/ News
Next-Generation Robot Needs Your Help
f you visit Manuela Veloso, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, you can expect to be met at reception, and led to her office, by an unfailingly polite and helpful assistant.
You might notice something a little odd about your chaperone, though, as it stops at the elevator and asks, in an electronic tone: “Can you press 7, and then press my ‘done’ button when we get to that floor?”
Your guide will be an unusual kind of robot, known as a Cobot, developed in Veloso’s lab. Resembling a laptop and a cluster of sensors sitting atop a wheeled barstool, it’s unlikely to be the most sophisticated robot you’ll ever encounter. It lacks arms, hands, or a particularly sophisticated vocabulary. But a Cobot employs a very simple and surprisingly effective trick to get around its inherent limitations.
Whenever it’s at a loss—when it needs to call an elevator, pick up an object, or find something that’s missing—it will simply pester the nearest human for help. If no one is nearby, a Cobot will send out an office-wide e-mail asking for help.
“I have been in the autonomy business for a long time,” says Veloso. “It’s very hard to be able to program a robot to be able to understand any speech or grab any object, even if they have arms. So I decided for them to be fully autonomous they have to be in an ‘asking for help’ mode.”
Several of Veloso’s Cobots roam Carnegie Mellon’s computer science department, ferrying packages between labs and offices, and dutifully showing guests around. Together they have performed tens of thousands of hours of useful service.
The robots may seem quirky, even a little annoying (Veloso admits that people occasionally get irritated by a robot’s neediness). But they also highlight how simple human-machine collaboration could enable robots to take on new roles in homes and workplaces. Programming robots to ask for help when necessary is far easier than giving them sophisticated language comprehension or skills in fine manipulation—incredibly difficult problems to solve.
“It is very good idea,” says Bilge Mutlu, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who researches the interaction between humans and robots. “It’s a lot more flexible and adaptable to day-to-day environments.”
Human-robot collaboration is already increasing in industrial settings (see “Increasingly, Robots of All Sizes are Human Workmates”). Finding ways for machines to collaborate in other settings could hasten the development of a new generation of service robot. “I am 100 percent sure that if people embraced robots with limitations we would have them in our homes as we speak,” Veloso says.
A few such robots are, in fact, already venturing into the real world. A robot called Tug, developed by Aethon, a company also based in Pittsburgh, moves equipment and supplies around a hospital. It doesn’t require the installation of any special beacons in order to navigate; if it gets stuck somewhere, it contacts a member of Aethon’s human support team, who will then remotely pilot the robot to its destination.
Veloso says the next generation of her Cobots will try to figure out for themselves when they might need assistance, instead of relying on a preprogrammed list of scenarios.
The usefulness of the Cobots suggests that the human-robot interface may turn out to be one of the most important areas for scientists and entrepreneurs to explore. “Even if we can’t achieve 100 percent autonomy,” says Mutlu, “we shouldn’t let that deter us from deploying autonomous systems.”
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532341/next-generation-robot-needs-your-help/
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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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