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How Robots Can Quickly Teach Each Other to Grasp New Objects
Grabbing a pen or pair of sunglasses might be effortless for you or me, but it’s fiendishly difficult for a robot, especially if the object in question is unfamiliar or positioned awkwardly.
Practice makes perfect, though, as one robot is proving. It is teaching itself to grasp all sorts of objects through hours of repetition. The robot uses different cameras and infrared sensors to look at an unfamiliar object from various angles before attempting to pick it up. Then it does so using several different grasps, shaking the object to make sure it is held securely. It may take dozens of tries for the robot to find the right grasp, and dozens more for it to make sure an object won’t slip.
That might seem like a tedious process, but once the robot has learned how to pick something up, it can share that knowledge with other robots that have the same sensors and grippers. The researchers behind the effort eventually hope to have hundreds of robots learn collectively how to grasp a million different things.
The work was done by Stefanie Tellex, an assistant professor at Brown University, together with one of her graduate students, John Oberlin. They used a two-armed industrial robot called Baxter, made by the Boston-based companyRethink Robotics.
At the Northeast Robotics Colloquium, an event held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute this month, Oberlin demonstrated the robot’s gripping abilities to members of the public.
Enabling robots to manipulate objects more easily is one of the big challenges in robotics today, and it could have major industrial significance (see “Shelf-Picking Robots Will Vie for Amazon Prize”).
Tellex says robotics researchers are increasingly looking for more efficient ways of training robots to perform tasks such as manipulation. “We have powerful algorithms now—such as deep learning—that can learn from large data sets, but these algorithms require data,” she says. “Robot practice is a way to acquire the data that a robot needs for learning to robustly manipulate objects.”
Tellex also notes that there are around 300 Baxter robots in various research labs around the world today. If each of those robots were to use both arms to examine new objects, she says, it would be possible for them to learn to grasp a million objects in 11 days. “By having robots share what they’ve learned, it’s possible to increase the speed of data collection by orders of magnitude,” she says.
To grasp each object, the Brown researchers’ robot scans it from various angles using one of the cameras in its arms and the infrared sensors on its body. This allows it to identify possible locations at which to grasp. The researchers used a mathematical technique to optimize the process of practicing different grips. With this technique, the team’s Baxter robot picked up objects as much as 75 percent more reliably than it did using its regular software. The information acquired for each object—the images, the 3-D scans, and the correct grip—is encoded in a format that allows it to be shared online.
Other groups are developing methods to allow robots to learn to perform various tasks, including grasping. One of the most promising ways to achieve this is deep learning using so-called neural networks, which are simulations loosely modeled on the way nerves in the brain process information and learn (see “Robot Toddler Learns to Stand by ‘Imagining’ How to Do It”).
Although humans acquire an ability to grasp through learning, a child doesn’t need to spend so much time handling different objects, and he or she can use previous experience to figure out very quickly how to pick up a new object. Tellex says the ultimate goal of her project is to give robots similar abilities. “Our long-term aim is to use this data to generalize to novel objects,” she says.
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/543461/how-robots-can-quickly-teach-each-other-to-grasp-new-objects/
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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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