Robots and Intelligence.

[garethace]

Guys i guess i just cannot help myself. Whenever a new bit of ground-breaking cinematic work comes to the silver screen, i feel it is my duty to create a discussion. I felt it was my duty to deliver some broader insight into the people who "think this stuff up".

 

http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/trailer_final.html

 

I was just thinking. How much of the inspiration for a film like the MATRIX is coming in fact from the real world of science and engineering, from the real things going on in Laboratories all around the world at the moment? How long will it take for machines to become the dominant species? Will my toaster begin to plot against me in the future?

 

I think the Matrix has borrowed alot of its unique visual language from scientific clips of robots in laboratories like seen here. Basically creatures on earth do a couple of distinctive things: crawl, hop, fly, swim, walk and run. Some very simple conceptual drawings of ideas for robots.

 

http://www.leggedrobots.org/plans.htm

 

While the cinematic representation of the robot is something super-intelligent and capable of ripping open a space vessel with its bare tenticales - the reality presented here from a scientists point of view is different. Robots are really rather weak and helpless creatures at the moment, without a great amount of ability to learn stuff. Famous NASA quotation: "You are always one transistor away from failure".

 

Spider type:

 

http://ais.gmd.de/BAR/SCORPION/evaluation.htm

 

Historical...from trucks with legs to modern walking machines

 

http://gate1.fzi.de/ids/public_html/historical.php

 

Sewer robots, check out the movie of snake 2 in particular which is like the ones in MAtrix 1:

 

http://ais.gmd.de/BAR/robots.htm

 

Robotics: A Brief History

 

http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/sophomore-college/projects-98/robotics/history.html

 

Robotics Projects from all around the world

 

http://www.leggedrobots.org/robots.htm

 

More projects from around the world

 

http://gate1.fzi.de/ids/public_html/videos.php

 

BEAM Robotics Philosophy

 

The science behind the idea stems from current concepts in artificial intelligence (AI), artificial life (ALife), evolutionary biology, and genetic algorithms. It seems that building large complex robots hasn't worked well, so why not try to evolve them from a lesser to a greater ability as mother nature has done with biologics? The problem is that such a concept requires self-reproducing robots which won't be possible to build (if at all) for years to come. A solution, however, is to view a human being as a robot's way of making another robot, to have an annual venue where experimenters can let their creations interact in real situations, and then watch as machine evolution occurs. Robogenetics through robobiologics:

 

http://www.nis.lanl.gov/projects/robot/

 

Some theoretical background about Natural systems:

 

A self-organizing system is a system that changes its basic structure as a function of its experience and environment.

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~unsal/thesis/thesisch2.html#ch2.2

 

Here is a robot called the cricket that can be built mostly out of scrap parts for a total cost of 230 dollars and sixty cents:

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~henryarnold/parts_rev4.PDF

 

Participants in the Cricket project seem to be knocking great fun out of their crickets now. Here is a gallery of self-builds:

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~henryarnold/page17.html

 

The only computer company at the moment which does a home robot at a reasonble price is Sony AIBO project.

 

http://www.us.aibo.com/ers_210/index.php

 

[ April 16, 2003, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[Richard McCarthy]

There are couple of "intelligent" robotic vacuum cleaner coming to market, one is produced by Dyson, another I can't remember the name top of my head, they have fairly large exposure in the US magazine.

 

The problem with "weakness of robot" is not really "robot"'s fault, rather, it's the people who design them aren't likely to argument it with more powerful motors and also given better AI routine that's already out there. There is also the theory of "flock intelligence", like the ants, which uses the intelligence of the mass. Another interesting topic to explore. As for "evolutionary" (genetic) AI routine can also be done more easily if there is a set of objective, to cycle out the bad AI, and transfter the AI between robot through radio network connection.

[garethace]

Dyson gave a lecture to the architecture college in Dublin late last year, boy that guy can draw some crowd for his talks. There was a line up of great art critics and cg graphics designers speaking all that day. Unfortunately i do not remember much discussion like that in my time as a student - my memories are really much more monochrome some how!

 

Here is a bit of deeper discussion if your curiousity of such matters is as great as i suspect from reading your post. Do bare in mind, that most of these posters have vested financial concerns about AI, and robotics/exploration etc. They also have asked these questions alot in their sphere of engineering and computer science degrees/masters/phds today.

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=95029031