Robot Thinks Ahead, Knows When You Screw Something Up
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 24 of June , 2009 at 5:46 am
For robots to really become useful to humans on a day to day basis, they’re going to have to learn to do some thinking on their own. They’ll have to go beyond their programming to some extent, with the ability not just to learn, but also to draw on past experiences to predict how to accomplish unfamiliar goals, both independently and cooperatively. Researchers from the European Joint Action Science and Technology project are working on an artificial intelligence system that not only allows robots to learn tasks from humans (we’ve seen that before, both directly and indirectly), but also to predict how to assist a human with an unfamiliar task.
In the video above, both the robot and the human have been presented with an unfamiliar object to be created from a set of parts. As the human puts pieces together, the robot is able to ‘visualize’ the parts required to assemble the finished object and follow along with the human, suggesting what part might go next and keeping an eye out for mistakes. This is a big deal because for the robot is able to anticipate a series of commands without relying on an explicit program, and in the future, AI like this might help robots do what you want without you even having to ask.
The next step, I can only assume, is to give the robot the capability to say, “give me those pieces, you stupid slow meatsack, I’ll do it myself.”
Comments (1)
Category: Artificial Intelligence, Research
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Comment by Lyle
Made Wednesday, 24 of June , 2009 at 9:26 pm
Does this remind anyone else of the Microsoft Office Paperclip? At least this time it’s embodied and you could wring it’s neck!