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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.'"
"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.
Don't let that bowtie fool you. I know a Dalek when I see one.
Beer? Great! But what is beer without titties?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwb1s1DYnDU
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Any UBC EEs from 83/84 will remember our robot, also called Basil, because it was somewhat faulty (Fawlty).
"...runs Linux with some instructions in Java..."
Uh-oh, they used the J-word. Wait until the Slashdot Religious Order gets their hands on them.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
welcome my beer. Thanks, robot underling.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
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.
This strategy seemed to work very well for George W. Bush.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I for one, really like the way they decided to proceed when making this robot. It works by a healthy mix of abstracting and trial and error.
Let's take the wooden chair, that is used as an example in TFA. As far as I understand it, learning about it and using this information for the robot goes like this.
They put the robot in front of the chair and let it use it's sonars on it from different angles and distances. I imagine that in the case of a typical wooden chair with a back it sees four points for the legs and a line for the back. At least I believe that it abstracts it as such. For the first time it will be input to it that the thing it sees is a wooden chair and it knows that all things that have four points about so far from each other in a squared manner and have a line above two of the side points can be regarded as a wooden chair. If it sees another chair made of metal without the back for example, it might consider that to be a wooden chair as well because it's similar enough and in that case the makers correct it's assumption and say it's a metal chair. Sure, it will start to think that all the chairs without the back are metal chairs, but if that's the case in their home, so what, it's right. If it understands anything wrong enough that it fails at its task it can always be corrected and its knowledge about the world as it sees it will increase. Now when performing tasks it can treat the chair as an abstract object, now that it can recognize it. It can memorize where it stands, it can learn to avoid it or push it or whatever, as long as humans correct its assumptions and choices. Now these abstractions could be abstracted even further. The idea is to let it do very simple things and then combine them into larger tasks, much like programmers think about and solve programming problems: If you want to solve a large problem and you don't know how to, you break it into smaller pieces until you get a piece, that is simple enough to be solved. You solve it and see the next piece. Then you combine the solutions to a solution to the bigger problem and you finally end up with the first and biggest problem getting solved. This robot 'learns' the exact opposite way.
It seems to me that the biggest concern in this case is abstracting the objects it 'sees' into such a form, that they take minimal memory but can still be used in the recognition process.
That came out as ranting. I have no knowledge in the subject and have no idea what I'm talking about but that should make this a good enough Slashdot comment.
I have a project on-line that allows you to build a basic robot for $500. It has PWM motor control and basic tips on building the base. It uses a PS/2 mouse to do wheel encoders. (cheap) and using a USB A-D/D-A board to control stuff.
I am a current user of your software, I found your site when looking for a way to implement wheel encoders for my robot. It has been extremely useful to me.
For the I/O hardware on my robot, I have implemented drivers for both a Pontech SV203 and Arduino Diecimila board. I also wrote an encoder driver to use the Linux event interface rather than the ps2 interface so I could use a USB mouse encoder. On top of your software I have written a Player driver to allow me to use the robot within their framework, opening up a massive amount of new high-level functions for the robot.
I just wanted to thank you for making your software freely available, it has helped me transform my robot from nothing to something that can localize, navigate and avoid obstacles. It has done real work sanding my deck and vacuuming my floor, now if I can only get a snowblower attachment going I will be set.
Enigma