot, Basil. Basil is completely home built, runs Linux with some instructions in Java, uses a sonar-based 'reification' logic system, and can go get you a beer or a pot of tea. Quoting: 'The plan is this: The Gundersons will ask Basil to go to the bar, request a couple of stouts from the bartender, and then, once they're placed on the titanium tray perched on his head, bring them back to his creators. They haven't told him how to do this — there's no set script in his processors that tells him to roll a certain distance southwest, speak a certain command, then come back. He'll have to figure it all out on his own, using a basic knowledge of bars and beers and so on, reasoning skills and an ability to understand certain parts of the world. When his sonars capture the image of a person, for example, he knows it's a person, not just a nameless object to be avoided. And he knows that, in this case, that person wants a beer.'"

Comments

FAAAAAKKKEE

[BadAnalogyGuy]

"I recognize a person 69cm away"
"I recognize a wooden chair"

Right. Using sonar, the robot is able to determine the composition of the chair.

Given that the robot's speech patterns are not broken at all, and that it speaks in complete sentences, it seems more likely that this is a blinkenlites contraption with a very human person controlling it the whole time.

Re:FAAAAAKKKEE

[Baron_Yam]

I won't disagree that it's fake, but I expect the sonar return is qualitatively affected by the type of surface it hits.

Even my human ears can tell the difference between some types of wall coverings based on ambient sound reflections.

In short, I'd want an expert in sonar to call bullshit on this one before I definitively choose sides.

Re:FAAAAAKKKEE

[Zironic]

From reading the article it seems to think every object with 4 feet and a straight back is a wooden chair and all the voices are probably prerecorded. It's not like it can invent new abstract objects on it's own.

Re:FAAAAAKKKEE

[juiceboxfan]

Right. Using sonar, the robot is able to determine the composition of the chair.

That's a bit cynical. While it's unlikely this thing is as autonomous as they would like us to believe there may be an explanation for the "detailed" description of the objects. Perhaps it was taught that an object of that height/width is a "wooden chair". And, much as a young child will run around and point at any small animal and say "doggy!" no matter what type of animal it is, anything about that size and shape is recognized as a "wooden chair".

Without more information it's hard to say for sure.

Re:FAAAAAKKKEE

[davester666]

Evidently, my mind is in the gutter, as when I read "service robot", I did not think of the kind of service that the summary actually discusses.

Sounds exaggerated

[Animats]

It looks like the sensors are dumb ranging sonars at four heights. Those are very crude sensors; all you get is the range of the nearest solid object in a 30 degree cone. You could probably separate walls, tables, chairs, and humans with that, at least some of the time. It won't ever work very well. People have been fooling with those things since the 1980s. (The usual sonar sensors are left over from Polaroid auto-focus cameras. Very few robotics people have tried to do serious sonar processing, like submarines or bats.) You're just too information-starved. Vision, though...

There's been much more progress in the last five years than most people realize, though. SLAM works now. Vision algorithms actually work. Low-cost inertial devices work. We're starting to see the payoff from the DARPA Grand Challenge, which gave robotics a serious and needed butt-kick.