AMARSi Project Aims To Have Robots Learn Jobs From Co-workers

Lanxon writes "Robots of the future will be capable of learning more complex behaviors than ever before if a new, pan-European research project succeeds in its goal of developing the world's first architecture for advanced robotic motor skills, reports Wired. If successful, the four-year AMARSi (Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills) project could see a manufacturing world filled with autonomous, intelligent humanoid worker bots that can learn new skills by interacting with their co-workers."

Comments

flamebait?

[girlintraining]

I know I'm going to hell for this but... why build robots when it costs less to use a bunch of third world labor? I'm all for technology, but when you've got a few billion people just laying around with not much to do, it makes more sense to hire them for pennies than to build a robotic replacement that costs thousands plus maintenance.

Oh great

[Trip6]

Now instead of teaching an Indian my job so it can be outsourced to India I'll teach a robot so it can be robo-sourced.

So, the new skills will include...

[russotto]

...hanging around the water cooler, bitching about management, sexually harassing other co-workers, having non-work-related discussions... in short, we'll end up with Bender.

Dealing with Abundance

[headkase]

What are we going to do once we move all of our manufacturing and service sectors over to robots? There won't be much work left for humans to do. We will either enter a ghetto like state where everyone lives on the street and the people who own the robots live well or we will enter some sort of communist utopia where all human needs are automatically fulfilled as needed. Its not that unimaginable, the Star Trek future is a communist utopia which is also a military dictatorship albeit a benevolent one.

Another "train your replacement" scam

[pongo000]

Sounds like a high-tech version of the current "train your replacement" scam where employers have you train the young, foreign-born, low-wage worker that is slated to take over your job when you're laid off. I'd like to see how the labor unions respond to this one.

Robot learning is new? Nah

[nurb432]

Ummm i saw this nearly 20 years ago, where a line worker physically 'walked' the new robot thru its paces to perform the task. After a single training lesson, the robot was on its own. ( and the program was copied to the rest of the robots on the same line. )

Worked out better then having some process engineer that lived in a box ( ok ok, nice clean cubicle up in the admin building ) try to program the steps in a vacuum then spend weeks refining it.