robofish

Photo: Reuters

[The robotic fish] will be able to detect changes in environmental conditions in the port and pick up on early signs of pollution spreading, for example by locating a small leak in a vessel. The hope is that this will prevent potentially hazardous discharges at sea, as the leak would undoubtedly get worse over time if not located.

Professor Huosheng Hu of Essex university in the Financial Times speaking of self-piloting robotic fish that will be released into the waters of the port of Gijon to monitor conditions and report back to their base station via Wifi.

Reuters also reported the story »

how to housebreak your robot

i gotta get me an i-pod
Originally uploaded by Dalmatica

First, make sure all computers and robots are never in a position where they must make a decision in which all the consequences cannot be predicted in advance. The likelihood of this strategy being widely deployed is highly unlikely however, as engineers are already building computers and robotic systems for use in environments where actions cannot always be predicted.

Second, do not give robots and computerized systems weapons. Semi-autonomous robotic weapons already exist, in the form of cruise missiles and Predator drones, and military planners are very interested in developing robotic soldiers as a way to reduce the deaths of human soldiers.

Third, install robots with Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics," which state that robots should not harm humans or allow them to come to harm through inaction, robots should always obey humans, and that robotic-self preservation is the lowest priority.

Fourth, program robots with principles for behavior that are more general than simplistic rules.

Fifth, educate robots like children. Machines that learn as they go through new experiences could develop a sensitivity to the actions that people consider to be right or wrong.

Finally, create machines capable of mastering emotions such as empathy, and give robots the ability to read non-verbal social cues.

The ACM's summary of the The New Scientist's review of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong by Yale University ethicist Wendell Wallach and historian and philosopher of cognitive science Colin Allen, at Indiana University.

rockin' 'em, sockin' 'em

Backyard battle. Red Rocker won.

no words.

Just wonder »

From Ryan Heshka's "Neo Pulp" Show at Orbit Gallery in Jersey, some time back.

getting to know you

Phones and computers have shown how people can develop relationships with inanimate electronic objects. The next generation of digital servants will deepen these relationships.

From Alok Jha's piece Robots, our new friends electric? in today's Guardian.

(And this is a good thing?)

barack obama built you a robot

http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

go 'head. click it.


via Gaper's Block

(Actually: via Gaper's Block weekly email newsletter The Party Line, but I can't go ahead and link you to my email Inbox now, can I? That would be kind of pervy.)

holiday diversions, &c.

The bristlebot. Because none of us has nearly enough time to build something like this -- which is why it's nice to live through others.

And when you're entirely short on time for your Christmas greetings, try the holiday-o-matic »

both via Neatorama

electric sheep

Video: Just a robot. Not an evolving one. But this one can do a cool trick with a pendulum.

I asked the World's Best Mechanical Engineer to weigh in on the self-evolving robot idea. This is his response:

The You-Tube presentation really whitewashes the real difficulty with self evolving robots. What he showed, and described, were robots that used evolving strategies for movement. But the robot design did not evolve at all. And in reality, the different strategies the robot used were limited to the imagination of the programmer. So the robot was really just an automated test rig for different movement strategies.

Now what would be really interesting would be a self reproducing robot. Though dauntingly difficult, it probably is probably at the fringe of today's technology.

If you had a machine that could mine it's own iron ore, refine it, and build a duplicate of itself, then you would be constructing the conditions for true evolution. Random variations would occur in the manufacturing process. The good variations would survive and replicate, the bad variations would be inoperable and die out. The significant barriers to something like this would be having the onboard ability to make silicon chips, the onboard ability to process some sort of organic materials for electrical insulation, and the onboard ability to build a power supply. The shear size of the machine could be so vast that it could never lumber from place to place to gather the raw materials.

Possibly this could be solved by subdividing the tasks into two machines that work together. Each machine specialized for special tasks. This would reduce the complexity of each machine substantially. Parts of the two machines that serve identical purposes (such as movement) would be identical for ease of manufacturing. You would have effectively introduced sexuality to the machines, where a male and female are needed to reproduce. This allows one machine to gather resources of one type, while another gathers resources of another type, or actually works on the replication process. Maybe this explains sexuality in animals.

The rate of evolution would have to be very slow, because you would want to be sure that at least one successful machine was built each generation. Random variation would probably be sufficient to drive the evolutionary process.

So when you think it through, the conditions for successful evolution of a machine very much mirror the conditions that nature has created for the successful evolution of plants and animals.

— The World's Best Mechanical Engineer

See more from the World's Best Mechanical Engineer »

change & grow

I {heart} robots
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

I think we need to get away from this idea of designing the machines manually, but actually let them evolve and learn like children.

And perhaps that’s the way we’ll get there.

Hod Lipson talks about evolving robots at TED »

Great brain candy -- video's about eight minutes long. The ideas that Lipson touches upon remind me of Theo Jansen's ideas, albeit as applied to freaky PVC piping creatures.

BTW: Jansen spoke at TED too, and he's on YouTube »

Stunning.

(Ignoring the nurdle problem.)

what we talk about when we talk about love

1950's Halloween Robots
Originally uploaded by Neato Coolville.

One thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable.

Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable too.

Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands commenting on what it will take to fall in love with a robot in Forecast: Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050 in LiveScience.

context is everything

The patterns of light that fall to your eyes are meaningless.

(...)
When the brain looks out to the world, it doesn't see the absolute of things. It sees relationships and uses relationships to build context.

R. Beau Lotto, lead author on a study out of the University College of London, that “suggests all visual distinctions aren't hardwired but rather represent the statistical accumulation of an individual's earlier experience.”

According Dale Purves, director of Duke University's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, who was cited in the brief National Geographic write up on the study, Lotto’s findings represent a “radical departure from the approach to vision taken in the last 50 years.”

Oh yeah -- and they tricked robot brains with optical illusions to figure it out »

vacuum cleaner attachment

This sort of notion that someone would dress a vacuum cleaner seemed strange. A lot more was going on.

Beki Grinter, an associate professor at Georgia Tech's College of Computing, commenting on how the emotional attachment that some humans develop toward their Roomba Robotic Vaccuum Cleaners prompted a Georgia Tech study on emotional design. As reported in The Examiner.

Image source: robotster.com/hack your roomba

Also of interest: Roomba-cum-Frogger

overkill

menace
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Most (elderly) people are not interested in robots. They see robots as overly-complicated and unpractical. They want to be able to get around their house, take a bath, get to the toilet and that's about it.

Ruth Campbell, a geriatric social worker at the University of Tokyo, as quoted in the Reuters report Robots turn off senior citizens in aging Japan.

The emailing kettle remains a big hit, though »

hot bot on bot action

I {heart} robots
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

I learned the power of the 'bot in kindergarten, when I took my favorite toy -- a cool robot that stood about 16 inches high -- to class for show and tell. The boys lined up to take turns looking at it, playing with it, adoring it.

I'm talking lined up around the block, girls.

Never before or since have I commanded so much attention from the boy half of our species. It was a glorious golden moment.

In gratitude and longing for those lost days, I have loved me some robots ever since.

There's a new blog on the block: Suicide Bots »

(Via Boing Boing)