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I’m always amazed by some of the stuff that comes out of the Rodney Brooks inspired school of
One of the briefs on my impending Sheffield job is to work on an experimental health and fitness agent, one that is able to discuss your fitness plans and motivate you on a daily basis. Now health and fitness is very important to me, I can usually be found sparring or running with equally insane people at 7am. When I’m not doing this I’ll be competing in triathlons or killing myself on a rock face. Mind you, I’m not any good at these things I just enjoying doing it.
And now I’m a little worried. I’m worried because I think I would be more likely to benefit from one of these:
than one of these:
One is an inspirationally designed but relatively simple robot and the other is a prototype that will require a very advanced dialogue system. The problem is that no matter how advanced the bunny, no matter how detailed the reasoning, at 6am I can just turn it off . By comparison, Clocky demands a response because it’s bloody annoying and if you’re up at 6 you might as well go for a run!
Seriously though, personal trainers and sports clubs work because if you don’t go training they will know about it. The social stigma motivates you to get up. Clocky works because if you don’t stop it it will carry on, remorselessly. Could we ever find ourselves in a situation where we go for a run on a wet December morning because if we don’t an artificial bunny will ‘know’ about it? I’m not sure, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
The parents at @bristol presented a really interesting opinion yesterday. They all seemed to say “So that guy is dressed as a robot that’s cool but now you’re telling me that everyone here is a real live scientist, that’s amazing!” Are we really such a secretive breed that our mere presence is enough to cause excitement. I’m not sure how to react to that, it’s either really depressing: a scientist simply talking to the public should not be a novelty. Or it’s really exciting: people are genuinely interested in who we are and what we do.
Anyway, as my academic carrer continues to roll along I really hope that public engagement with the sciences becomes the norm and not the exception. Walking with Robots is making a really valuable contribution to that ideal and I guess that this blog is a small consequence of that. As you can see from the previous posts Johnathan and Gia have put me through a bit of a blogging masterclass and hopefully I’ll find the time to keep things going. Ideally, I’d like to use this blog to both draw in my academic collegues, by posting my own research and the research that we discuss at Southampton, and to engage with the general public, by blogging about the many, truly amazing, recent scientific developments. The dream would be to get both sides (academic and public) talking to each other in the comment threads. Will I succeed, frankly I have no idea…
Just in case you were wondering what we all look like at the Walking with Robots conference, here we are! As the conference carries on we’ll be bringing you more profiles of these lovely individuals, detailing their research, motivations and interests.
The subtle manipulation of objects is a pressing challenge in robotics. To convey the problems researchers face Martin Postler is using the Walking with Robots workshop to create a glove to restrict movement. This forces people to think about the complexities present in apparently simple tasks (pictured below) and highlights the importance of good design within robotics.
It also raises the interesting question: To what extent is intelligence embodied? If we could build a robot with the physical senses and capabilities of a human being (artificial muscles, an incredibly sensitive sense of touch etc…), how much intelligence would we need? Personally, I feel that quite a lot or AI within robotics is developed to overcome the robots own physical limitations. As increasingly sophisticated engineering solutions become available we may discover that intelligence is simpler than we realised.
One of our delegates, James Wilson, seen here posing in a giant hamster wheel. Usually spends his time at Aberystwyth University constructing robotic models of infant development, in the hope that we will gain greater insights into both. When you think about it it’s a brilliant approach. As researchers in Artificial Intelligence we spend a lot of time inventing weird and wonderful learning algorithms. Instead, we could save a lot of time by trying to copy what we find in nature, infant development is a perfect example of this.
Infants are capable of incredible feats of learning and they start before they are even born. In the womb, unable to see, they move their limbs developing a sense of co-ordination. Back in Aberystwyth this is modelled by having infant robots move around completely blind, through trial and error they learn how to co-ordinate themselves and discover the limits of their physical abilities. Then they are “born”, suddenly given a sense of sight and a complex environment they are not overwhelmed because they have already developed an initial sense of self. The success of these robots, helps to develop greater insights into infant development. Establishing these beneficial symbiotic relationships between nature and simulation is one of the key goals of AI. Better robots lead to a greater understanding of nature, which leads to better robots.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had a personal trainer available 24/7. Well that’s one of the potential applications of my work at Sheffield University. Over the next three years I will be developing artificial companions that are able to talk about specific topics. So you could soon spend the morning discussing your diet and fitness plans with a robotic bunny rabbit and the evening talking about what’s on the T.V. This presents all sorts of challenges, how can we simulate the emotive content of a conversation? Could a robot ever tell if you’re in a bad mood? How can it get to know you? Remembering your likes, dislikes and habits. We’ve still got a long way to go as you can see from the video our current generation of companions are a little “intrusive”.
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