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The Changing Face of Robotics
An anonymous reader writes "Using sensors to interface socially, the next generation of robots may not fit the classic idea of what a robot should be. Glen Martin writes: 'Equipped with two articulated arms, it can perform a multitude of tasks. It requires no application code to start up, and no expensive software to function. No specialists are required to program it; workers with minimal technical background can "teach" the robot right on the production line through a graphical user interface and arm manipulation.'"
"workers with minimal technical background can 'teach' the robot right on the production line through a graphical user interface and arm manipulation"
How the hell do you have a graphical user interface without anyone having ever written any software for it? My understanding of what a robot "should be" already *is*, "you should not have to buy it expensive 3rd-party software, it runs the software it was already programmed to run when you bought it". Otherwise it would be a general-purpose computer that happens to have arm attachments.
Cool. I love the idea of virtually zero employment thanks to ubiquitous robots.
Wonder how that's going to work out...no workers means no one collects a paycheck. Only a few people will own all the resources. So what...the government gives the people a stipend? And we spend it on whatever the robots make? Or do we just cut out the middle man, hand the robots over to the people through government proxies, and make whatever we want?
Man, I would say in the long run, capitalism doesn't have much of a future.
I've always wanted to be a robot's pet.
Now Mr Robot, this is what I want you to do. When the boss comes by, I want you to lift up both arms like this, now extend your middle actuators and shout, "Blow it out your tailpipe!"
time to cut full time down maybe 20-32 hours.
Let's start with 32 hours / 4 days a week with an end to the salary no OT pay or maybe a high mini level of pay to have the no OT pay say 100K+ COL
Also an high H-1B min wage say 125k+
They will be programmed to KILL. What then???
Captcha: Murder
Why the recent interest in robots? Robots were used extensively in the 70s and 80s in car factories. They didn't need much computing power. They didn't take over jobs in many industries as many predicted back then. Why is there a more recent interest in robots? Does good machine vision require lots of CPU power? Have Chinese wages become too expensive? Have Mexican wages become too expensive? Is the ACA that horrible? Were factory managers too lazy to think of how robots could benefit them?
use both arms
hobbyist dilettante so that you don't baby...don't fear Discussion I'm more g4y than they 4as been my only people playing can said one FreeBSD Encountered while
What the hell? Two arms and multiple functions? You call that a robot? Can a 10 year old whizz kid deep into pod race subculture build it in his bedroom from kits? Can it play co-pilot to a X-wing space fighter? No? Then it ain't no robot.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is how the next generation robot looks like.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The 2012 interview was more informative:
" Indeed. We don't mean "common sense" from a Marvin Minsky-like strong AI perspective. Baxter's "execution" application consists of a series of behavior-based systems. During "training," the robot detects task-relevant features and uses it to build up the behavior based system.
For example, let's say a user is training the robot for a pick and place task. During the "pick" phase, a user places the gripper above an object and closes the gripper. The force on the gripper is detected by the robot. Our "training" application detects this sequence as "the robot is grasping an object"... so during "execution", Baxter won't proceed unless it actually detects an object in the robots gripper. Thus, if the object fell out, it would stop (or do something else). This is different from how existing industrial robots work -- they'd just merrily continue the pick-and-place without the object.
Collectively, these "behavior primitives" are assigned and composed, ie. "learned", during "training" by having non-technical users directly manipulate the robot rather than programming it (which is also possible for those inclined). This gives the robot an air of common sense."
This is useful, but not that intelligent. Take a look at these PR videos to see what it can do. Basically, it can pack and unpack things, and move them from one place to another. It's not good enough to assemble much of anything. Plugging in connectors to assemble a phone? Not with this machine and software.
Heinlein's "Door into summer" describes Flexible Frank robot with exactly those capabilities.
Finally, a device to punch someone in the face over Internet. It couldn't have arrived sooner.