Comments on: Lost Robot Asks For Directions

By: surfer7

surfer7 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:49:44 +0000

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,

By: Олег

Олег — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:56:59 +0000

After 5 hours and 38 interactions, ACE reached its destination

By: Farle

Farle — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:56:56 +0000

Yeah, if their database is out of date or the place is new, asking for directions would be quite good idea.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.

By: Anastasios-Antonios Toulkeridis

Anastasios-Antonios Toulkeridis — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:46:20 +0000

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

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:15:29 +0000

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.