That’s the bottom line. If you’re not scared of them, you’re in big trouble.
– Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
RoboBusiness 2007, an international conference showcasing consumer, commercial and military robots, opened in Boston today. To gain insight on what’s in the pipeline, CNET News.com talked with Rodney Brooks, one of the leading experts on robots and artificial intelligence.
Rodney Brooks is a professor of robotics at MIT, the director of CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) and co-founder and CEO of iRobot:
Q: What makes a robot a robot?
A: Brooks: For me it’s something that senses the world in some way, does some sort of computation, deciding what to do, and then acts on the world outside itself as a result.Q: What other technology needs to be perfected before a Domo can become a relatively affordable, artificially intelligent majordomo for the house?
A: Brooks: I have set these goals: the object recognition capabilities of a 2-year-old child, the language understanding of a 4-year-old, the manual dexterity of a 6-year-old and the social understanding of an 8-year-old child.
Q: What do you think are the greatest achievements in AI right now?
A: Brooks: I think our whole lives are surrounded by artificial intelligence, but we don’t think of it that way. Google–you know, all the techniques that Google uses.Q: You mean the search algorithms?
A: Brooks: The search, all those sorts of things are cool artificial intelligence and Google, you know, uses statistical machine learning running it. It sucks up AI researchers like crazy, and it’s full of AI researchers at all levels.Q: What’s the next big market for robots? Military? Entertainment? Health care?
A: Brooks: Clearly military is one–the sorts of jobs that can’t be outsourced. Mining. Mining’s a shitty job. Especially in China it’s so horrendous, but even in North America. Meat packing plants. You hear all these stories about repetitive injury syndromes from people cutting chicken. You could have a robot do that.
The UK’s MoD will deploy airborne cyber-gunships from General Atomics which will be controlled from Skynet, the UK’s military satellite system. The MQ-9 (above) is the most formidable killer robot currently in operation, says The Register. The 36 feet robot aircraft can fly 14 hours without refuelling and as high as 50,000 feet.
At the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute this week, four new members were inducted into its Robot Hall of Fame.
The 2007 inductees included the Lego Mindstorm NXT, Navlab, one of the very first autonomous vehicles, Hopper a peg-legged robot that hopped around a room and Data from Star Trek.
Wikipedia has more on Robotics. Related DailyWireless articles include; iRobot Drafted, SkyNet Hacked?, Land Warrior Retires, Primordial Slime, Advanced EHF - Wait for It, Satellite Jam, Space Lasers and Unwired in Maui.
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