Artificial intelligence systems are good at tackling problems that can be solved using brute force, like chess… All the computer has to do is calculate out every possible permutation of moves and pick the best one. They’re also pretty good at games like poker, where even with incomplete information, a computer can make a move that is statistically ‘best.’ And lastly, they’re good at making decisions far more quickly than a human.

When you combine all of these separate characteristics into one game, things get exponentially more complex, but also much more like real life. And this is why people are trying to teach computers how to play StarCraft, at a level where they can compete with even the best human players.

UC Santa Cruz hosted the 2010 StarCraft AI Competition, which put AI programs through a series of different StarCraft testing scenarios to determine the most effective AI system at micromanagement, small scale combat, tech limited games, and of course full gameplay. The video above shows a bunch of highlights; especially notable is the absolutely brutal use of mutalisks by the eventual AI winner, UC Berkeley’s Overmind.

The last clip in the highlight video shows an AI taking on a world class human player, who wins handily. It’s only a matter of two or three years before humans have no chance against programs like these, however… And the reason (I think) is quite straightforward: the computer can micromanage every single unit it owns, on every part of the map, at the same time. A human can’t. Once the AI reaches a competent level of strategy and unit use (it’s not there yet), we’re screwed, because the AI can just launch multiple simultaneous micromanaged attacks.

There are lots more videos of the different AI programs competing against each other on YouTube here, and you can download in-game replays at the link below.

[ StarCraft AI Competition ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

The world’s most useless robot competition is back for another year, and it just leaves me wondering one thing: can it get any stupider?

Yeah, probably.

Check back in 2011 for the answer.

VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

Marvin Minsky helped found what is now known as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory back in 1959. Only 9 years later, he constructed this tentacle arm, which shows an impressive level of sophistication. There isn’t too much info about it, but here’s the caption from the video, which was posted by MIT CSAIL:

“This film from 1968 shows Marvin Minsky’s tentacle arm, developed at the MIT AI Lab (one of CSAIL’s forerunner labs). The arm had twelve joints and could be controlled by a PDP-6 computer or via a joystick. This video demonstrates that the arm was strong enough to lift a person, yet gentle enough to embrace a child.”

[ MIT CSAIL ]

We know HUBO has skills: he’s able to wield foam swords with fearsome precision. And it looks like he’s got some skills when it comes to dancing, too… Unfortunately, those skills all involve being able to automatically detect and tract live audio beat, and not actually doing anything especially groovy with that knowledge. Well, you have to start somewhere, I guess, but maybe HUBO could take some lessons from HRP-4C.

[ DASL ]

We’ve all seen those videos of cats riding Roombas. It’s sort of cute. But what if you don’t want your cat riding on your Roomba? New from Robot Add-Ons is this accessory for your Roomba that provides your cat with a gentle suggestion not to sit on the robot:

Be assured, after just one use kitty won’t be coming anywhere near your Roomba ever again. Also works on turtles.

Speaking of Robot Add-Ons (you remember them, right?), they’re offering 15% off plus free shipping until November 11th on any of their awesome Roomba and Scooba upgrades. Get your holiday shopping done early (for your robots, at least).

[ Robot Add-Ons ]

Happy birthday ROS! Our first post about ROS (the completely open source Robot Operating System) was sort of as a footnote to another post about Willow Garage, where I mentioned that “if [ROS] catches on, this could be great.” Well, it looks like it’s catching on, as over the last three years ROS has grown exponentially:

These data suggest that by the time ROS celebrates its 10th birthday, there will be over 150,000 ROS repositories! Wow! In the meantime, ROS is running on many, if not most, of the coolest robots in the world, plus a lot of robots that are cheap and easy enough for you to buy and mess with yourself:

Looking towards the future, Willow Garage is proposing a ROS Foundation, which would be sort of like the Mozilla Foundation that’s brought you such quality products as Firefox and Thunderbird. The idea is that ROS stops becoming a Willow Garage project, and transitions into a community owned and community run endeavor.

Meantime, ROS is going strong, and we’ll continue to bring you all the latest and most incredibly awesome robots that use ROS to do what they do.

[ ROS ] VIA [ Willow Garage ]

Yesterday, I got a kidney stone. I would describe what it feels like to get a kidney stone, but I’m not sure that words can do it justice. If you’ve had a kidney stone before, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, be thankful. The only reason that it’s something to look forward to is so that you’ll be able to contrast it with every other pain you’ll ever experience and think, “well, this may be bad, but at least it’s not a kidney stone.”

The first thing I did after the massive (massive) amount of narcotics wore off was to check and see whether I could somehow replace my real kidneys with robotic ones that won’t have this problem. Happily, the answer is “soon.” Ten teams of researchers headed by a group at UCSF have developed an artificial kidney that works just about as well as the real, biological thing. An artificial hemofilter screens toxins, while bioengineered renal tube cells provide other vital functions of a healthy kidney. Your blood pressure keeps the whole thing running without needing batteries or a pump. Besides not being susceptible to kidney stones, the artificial kidney will help save billions of dollars and thousands of lives for people who depend on dialysis.

The researchers already have a proven, working prototype… Problem is, it’s currently the size of a small room, which makes it a bit of a challenge to implant in most people. Using currently existing technology, however, the device should be able to shrink down to about the size of a coffee cup, and clinical trials should start in 5-7 years.

VIA [ Science Daily ]

We get a lot of tips around here, and I feel bad for not being able to respond to every one of you, and for not being able to turn every tip into a post. There’s also robot news that might not quite be the right fit for BotJunkie. Some of this ends up in the BotJunkie Twitter feed, but I thought I’d just post a bunch of interesting stuff all at once today. If you guys like this occasional summary of random robot news, I can do it more often. If not, let me know, and I’ll just focus on the Twitter feed. Okay, here goes!

-What robots might think about the balloon coffee ground grabber hand thing (thanks Sean!)

-Hizook has more details on Cody, the sponge bath robot from yesterday

-RobotShop now serving Europe

-Send your name to Mars on MSL (thanks Oliver!)

-Intelligent wheelchair project from MIT CSAIL

-Gallery of crazy Roomba knockoffs from TIROS2010

-Gearlog’s take on the scariest robots of all time

-Cute little crawlspace robot

-Video: Luke arm goes shopping

-iFixit’s total Pleo teardown

-Plug and play solar panels for LEGO NXT

Well, what do you think? Is it worth your time to have this random robot stuff to look through occasionally, or would you rather I just put things on the Twitter feed?

Thanks!

Cody here comes from Georgia Tech’s Healthcare Robotics Lab; we first met him back in March. Since then, Cody’s been busy, learning how to give sponge baths. All an operator has to do is to select an area of a patient, and Cody will autonomously go to work. In the video above, there are little blue squares of debris that Cody has been assigned to clean up, and clearly, he’s pretty good at it. Very good. He goes nice and sloooowww. Yeah… Just like that.

Cody’s more than just a pleasurebot, though. He’s learning how to help out in hospitals and care facilities, to reduce the workload on nurses and direct care workers. This means better healthcare for everyone in the long run, and we can all look forward to getting sponged down by robots. I know I am.

[ Georgia Tech Healthcare Robotics ]

Note: this video might not display unless you click through to the post page

Everyone’s favorite TV show, NewsHour on PBS, had a segment on robots last week, and it’s now online. There’s nothing super new and exciting, at least not for loyal BotJunkie readers, but there’s bits of new footage of PR2′s towel folding and some other stuff. They couldn’t avoid a breathless “How close are we to being replaced by robots?” tagline, but we’ll forgive them, because Jim Lehrer is badass.

[ PBS NewsHour ]

Thanks Mom!