Lost Robot Asks For Directions
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 14 of May , 2009 at 4:41 am
The Technical University of Munich dropped off their ACE (Autonomous City Explorer) robot somewhere in Munich with no maps and instructions to make its way to the city center, 1.5 kilometers away. How was it supposed to do that? Same way you would: by asking strangers for directions.
ACE is able to search out humans, verbally ask for directions, interpret pointing gestures, say “thank you,” and proceed on its way. After 5 hours and 38 interactions, ACE reached its destination. I have to wonder, though, if we really want robots to be asking people for directions. It’s not a very efficient use of time, especially considering the various highly accurate navigation systems available to robots and the notorious fallibility of humans. I mean, I can understand how it’s a friendly thing to do, and how the robot is emulating what a person would do in the same situation, but part of the point of robots is that they can be better than us, right? Asking for directions is just so, you know, biological. Ew.
VIA [ New Scientist ]
Comments (5)
Category: Research
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Comment by Alex
Made Thursday, 14 of May , 2009 at 10:15 am
This is actually pretty cool. If the robot’s internal gps malfunctions or it loses its mapping data, it can still reach a goal position by following human advice. Not a bad back-up plan for robots patrolling populated areas, so long as the people there don’t despise the machines enough to give them wrong directions.
Comment by Anastasios-Antonios Toulkeridis
Made Thursday, 14 of May , 2009 at 11:46 am
hehe, i don’t think their intention was to evaluate the practical usefulness of this, but rather improve the research in areas such as human-machine interaction.
The author of this post is right to point out that imitating the human-way of doing things is not always the way to go. Humans are restricted by their biological mechanisms. Those mechanisms were not designed but rather evolved. Evolution takes small steps by modifying/improving existing mechanisms. No radical change takes place, at least nothing of the GPS type :-)
The way i see it, it is more likely that humans will eventually adopt “ways of the machine” than the other way. I patiently wait for the advent of wearable-computing/augmented-reality
Comment by Farle
Made Thursday, 14 of May , 2009 at 3:56 pm
Yeah, if their database is out of date or the place is new, asking for directions would be quite good idea. But I imagine its more about interaction and interpretation than just navigation problems.
Comment by Олег
Made Thursday, 28 of May , 2009 at 11:56 am
After 5 hours and 38 interactions, ACE reached its destination
Comment by surfer7
Made Wednesday, 10 of June , 2009 at 3:49 am
I mean, I can understand how it’s a friendly thing to do, and how the robot is emulating what a person would do in the same situation,