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Crowdsourcing could help robots learn new tasks faster
If robots are going to work alongside humans, the machines are going to need to swallow their pride and learn to ask for help. At least, that’s the thinking of computer scientists at the University of Washington (UW), who are working on ways for robots to crowdsource their problems when learning new tasks. If successful, this approach points the way toward future robots that are capable of asking for assistance to speed up their learning when it comes to figuring out how to carry out household tasks.
Human environments are very unfriendly for robots. They prefer a tightly controlled environment where everything is predictable and objects are relatively easy to define. However, that’s exactly the opposite of the normal human environment, as anyone who’s cleaned up after an 11-year old can confirm.
The real world is extremely complicated, filled with variables, and routinely poses complex problems to robots tasked with carrying out the simplest of household chores. Stacking dishes in a cupboard is easy enough, but loading a dishwasher is surprisingly difficult. A robot can be taught to do it, but the number of different ways of carrying out such a task can make for a very long lesson.
A common approach for teaching a robot how to carry out a task is for it to imitate a person. Instead of telling the robot how to move and what to do, the machine watches the operator in one way or another, then follows the example. It works, but it’s time consuming and working in real-world situations requires a great deal of data to produce accurate models – more than a single teacher can provide.
The UW team calls their approach "goal-based imitation," and involves programming the robot to "infer" the goals of its operators by watching how the human carries out a task, such as building a model, and then calculating how to carry it out itself, taking into account time and difficulty, and determining what are the key factors in completing the task.
The UW team reasoned that instead of a single human teacher, the robot is programmed to consult an online community for input on the best way to accomplish its task. The robot requests data relevant to how to complete a task and the community returns a large set of alternatives for the robot to analyze.
The UW study was aimed at finding ways to help a robot to recreate simple models out of colored Lego blocks, such as a car, tree, turtle, or a snake. The goal was for the robot to create something that resembled the original, yet was simple enough for it to assemble.
Crowdsourced designs for the word "person"
For the study, human participants built models of the object in question and the robot was tasked with replicating them. The robot couldn't manage this, so the team hired other participants online using the Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing site to create more models of the object in question. Based on the online community’s rating of the models, the robot chose the best ones for reconstruction. The outcome was a model that resembled the original, but was simpler and easier to construct.
"We’re trying to create a method for a robot to seek help from the whole world when it’s puzzled by something," says Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering and director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at UW. "This is a way to go beyond just one-on-one interaction between a human and a robot by also learning from other humans around the world."
The team presented its results at the 2014 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Hong Kong earlier this month and will report on their further research at the Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing in Pittsburgh in November.
The following video shows the robot involved in the study.
Source: http://www.gizmag.com/uw-crowdsourced-assistance-robot/32747/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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