"Living robot" Escapes Lab, Makes It To...Parking Lot 698
jerkychew writes "This is either really cool or really scary, depending on how you look at it. According to this article, scientists in England have been experimenting with so-called 'living robots' that think and act for themselves. During an exercise that pitted the machines against each other in battle, one of the machines, named Gaak, was taken out of the competition and left alone for fifteen minutes. When the scientist returned to retrieve Gaak, he found that the machine had broken free from its 'cage', and made it all the way to the lab's parking lot before it was apprehended! Can the T-1000 be far behind?" Update: 06/20 20:36 GMT by T : Thanks to skywalker404, who points out the Magna site and Professor Noel Sharkey's web page.
Asimov had it right (Score:5, Interesting)
First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
A Google Search [google.com] on the laws brings up some interesting papers [anu.edu.au] on the subject or another link on AI in robotics here [maplesearch.com]
Re:short circuit? (Score:4, Interesting)
The part where he's working with the hand is most memorable. The 'expression' via 'eyelashes' was a nice touch IMHO.
Re:Ahh..but where would it have went? (Score:5, Interesting)
If that were the case, it would be
FACTS, please.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on please.. what are thos kind of "intelligent" robots?
A google search [google.it] doesn't tell me anything interesting about that.. unless it's the "magna adventure center" which the author is talking about. Or whatever.
Could anyone provide more details about those bots? How are they programmed, how do they "think" (bah..) or anything else more interesting than a gossip? Thanks.
Robots won't be much use as guards, then (Score:2, Interesting)
Say I want to get one of these robots to guard my car. So I go into the store, and the robot sits by my 1988 Ford.
Arrive robbert.
"Robot, this is not the car you're supposed to be guarding." says the robber.
"This is not the car I'm supposed to be guarding." echoes the robot, thinking hard about Asimov's second law.
"Move along."
And the robot moves along: because that's the second law.
And even if the robber was dumb enough not to ask the robot to move along, then - by the first and third laws - it would be practially unable to do anything to stop the robber. Indeed, it might be required to get out the way of the cheeky chappy because that would endanger its own existence.
Bah! You won't catch me getting a robot for a security guard.
Animal Intelligence (Score:5, Interesting)
He (spanky) will jump up against the gate and dislodge it's latch so it comes open and run in to the drive in front of our house. It isn't a busy drive, certainly not a street so cars hitting him aren't a problem but it' intersting to see that he doesn't go farther than investigating his immediate surroundings and then looking around for us, familiar members of his pack.
We have since the last incident completely secured the latch to avoid this particular surprise while driving away but the behavior is interesting in this context.
He broke out of a familiar environment, navigated a semi-familiar environment and then stopped to investigate an unfamiliar environment. The robot did the same... given more time it is plausible that each would have become more familiar and have explored further into the unfamiliar.
Animal Intelligence indeed.
Re:Asimov had it right (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Skeptical (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Robots won't be much use as guards, then (Score:3, Interesting)
Dumb luck? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Asimov had it right (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Asimov had it right (Score:4, Interesting)
The trouble with Asimov's laws of Robotics is that they assume a 'Hard AI' approach to programming robots.
In 50 years time a robot might be a grey slime of a billion nanobots, each with a small and fluid intelligence/memory and perception of the world, but collectively with a powerful hive mind. How would you hard code Asimov's simplistic rules into a robot like that?
Learning Autonomic Robots (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:so... (Score:2, Interesting)
Pat on the back for anyone who can tell me what game that's from
Re:Johnny Five is Alive! (Score:2, Interesting)
What a coincidence that all 4 people that got that reference though had moderator points.
Background on Magna and Living Robots exhibit (Score:5, Interesting)
First Magna [magnatrust.org.uk] is a "Science Adventure Centre" housed in what was a Steel works near Sheffield - this place is basically a huge shed filled with strange leftovers from the steel making, with long walkways and 4 exhibition areas inside. The whole place is done with a sort of gothic frankenstein science style - lots of sparks etc.
The living robots part is a new exhibit organised by Dr Noel Starkey (of Sheffield University - best known for being a judge on Robot Wars). There are a total of 12 robots, of 2 basic designs (although they are apparently not completely identical within the types). The two types are predator and prey.
Prey robots look like animated inverted wastebins with solar panels on the top. Their aim in life is to avoid being predated upon and to feed. Feeding involves soaking up energy from the light trees (2 sets of lights on the edge of the arena). I assume that the feeding etc is to demonstrate behaviour in that there is no way they could get enough energy from the solar panels on them to actually run for any length of time. The robots have 8 infra-red sensor/emitters around the shell which put out a type recognition code and detect other emitters in the area - so they can recognise other prey and ignore them, and see preditors before they ge t got.
The preditors, of which Gaak is one, look like some form of fork lift truck. Their role in life is to find prey, grab them and lift them off the ground. They then have an arrangement where a probe enguages with a connector on top of the prey and "sucks some energy" out of the prey. Following this feeding process the preditor releases the prey and then goes torpid for a short time.
The "intelligence" is based on some form of neural network - I didn't get details of this. At the end of each day the data on each robot is downloaded along with the neural net configurations. The 2 most successful predators have their neural nets merged to produce a new "evolved" network which is downloaded to all the predators. Similarly for the prey. Theory is that this produces an evolutionary basis for their behaviour.
I find it hard to be convinced of this process having much real scientific value, and the displays have too little violence for a population that watches Robot Wars
Bad Example - harm wasn't the robot's decision (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason there is no pogrom is that the robot was incapable of deciding to kill a human. The moment that becomes possible, and the first human is DELIBERATELY injured by a thinking robot, we WILL see an Asimovian response to intelligent robots.
Asimov has proven to be incredibly perceptive, and long-sighted. You just have to think as far ahead as he does, to see the value in his thinking.
You're Skeptical (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Taking over (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:this article is very short on details (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Asimov had it right"? Bovine excreta! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think we need to draw a distinction here between computer-controlled machines and robots in Asimov's sense of the word. They're very different things.
Rodney Brooks' robots are more exciting than this. (Score:2, Interesting)
-d
Re:FACTS, please.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I have no links and can't remember the magazine, but the gist of it was this scientist was making problem-solving robotic insects out of about $100 in radio shack off the shelf electronic components and no digital programming whatsoever. The robots used the fluctuations in the electric current in their bodies, somehow, to determine when they were hungry, when they were getting energy, etc.
And when faced with obstacles, these robots would actually problem solve, with no processing capacity at all. No one was sure why it worked either according to that article.
A brief experiement showed they did have a very short term "memory" of sorts, in that if they overcame an obstacle and were immediately replaced at the same obstacle, they would solve the problem much faster. However this did not seem to hold true for long.
Perhaps these robots are a hybrid digital/analog processor of sorts or fully analog? I'm glad to see research continuing in this direction as the mysterious article I read seemed to indicate strongly that analog processing of this kind would be critical to our understanding of our minds, which are at most only partially digital in nature.
Here is one story on him: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9804/30/t_t/robot
a google search on "los alamos analog robot" turns up several others.
Evolving Robot Language (Score:4, Interesting)
I have read about experiments where simulated robots (or "critters") *did* form just such a language. At the time of writing, though, the researches had not figured out the language. (Musta been Perl
Thus, AI has reached the stage of artificially-created languages. (Of course, they are very task-specific languages.)