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Researchers Create the First AI-Controlled Robotic Limb That Can Learn To Walk Without Being Programmed (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: Researchers at the University of Southern Carolina (USC) claim to have created the first AI-controlled robotic limb that can learn how to walk without being explicitly programmed to do so. The algorithm they used is inspired by real-life biology. Just like animals that can walk soon after birth, this robot can figure out how to use its animal-like tendons after only five minutes of unstructured play.
Today, most robots take months or years before they are ready to interact with the rest of the world. But with this new algorithm, the team has figured out how to make robots that can learn by simply doing. This is known in robotics as "motor babbling" because it closely mimics how babies learn to speak through trial and error. "During the babbling phase, the system will send random commands to motors and sense the joint angles," co-author Ali Marjaninejad an engineer at USC, told PC Mag. "Then, it will train the three-layer neural network to guess what commands will produce a given movement. We then start performing the task and reinforce good behavior."
Today, most robots take months or years before they are ready to interact with the rest of the world. But with this new algorithm, the team has figured out how to make robots that can learn by simply doing. This is known in robotics as "motor babbling" because it closely mimics how babies learn to speak through trial and error. "During the babbling phase, the system will send random commands to motors and sense the joint angles," co-author Ali Marjaninejad an engineer at USC, told PC Mag. "Then, it will train the three-layer neural network to guess what commands will produce a given movement. We then start performing the task and reinforce good behavior."
There's a link there: https://pt.usc.edu/2019/03/08/...
There is no need for journalists to add another layer between us and researchers any more thanks to the internet.
Remember playing the telephone game as a kid? It's better to get info from the horse's mouth than have it passed down and muddled through extra layers.
Of Wallace and Gromit fame. Now with even less penguin required.
Boring! Too many facts and stuff! And they'll be low on trackers and that sort of crud.
C'mon, haven't you figured BeauHD, msmash, and EditorDavid are adderall-addicted millennials desperate for more clicks from other millennials? It so clearly shows in their "work".
What's really *cool* with an arm trained by machine learning it doesn't have to get it exactly right. Close enough is plenty good for many tasks that do not require finesse, like crushing or walking in a general direction, etc
Dr. Strangelove had a few issues with the first generation arm.
I'm an embedded firmware engineer and it's so awesome to know that there is technology that will allow me to ship product with blank processors that will learn on its own without being programmed. Makes my job so much easier!
Most of the "breakthroughs" in AI are from about 20 years ago. Turns out much of what failed then failed because their neural nets were too small. Also, sometimes things work when rediscovered because the person is implementing the idea independently without the baggage of wrong ideas that seemed correct and lead people down the wrong path.
Everything but incremental improvements "didn't really work" until one day someone figured out how to make it work. Hopefully they give appropriate credit.
https://www.dailymotion.com/vi...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I am Groot?
I'm thinking of a more...recreational application of this kind of software. Something that might be found on the "Silicon Wives" website, for example.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
it was the hype over 20 years ago, and was discarded soon after it didn't really work. It looks like the new generation is learning it all over again.
Except now it does work.
The most accurate word in TFA: "Scarily".
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
Lame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Are the slashdot editors doing their jobs on the phones now, and letting autocorrect fix their typos?
1. What could possibly go wrong?
2. And so it begins.
3. I, for one, welcome our self-learning robotic-arm overlords.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
It was obviously programmed to find the movements that make it walk. Is yes, it was programmed to walk.