Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Robots Implore Humans For Help Online
Maybe we're going to see some robot humility. A University of Washington team is working on a way for robots to go online and ask for help when they are puzzled.
(Puzzled UW robot - solving a puzzle)
"We're trying to create a method for a robot to seek help from the whole world when it's puzzled by something," said Rajesh Rao, an associate professor of computer science and engineering and director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the 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."Learning by imitating a human is a proven approach to teach a robot to perform tasks, but it can take a lot of time. Imagine having to teach a robot how to load the dishwasher -- it might take many repetitious lessons for the robot to learn how to hold different types of cookware and cutlery and how to most efficiently fill the machine. But if the robot could learn a task's basic steps, then ask the online community for additional input, it could collect more data on how to complete this task efficiently and correctly.
"Because our robots use machine-learning techniques, they require a lot of data to build accurate models of the task. The more data they have, the better model they can build. Our solution is to get that data from crowdsourcing," said Maya Cakmak, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.
The research team, led by professors Rao and Cakmak, also includes UW computer science and engineering graduate student Michael Jae-Yoon Chung and undergraduate Maxwell Forbes. The team designed a study that taps into the online crowdsourcing community to teach a robot a model-building task. To begin, study participants built a simple model -- a car, tree, turtle and snake, among others -- out of colored Lego blocks. Then, they asked the robot to build a similar object. But based on the few examples provided by the participants, the robot was unable to build complete models.
To gather more input about building the objects, the robots turned to the crowd. They hired people on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing site, to build similar models of a car, tree, turtle, snake and others. From more than 100 crowd-generated models of each shape, the robot searched for the best models to build based on difficulty to construct, similarity to the original and the online community's ratings of the models. The robot then built the best models of each participant's shape.
As far as I know, the first mention of computers being helped by human object recognition is found in Harry Harrison's 1956 short story The Velvet Glove:
"... whenever a robot finds something it can't identify straight off... it puts whatever it is in the hopper outside your window. You give it a good look, check the list for the proper category if you're not sure, then press the right button and in she goes."An hour passed before he had his first identification to make. A robot stopped in mid-dump, ground its gears a moment, and then dropped a dead cat into Carl's hopper... Something heavy had dropped on the cat, reducing the lower part of its body to paper-thinness.
Castings... Cast Iron... Cats... There was the bin number. Nine.
I should also mention Ava learning software from The Calcutta Chromosome, a 1995 novel by Amitav Ghosh. In the story, Ava is an artificial intelligence program that has human help in identifying objects.
Via Science Daily.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/29/2014)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.' Robert Heinlein, 1962.
Micro-Robots Are Smallest, Fully Functional
'With a whir, the Scarab shot from the concealing shadows of the corner where it had hidden itself.' - Raymond Z. Gallun, 1936.
DIY Robotic Hand Made After Loss Of Fingers
'I made them... with the fine work of the watchmaker...' - Boris Zhitkov, 1931.
Robot Snakes No Longer Stopped By Stairs
'...she dropped her hands from the wheel, took the robot snake from his box.' - Lee Chaytor, 1958.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Will Be Ready This August, 2024
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Moonwalkers AI-Controlled Electric Shoes
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
Steve Jobs: 'Capture The Next Aristotle - With AI'
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
Harvest Power From Tears And Blinking With Smart Contact Lens
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
Europa Clipper Plate Carries A Special Message
'...a universal cryptogram — yet it is one which can be interpreted by any intelligent creature on any planet in the Solar System!'
Micro-Robots Are Smallest, Fully Functional
'With a whir, the Scarab shot from the concealing shadows of the corner where it had hidden itself.'
AI Enhances Images Your Brain Sees
'I could have sworn the psychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as reality itself'
Illustrating Classic Heinlein With AI
'Stasis, cold sleep, hibernation, hypothermia, reduced metabolism, call it what you will - the logistics-medicine research teams had found a way to stack people like cordwood and use them when needed.'
Deflector Plasma Screen For Drones ala Star Wars
'If the enemy persists in attacking or even intensifies their power, the density of the plasma in space will suddenly increase, causing it to reflect most of the incoming energy like a mirror.'
DIY Robotic Hand Made After Loss Of Fingers
'I made them... with the fine work of the watchmaker...'
Cheap Drunk Driver Detection From UofM
"Look, I can drive... Start, darn it!"
