“Now they can escape and fend for themselves”
In somewhat of an overstatement, that is how a scientist described progress on robot AI over at Willow Garage. Head on over to Willow to see “PR 2 Alpha” navigate into another room, and there plug himself into a wall socket to recharge.
It’s not quite jumping into the car to fetch Pizza, and really, it’s a very long way from our persistent dreams of useful, humanoid robots. That seems to have been the status quo on Robot AI for quite some time now. Behind the scenes though, they promise us, greater things are happening to the code that underlies this sort of behaviour. Certainly these guys, Microsoft, and probably half a dozen others are trying to come up with a Robot OS – a common platform for developing Robot AI on. This should help, but I expect that the leaps/bounds towards humanoid robots will take something more significant.
I spent the morning with the bright students at Hult University here in London who are working on a marketing project for my company right now, and we spent a bit of time discussing how A.I. and those sorts of technologies could start to become part of next wave of technologies. At a stretch, what’s happening with Robots like PR 2 Alpha is part of this (if only he can find a way out of the building…). But I believe it will be this kind of work, combined with a LOT of different, diverse and currently unconnected technologies to make the leap to something that can “fend for itself”.
