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MIT uses 4D maps to help robot teams navigate moving obstacles
It’s one thing to keep robots from crashing into fixed obstacles like walls or furniture, but preventing collisions with other moving things is a much tougher challenge. Targeting teams of robots working together, MIT on Thursday announced a new algorithm that helps robots avoid moving objects.
Planning algorithms for robot teams can be centralized, in which a single computer makes decisions for the whole team, or decentralized, in which each robot makes its own decisions. The latter approach is much better in terms of incorporating local observations, but it’s also much trickier, since each robot must essentially guess what the others are going to do.
MIT’s new algorithm takes a decentralized approach and factors in not just stationary obstacles but also moving ones. Each robot uses its own observations to map out an obstacle-free region in its immediate environment. It then passes that map to its nearest neighbors. When a robot receives a map from a neighbor, it calculates the intersection of that map with its own and passes that on to other neighbors.
Because each robot communicates only with its close neighbors, the bandwidth required for communications is greatly reduced, particularly when there are a lot of robots. And each robot ends up with a map that reflects all of the obstacles detected by the whole team.
The algorithm accounts for obstacles in motion by including time as a fourth mapping dimension. With that dimension included, it describes how a three-dimensional map would have to change to accommodate the obstacle’s change of location over a span of a few seconds.
In simulations involving squadrons of mini helicopters, the algorithm came up with the same flight plans that a centralized version did but allowed for small variations as conditions required.
“It’s a really exciting result, because it combines so many challenging goals,” said Daniela Rus, a professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
“Your group of robots has a local goal, which is to stay in formation, and a global goal, which is where they want to go or the trajectory along which you want them to move,” Rus explained. “You allow them to operate in a world with static obstacles but also unexpected dynamic obstacles, and you have a guarantee that they are going to retain their local and global objectives.”
Each robot updates its map several times per second, calculating the trajectory that will maximize both local and global objectives.
To simulate environments in which humans and robots work together, the researchers are also testing a version of their algorithm on wheeled robots whose goal is to collectively carry an object across a room where humans are also moving.
They’ll present their algorithm next month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3060201/analytics/mit-uses-4d-maps-to-help-robot-teams-navigate-moving-obstacles.html
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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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