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Big Dog Robot
March 23rd, 2009The BigDog Robot: Rise of the Machines
March 23rd, 2009
BigDog is the latest of the US military’s combat robots now being tested in Afghanistan. BigDog is a four-legged vehicle designed to carry equipment for American soldiers in rough terrain. It is three-and-a-third feet long and two-and-a-third feet tall.
BigDog, built by Boston Dynamics and has been funded by DARPA, weighs about the same as a mule and can carry thirty hundred and forty pounds of equipment and provisions. BigDog can walk between three and four miles an hour and traverse rugged terrain at an incline of upto 35 degrees. BigDog has sensors that can alert it to surrounding dangers when out in the field.
BigDog looks a little like an Imperial Walker in the film The Empire Strikes Back, though it doesn’t contain a crew. Nor does BigDog contain any mounted weapons, at least in prototype form. BigDog and similar machines under development is more like a robotic version of a mule, carrying equipment for a squad level patrol in rugged territory. The Legged Squad Support System, which is also under development by Boston Dynamics, will have even great capability to carry equipment long distances over rugged terrain.
Still, BigDog represents the latest trend in military hardware development, which is to automate as much as possible dangerous military missions. Predator aerial drones already fly over the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, performing recon missions and the occasional strike against terrorist targets with mounted hellfire missiles.
The Bear Robot is a machine designed to medivac wounded soldiers from the battlefield safely. K-Max is a remote control helicopter capable of carrying supplies long distances by air.
Other robots either in use or in the testing stage are machines designed to scout out and, eventually, clear with weapons dangerous, enemy held positions such as buildings.
If this all sounds familiar, it would seem like the logical conclusion to this robot development trend would be an autonomous “Terminator” as depicted in the series of films and a current TV show. Of course in The Terminator series, the robots rebelled under the control of
an insane, Hal 9000 type self aware computer called SkyNet and nearly wiped out all of humanity.
Some thought has been given to programming combat ethics into future “Terminator” style robots to make sure they do not run amok. The idea is, with the correct programming, a robot could behave better on the battlefield than a human soldier. A robot does not get scared, tired, hungry, or bored. It just follows its mission, whether it is to clear a building of the enemy or to rescue a human comrade and bring him to safety.
Wars will likely always be with us. But the rise of the machines, at least in war, might well help to lower their lethality. The fewer human beings are placed in harm’s way, the fewer widows and orphans future wars will make.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1587496/the_bigdog_robot_rise_of_the_machines_pg2.html?cat=15
Robot Madness: Creating True Artificial Intelligence
March 18th, 2009
In Robot Madness, LiveScience examines humanoid robots and cybernetic enhancement of humans, as well as the exciting and sometimes frightening convergence of it all. Return for a new episode each Monday, Wednesday and Friday through April 6.
Artificial intelligence in the form of Deep Blue may have beaten human chess champions, but don’t expect robots to fetch you a beer from the fridge just yet.
Robotic artificial intelligence (AI) mainly excels at formal logic, which allows it to sift through thousands of Web sites to match your Google search, or find the right chess move from hundreds of previous games. That becomes a different story when AI struggles to connect that abstract logic with real-world meanings, such as those associated with “beer” or “fridge handle.”
“People realized at some point that you can only get so far with a logical approach,” said Matt Berlin, an AI researcher with MIT’s Media Lab. “At some point these symbols have to be connected to the world.”
A robot fetching a beer has to realize that it should go to the fridge, figure out where the handle is and how to open the fridge door, and distinguish between beer cans and soda cans. It should know not to crush the beer can in its grasp. Finally, it should know that handing a beer over isn’t the same as dropping the can in someone’s lap, Berlin noted.
Even the most painstaking lines of logic can’t convey actual understanding of what each step means in the real world, unless robots can perceive that world and learn from their experiences.
“People learn what a word means in a truly grounded way,” Berlin told LiveScience. Researchers around the world are trying to replicate the human perception that permits such learning, which means building things such as robotic hands that can feel what they grasp.
One major challenge is getting robots to see the world as well as people.
“As humans, we can detect where there’s shadows, colors and objects,” said Chad Jenkins, a robotics expert at Brown University. “That has proven extremely difficult for robots.”
Jenkins is working on a robot that can respond to nonverbal commands, such as gestures. His research group took a bomb-disposal PackBot that’s normally controlled by a human soldier, and hard-coded it to understand gesture commands such as “follow,” “halt,” “wait” and “door breach.”
The upgraded PackBot has a camera that provides depth perception, meaning that the robot can easily extract and follow the silhouette of a person against any background. Eventually, Jenkins hopes that a soldier could “train” PackBot by performing certain gestures and telling the robot to remember.
That hints at a future where each person can easily supervise their own robot team, with each robot having different forms and capabilities, Jenkins said.
But humans need not fret during the wait for their robotic “Jeeves.” New technology promises upgrades for people as well.
Return Wednesday for Episode 3: Human Becomes ‘Eyeborg’
- Video - Sensational Learning: Robot Minds Grow By Feel
- Robot Madness Episode 1: Preventing Insurrection of Machines
- More Robot News and Information
- Original Story: Robot Madness: Creating True Artificial Intelligence
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Credit Due: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090318/sc_livescience/robotmadnesscreatingtrueartificialintelligence
