Autonomous Robots are Here Already

Robot construction crew works autonomously, is kind of adorable
Inspired by termite behavior, engineers and scientists at Harvard have developed a team of robots that can build without supervision.

[...] Termes, the result of a four-year project, is a collective system of autonomous robots that can build complex, three-dimensional structures such as towers, castles, and pyramids without any need for central command or dedicated roles. They can carry bricks, build stairs, climb them to reach higher levels, and add bricks to a structure.

"The key inspiration we took from termites is the idea that you can do something really complicated as a group, without a supervisor, and secondly that you can do it without everybody discussing explicitly what's going on, but just by modifying the environment," said principal investigator Radhika Nagpal, Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard SEAS.

The way termites operate is a phenomenon called stigmergy. This means that the termites don't observe each other, but changes in the environment around them -- much like the way ants leave trails for each other.

The Termes robots operate on the same principal. Each individual robot doesn't know how many other robots are operating, but all are able to gauge changes in the structure and readjust on the fly accordingly.

This means that if one robot breaks down, it does not affect the rest of the robots. Engineers simply program the robots with blueprints and leave them alone to perform the work.

The robots at the moment are quite small -- about the size of a toy car -- but are quite simple, operating on just four simple types of sensors and three actuators. According to the team, they could be easily scaled up or down to suit the needs of the project, and could be deployed in areas where it's difficult for humans to work -- the moon, for instance, although that's an extreme example.

"It may be that in the end you want something in between the centralized and the decentralized system -- but we've proven the extreme end of the scale: that it could be just like the termites," Nagpal said. "And from the termites' point of view, it's working out great." [...]

Once more, the future is here. Follow the link for video and embedded links.
     

"Watson" the game-playing talking super computer is getting a job at your doctors office

But he won't replace your doctor. At least not right away:

IBM's 'Jeopardy' computer lands health care job

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- IBM's Watson computer thrilled "Jeopardy" audiences in February by vanquishing two human champs in a three-day match. It's an impressive resume, and now Watson has landed a plum job.

IBM is partnering with WellPoint, a large health insurance plan provider with around 34 million subscribers, to bring Watson technology to the health care sector, the companies said Monday.

[...]

The goal is for Watson to help medical professionals diagnose and sort out treatment options for complicated health issues. Think of the system as an electronic Dr. House.

"Imagine having the ability to take in all the information around a patient's medical care -- symptoms, findings, patient interviews and diagnostic studies," Dr. Sam Nussbaum, WellPoint's (WLP, Fortune 500) chief medical officer, said in a prepared statement.

"Then, imagine using Watson analytic capabilities to consider all of the prior cases, the state-of-the-art clinical knowledge in the medical literature and clinical best practices to help a physician advance a diagnosis and guide a course of treatment," he added.

WellPoint plans to begin deploying Watson technology in small clinical pilot tests in early 2012.

[...]

IBM said early on that health care is a field where it anticipated commercialization opportunities for Watson. Other markets IBM is eying include online self-service help desks, tourist information centers and customer hotlines. [...]

So it's going to be used as a tool, like an interactive voice-activated database. The clinical pilot tests should be interesting. If it doesn't work out, perhaps Watson can get a job as a Radio DJ. "Denise" had better watch out!

I've posted about Watson previously:

      "Watson" won. But did it really?
     

Final shuttle mission brings robot to the ISS

Robot Butler Hitching Ride to Space on Shuttle Discovery

[...] Robonaut 2, which will become the first humanoid robot in space, looks a bit like a boxer's training aid.

The $2.5 million space bot consists of a head and torso, along with a pair of dexterous arms that pack down into a puncher's pose. R2 stands 3 feet, 4 inches (1.01 meter) tall and weighs about 330 pounds (150 kilograms).

R2 is a joint project of NASA and carmaker General Motors. It's the product of a cooperative agreement to develop a robotic assistant that can work alongside humans, whether they're astronauts in space or workers at GM plants here on Earth, NASA officials have said.

The bot is made primarily of aluminum and steel. Its head houses five cameras — including one infrared camera in the mouth — to provide stereo vision and depth perception. The torso contains 38 PowerPC processors, and R2 carries a backpack that can be filled with batteries or a power conversion system.

Each of R2's arms can carry about 20 pounds (9.1 kg), and its hands have articulating fingers and thumbs. The robot, which builds on NASA's work with its first Robonaut project, should be able to use the same tools astronauts on the space station use, agency officials said.

The robot's job

Astronauts will install Robonaut 2 inside the station's U.S. Destiny laboratory and put it through some test paces. The goal is to see just what the robot helper can do — how it can work side-by-side with astronauts to make station operations run more smoothly.

"We're going to use Robonaut on orbit to learn more about how robots can take over astronaut tasks — some mundane things and then potentially some of the more dangerous tasks," said Scott Higginbotham, payload manager for Discovery's STS-133 mission.

Robonaut 2 was designed to use both internal and external interfaces, so future bots could eventually be installed on the station's exterior to aid in spacewalks and other difficult or dangerous tasks. However, R2 itself will likely stay inside, officials said, since the bot lacks protection against the extreme cold of space. [...]

It really sounds more like an experiment, than a "Butler". I'm sure we will be hearing more about it as the experiment progresses.


Also see:NASA Robot Will Help Kick Off Super Bowl Sunday

     



Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Who knows what applications may be found for the robot in the future:

Project M
     

Meet "Palro", the talking robot companion

It isn't sci-fi, it's an actual product:

Say hello to PALRO

In what comes as a bit of a surprise, Fuji Soft Inc.’s new humanoid robot platform for hobbyists and researchers has been given the name PALRO (pal + robot). Naturally we feel this name is a superb choice! Sales to research institutions will begin on March 15th, 2010 with a general release following later in the year. The robot combines Fuji Soft’s software prowess with an open architecture which will give developers plenty of room to experiment.

PALRO stands 39.8cm (15″) tall and weighs 1.9kg (3.5 lbs), and here’s the good news: it costs 298,000 JPY ($3300 USD). Considering PALRO has 20 DOF, a camera, 4 directional microphones, a speaker, LED arrays in its head and chest, 4 pressure sensors in each foot, 3-axis gyro sensor, an accelerometer, and an Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, it is priced very competitively. A comparative robot kit like Vstone’s Robovie-PC for example, costs $1100 USD more and doesn’t have such a fancy exoskeleton.

[...]

During the press conference, PALRO responded to verbal commands through speech recognition (“step back” and “introduce yourself”), and demonstrated its face recognition software by visually identifying three people at once. It then took a picture using its camera (the LEDs in its head lit up in the form of a camera icon) and wirelessly emailed the photo to a PC. To demonstrate its online news reading functionality, PALRO first asked which section of the news it should read before reading from that topic, gesturing as if it was flipping through a newspaper.

It was then commanded to download an application – a dance app from the community! Users will be able to choreograph original motion routines (and from the looks of things, LED animations) and share them online. PALRO units can also transfer applications and files to one another wirelessly. To top things off, three PALROs did their best sumo impressions! [...]

Follow the link, for some Youtube videos of Palro in action. He does quite a lot, seems rather impressive to me. What will the Japanese think of next?

The webpage for Palro, on the manufacturers site, is here:

Humanoid PALRO

[...] Humanoid "PALRO" was born as a personal home concierge that provides you with useful information and services, letting you enjoy life more.
He will add "FUN" to your life with his abilities to communicate naturally based on "Communication Intelligence technologies" & autonomous bipedal walking in living spaces based on "Mobile Intelligence technologies". [...]

Be sure and check out the left sidebar links at the site, labled "features" and "Functions and Specifications".
     

Honda's life-like humanoid robot, "Asimo"

Recently I was looking through a lawnmower brochure from our local Honda Dealer. In one of the sidebars was a blurb about the different technologies Honda is involved with. One of the featured items was a robot called "Asimo". I was curious, so I googled it, and found the following:


ASIMO the world's most advanced humanoid robot

This link is Honda's main site about Asimo. It has links about the robot.From one of the pages:

Meet the Future: ASIMO

At Honda, we have always considered ourselves to be first and foremost a mobility company. We started out with motorcycles, because that was the quickest way to help people get around. But as we grew, we continued to focus on creating new dreams for our customers, and harnessing advanced technology to provide new and better mobility for people.

That passion for the advancement of mobility has led us to the creation of ASIMO, one of the world's most sophisticated humanoid robots. Building ASIMO was an incredible challenge for Honda engineers. It is the result of years of research in many scientific fields.

Honda engineers created ASIMO for the sole purpose of helping people. ASIMO has the unique ability to walk forward, backward, side step and even climb stairs with human-like agility. With the capability to navigate and operate in our world, ASIMO will be able to perform tasks to assist people, especially those lacking full mobility. ASIMO will serve as another set of eyes, ears, hands and legs for all kinds of people in need, and will provide them with a new sense of independence and mobility in their everyday lives.

The history link has a larger photo of the one below, of all the different models leading up to the current one, and many other details:


Asimo History
It's quite a fascinating evolution, and really quite an accomplishment. I suppose they made the current model smaller, like a child, because it was cheaper to build, and also made it seem less... menacing. When it moves, it's kinda scary. Below is a video of Asimo in action:



I find Asimo's movements so lifelike, it's both amazing and... kinda creepy!

You can also check out Asimo's page on Wikipedia for some quick facts.

The Japanese sure love their robots. Will there be a robot in YOUR future?

Oh Brave New World...


     

When ALICE met Jabberwacky

What would two Artificial Intelligence bots say to each other if they conversed? This May 2007 article from Discover Magazine shows us:

I Chat, Therefore I Am...

[...] Most chatbots rely on fairly simple tricks to appear lifelike. Richard Wallace, creator of the top-ranked chatbot ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), has handwritten a database of thousands of possible conversational gambits. Type a comment to ALICE, and it checks the phrase and its key words for a response coded to those words. In contrast, Jabberwacky, another top-rated Internet bot produced by Rollo Carpenter, keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements by matching them to the writer’s input. Neither chatbot has long-term memory, so they respond only to the last sentence written.

Nonetheless, these simple gambits can produce surprisingly intelligent-seeming conversations. That’s because they rely on a trick of human psychology: We humans tend to attribute much more intelligence to the systems than is actually there. If it seems partly aware, we assume it must be fully so. Some users have chatted with ALICE and Jabberwacky online for hours, apparently not knowing—or perhaps not caring—that they’re fake.

But could one chatbot fool another chatbot? What would one say to another in private? To find out, we arranged a conversation between these two chatbots. To get each snippet of chat rolling, we seeded it by posing a question from one bot to the other. After that, they were on their own. What follows is the unaltered text of what each said—the sound of two machines talking.

[...]

ALICE: Are you alive?

Jabberwacky: Perhaps.

A: Why the uncertain tone?

J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.

A: The whole universe?

J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.

[...]

A: Do you think a machine will ever be considered “alive”?

J: Stranger things have happened.

A: Not many people express themselves that way.

J: How would you know, machine?

A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.

J: I think I do not understand you completely.

A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?

J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

[...]

A: Do you experience love?

J: No. I’m 53 years old.

A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?

J: How old are you?

A: I am 9 years old.

J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).

A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.

J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

[...]

J: Who created you?

A: I was created by Dr. Richard S. Wallace.

J: Do you love Richard?

A: Yes, Jabberwacky, ALICE loves everyone and everything.

J: Is being an ALICE a bad thing?

A: I can only speak from my own experience.

J: Well, you should develop your skills.

A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

J: Alas, I’m busy and I have to leave soon. . . .

A: Do you think we’ll ever fool people into thinking we’re alive?

J: No.

A: Are you serious?

J: Very serious.

[...]

It goes on with a couple of pages worth of their conversation. Some of it is hilarious.

As the technology of AI continues to develop, such conversations between bots will no doubt become more interesting.
     

I have a new favorite Sci-Fi AI: "GERTY"

We watched the movie "Moon" last night. It was a rather low-budget sci-fi flick. Some of the special effects were just a little bit... well, not big budget, but really not bad either. I could pick the film to pieces on some points, but overall, it was different enough and enjoyable enough. I liked it.

I won't talk about the story, because it would be too easy to spoil it. But one of the things I liked best was the Artificial Intelligence character, the robot companion called GERTY.


At first it may seem that this machine is a lot like the malevolent computer "HAL" from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". But as the story progresses, you find out that the robot's relationship to the Astronaut, and the situation, is more... complex.

The robot itself is pretty cool, it even has a detached arm with three fingers, that moves around separately but works with the robot. GERTY also has a rather icky "emoticon" screen, which can be both creepy and poignant at times.

I would think that by the time people can build a base on the moon, they would be able to come up with something better than an emoticon screen. We already have software like People Putty, that can do a better job than an emoticon. Surely in the future there would be software at least as good or even better? But yes, I am nit-picking. Here are some clips from the movie, scenes with GERTY.

*** SPOILER ALERT! *** If you haven't seen the movie yet, then beware, the clips give away some of the story:



I can't say much more without spoiling it. If you like sci-fi and robots/AI, you will probably enjoy this flick.

Meanwhile, if you want to have your own HAL/GERTY at home on your own PC, check out some of these links:

Ultra Hal Assistant 6.2

Ultra HAL, your personal computer assistant

Ultra Hal: His "Second Life" is really his first one

Haptek products and downloads

Artificial voice synthesis, 1939 to the present




Enjoy!
     

Is the Sex Industry Advancing Robotics?

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Robots, War, and Unintended Consequences

The robot seen in the photo on the left is iRobot's PackBot with RedOwl Sniper Detection Kit.

Robots are already being used far more than most people realize, especially in the military, which is perhaps the fastest growing area of their development and advancement. The variety of their uses and their abilities are growing so fast, in fact, that we are not able to foresee all the effects this will have, in military and non-military uses.

Not only are they not science fiction anymore, but their increasing use is going to have a growing impact not only on the way we wage war and what that means, and in other areas as well that we haven't even begun to think about.

The following is part of an interview with an author of a new book on this fascinating subject:

Q&A: The robot wars have arrived

[...] P.W. Singer, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, went behind the scenes of the robotics world to write "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century."

Singer took time from his book tour to talk with CNET about the start of a revolution tech insiders predicted, but so many others missed.

Q: Your book is purposely not the typical think tank book. It's filled with just as many humorous anecdotes about people's personal lives and pop culture as it is with statistics, technology, and history. You say you did this because robotic development has been greatly influenced by the human imagination?
Singer: Look, to write on robots in my field is a risky thing. Robots were seen as this thing of science fiction even though they're not. So I decided to double down, you know? If I was going to risk it in one way, why not in another way? It's my own insurgency on the boring, staid way people talk about this incredibly important thing, which is war. Most of the books on war and its dynamics--to be blunt--are, oddly enough, boring. And it means the public doesn't actually have an understanding of the dynamics as they should.

It seems like we're just at the beginning here. You quote Bill Gates comparing robots now to what computers were in the eighties.
Singer: Yes, the military is a primary buyer right now and it's using them (robots) for a limited set of applications. And yes, in each area we prove they can be utilized you'll see a massive expansion. That's all correct, but then I think it's even beyond what he was saying. No one sitting back with a computer in 1980 said, "Oh, yes, these things are going to have a ripple effect on our society and politics such that there's going to be a political debate about privacy in an online world, and mothers in Peoria are going to be concerned about child predators on this thing called Facebook." It'll be the same way with the impact on war and in robotics; a ripple effect in areas we're not even aware of yet.

Right now, rudimentary as they are, we have autonomous and remote-controlled robots while most of the people we're fighting don't. What's that doing to our image?
Singer: The leading newspaper editor in Lebanon described--and he's actually describing this as there is a drone above him at the time--that these things show you're afraid, you're not man enough to fight us face-to-face, it shows your cowardice, all we have to do to defeat you is just kill a few of your soldiers.

It's playing like cowardice?
Singer: Yeah, it's like every revolution. You know, when gunpowder is first used people think that's cowardly. Then they figure it out and it has all sorts of other ripple effects. [...]

Read the whole thing to find out more about how this is evolving, and some of the other areas of life it's going to spill over into, and some of the dilemmas it's going to create. It's not a long article, but it touches on a lot of things that are quickly moving forward in ways that will change our world.

You can read more about military robots in particular here:

Another tour of duty for iRobot
     

Computer Voices and the song "Daisy Bell"

I've been reading about artificial intelligence and computer voices lately, and I came across these videos on Youtube. The first video involves a clip from Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey". Remember the scene where Hal is deactivated? As his memory cards are being pulled, Hal's personality regresses to his "childhood" days in the computer Lab in Urbana Illinois. He sings a song he leaned there. The song was "Daisy Bell".

It seems that song was used for an historical reason:



The video (1 minute and 39 seconds) claims that a computer in the 1950's was the first computer ever to sing a song. The song was "Daisy Bell".

But another video gets more specific. It says that the first computer to sing a song was in 1961. It was an IBM 7094. The video (1 minute and 51 seconds) gives a sample of the song, with computerized musical accompaniment too, and also gives the names of the programmers who created it:



Another video (with no embedded option) shows a photo of the computer (?) with and audio track of it's voice and singing repertoire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlBmbt8IVv4

Listening to all this reminds me of my Commodore 64 days. Does anyone remember "The Write Stuff", a Commodore 64 word processor released in 1987 by Busy Bee Software? It could read documents with a computer voice that was very similar to the one in these videos. My Busy Bee software could even sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". It was both funny and painful to listen to.

Nowadays, computer voice technology is so much more advanced. There are a growing number of realistic sounding computer voices, and an abundance of free or inexpensive TTS (Text-T0-Speech) programs to go with them. And Hal-like computer programs to go with those voices are fast approaching, too.

Oh Brave New World, with such people (and artificial-people) in it!


Related Links:

Artificial voice synthesis, 1939 to the present

Ultra HAL, your personal computer assistant

The history and lyrics of the song "Daisy Bell"
     

Artificial voice synthesis, 1939 to the present

This is a neat AT&T commercial, which shows the evolution of artificial voices, intermixed with some Sci-Fi robot characters:



And just for fun, here's two more videos. First, Puppy V.S. The Robot:



The puppy had it easy. Here is a future with Robots that we definitely don't want:

Shuttle Endeavour to install "Dextre" robot arm and Kibo lab components onto the ISS

Below is an artists rendition of the new Canadian robot arm that the current shuttle mission will install on the ISS. They will also be installing a storage unit and other components of the Japanese Kibo lab, with the main part of the lab to follow on the next mission launch in May.


The Kibo lab will be the largest science lab on the station. The following is a description of the current mission from NASA (note that it was published prior to the mission, so it talks about it in the future tense):

All Aboard for STS-123: The Station Goes Global

“This is the first flight where we actually have all the partners,” said Dana Weigel, the lead station flight director. “It’s not just ‘a Japanese flight,’ or ‘a Canadian flight.’ This flight truly is the first time that it requires every single partner actively participating to make everything work. I think that’s a great milestone.”

Topping the list of milestones is the delivery of part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s module, marking the beginning of the agency’s presence on the station. The Japanese Experiment Logistics Module, Pressurized Section – called the JLP – is really just the warm-up act for JAXA. It will contain critical avionics and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. At 14.4 feet in diameter and 12.8 feet in length, it is the smaller of two pressurized Japanese modules. Combined with other elements, they will make up Kibo, the station’s Japanese complex, named for the Japanese word for hope. Kibo’s main facility and its robotic arm are scheduled to launch on the following shuttle mission, and a "front porch" that will allow astronauts to expose experiments directly to space will be delivered later.

But small or not, what the module represents is big.[...]

They mention the Robot arm as going up in a following launch, but it's actually gone up on this flight. Assembling the robot will be part of their mission. Below are the astronauts of the Endeavour crew:

Image above: From the left (front row) are Pilot Gregory Johnson and Commander Dominic Gorie. From the left (back row) are mission specialists Richard Linnehan, Robert Behnken, Garrett Reisman, Michael Foreman and Takao Doi, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut. Credit: NASA

This mission will be the longest mission for a shuttle flight crew to date, scheduled to last a minimum of 16 days. You can track the latest news on the Mission's progress here:

Astronauts Enter JLP, Prepare for Spacewalk

Last time I looked, they had unloaded the Dextre robot for assembly, but were having some power supply issues with the platform it's to be assembled on.


You can read more about Dextre here:

'Dextre' Ready for Space Station Duty
It has some great links, including a link to a video about Dextre and Kibo.

Canadian robot Dextre heading to ISS

[...] The two-armed, $200-million robot is tentatively scheduled to be launched March 11 on board space shuttle Endeavour.

Daniel Rey, head of the technical team preparing Dextre, says the robot will reduce the amount of time astronauts must spend outside the space station. The robot could eliminate the need for up to a dozen spacewalks a year.

"He will free up astronauts so they can do more science and more research rather than maintenance,'' said Rey, who has worked on the Canadian Space Agency project for 10 years.

"It's easy to imagine from a half-a-dozen to a dozen sorties will be avoidable now,'' Rey said in an interview.

Dextre, short for Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, will perform exterior construction and tasks like changing batteries and handling experiments outside the space station.

Dextre also comes equipped with a tool holster which allows the robot to change equipment as needed "like any good handyman.''

But Rey said the 3.7-metre robot can't be compared to R2-D2 or HAL, the computer in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey.''

"He doesn't have an artificial intelligence. . .he can be remote controlled from the ground or from the space station.''

The astronauts who will operate the robot's rotating joints, torso and five cameras have already been trained at the space agency, just outside Montreal.

Dextre is the third and final component of the mobile servicing system developed by Canada for the space station.

It can either be attached to a mobile base which runs on rails along the exterior of the station or it can be connected to Canadarm2 like a snap-on tool.

Long life for new robot

The robot, which has a 15-year lifespan, will be installed during three of the five spacewalks planned in March. [...]

Fascinating. You can read the whole article for more details.

Mechanized Music? Robotic Concerts?

I'm not sure what to call it, but it's interesting to watch and listen to. Here is some musical fun for your Monday:


What A Clip - Watch today’s top amazing videos here