YOU, ROBOT CAN LEARN: Stoytchev and a team of grad students are developing software to teach robots to learn about as well as a two-year-old child.
Image: © ALEXANDER STOYTCHEV
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It took just a few decades for computers to evolve from room-size vacuum tube–based machines that cost as much as a house to cheap chip-powered desktop models with vastly more processing power. Similarly, the days of "personal robots"—inexpensive machines that can help out at home or the office—may be closer than we think. But first, says Alexander Stoytchev, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State University in Ames, robots have to be taught to do something we know instinctively: how to learn.
"A truly useful personal robot [must have] the ability to learn on its own from interactions with the physical and social environment," says Stoytchev, whose field of developmental robotics combines developmental psychology and neuroscience with artificial intelligence and robotic engineering. "It should not rely on a human programmer once it is purchased. It must be trainable."
Stoytchev and a team of grad students are developing software to teach robots to learn about as well as a two-year-old child. Their platform is a humanoid robot that sprouts two 60-pound (27-kilogram) Whole Arm Manipulators (WAM) made by Cambridge, Mass.,–based Barrett Technology, Inc., each tipped with a 2.6-pound (1.2-kilogram) three-fingered BarrettHand.
In one set of experiments, the robot was presented with 36 different objects, including hockey pucks and Tupperware. It could perform five different actions with each one—grasping, pushing, tapping, shaking and dropping—and had to identify and classify them based only on the sounds they made. After just one action the robot had a 72 percent success rate, but its accuracy soared with each successive action, reaching 99.2 percent after all five. The robot had learned to use a perceptual model to recognize and classify objects—and it could rely on this model to estimate how similar two objects were with only the sounds they made to guide it.
Another set of experiments showed the robot could learn to tell whether or not something was a container. The team presented the machine, topped with a 3-D camera, with objects of different shapes. By dropping a small block on each one and then pushing it, the robot learned to classify objects either as containers—those that moved together with the block ["co-moved"] more often when pushed—or as noncontainers. The robot could then use this knowledge to judge whether unfamiliar objects could hold things; in other words, it had learned, roughly, how to discern the unique characteristics of a container.
When personal robots finally hit retail chains, they might look something like HERB, the "Home Exploring Robotic Butler" created at an Intel lab in Pittsburgh. It is part of the company's Personal Robotics Project, whose goal is to make a truly autonomous robotic assistant that can perform routine tasks at human speeds in cluttered environments like homes or offices.
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7 Comments
Add CommentWhen I was in a tech school in the early 90's, one of the teachers was a former NASA guy, and incredibly intelligent. He explained back then how robots learn. Can't remember the details, but it was pretty simple and obvious when he explained it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo...yeah, they can, do, and will learn from previous experiences. The oldest example that I know is the ones that play chess (the actual example he used). Once you beat them, you will never defeat them the same way again. I could give his name, but he'd probably not appreciate it, and he was such a great teacher, I don't want to make his life rough.
Why are we teaching robots to learn? Haven't you people seen Terminator!!! We are all gonna die!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYea... ill second that!!! Teaching robots to learn is a bad idea. They first will put millions of diligent workers on the streets, creating more poverty then we have now. Eventually it will get to the point were they are going to college and learning next to human students. If a robot learned at the rate or faster then humans can we will out source humans all together. It sucks getting laid off now because a younger smarter version of yourself takes your job, imagine getting laid off because a robot is taking your position. The next thing we will have is angry robots trying to get their rights. PROTESTING ROBOTS is the last thing we need!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs he said above we have all seen Terminator and I-ROBOT!!!! Didn't exactly end well in either of those movies.
Perhaps we're missing the point of science fiction robot movies. Perhaps it is not the robots that are the problem, I think we may be the problem. Robots tend to act logically and when faced with illogical humans, they make the logical conclusion that we are dangerous and seek to exterminate us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we treat we create androids that have human-like intelligence and we treat them well, there shouldn't be a problem. If you treat them like slaves and property and they have the capacity to learn, they will eventually seek to overthrow their oppressors. If they can learn, teach them to be good and value life. Don't teach them that we are evil, hateful, and violent creatures and we should be fine.
In other words, if we create androids in our own image, we had better make sure that the image we work from is based off of the good in this world, not the evil. If we are evil, and create in our own image, we shouldn't be surprised when our creations turn out to also be evil.
When it comes right down to it, there is a saying I heard a while back: "a computer never really has an error, it always does exactly what it was programmed to do. The human who programmed it made all the errors." If androids go crazy and kill us all, it's because we programed them with the capacity to do so.
OK, so we can teach robots simple learning algorythms. I was very pleased when I taught one to find its way out of a maze by the shortest route. But remember Eistein taught himself that E=Mc^2 without any form of computer. Just try writing code to do that!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe greatest Android ever created became a Painter...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut can robots learn not to drop wrenches on their motor control boards. That is the real question.
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