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 Should Start Out As Babies
Andrew Meltzoff, a psychology professor at the University of Washington and a co-director of the school’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences Meltzoff recently worked with a team of roboticists and machine-learning experts to explore a strange and compelling question: What if robots could learn the way human babies learned?
In the first experiment, the robot would learn how its own head moved, and assume that the human’s head was governed by the same rules. It would then observe the movement of the human’s head, including the direction that person was looking and what the person fixated on, and mimic those movements. In the second experiment, the robot experimented with moving food-shaped toys around on a table. Not only did the robot mimic the human—pushing the toys, sometimes sweeping them off the table top—it also occasionally used different means to achieve the same end result...
By emulating human development, Rao and his colleagues believe that robots will be able to learn progressively more sophisticated skills just by watching and imitating other humans and robots.
“We are convinced that bringing together the roboticists and developmental psychologists may allow us to combine the best of human learning and the best of machine learning to the benefit of both,” Meltzoff said.
“I’m trying to teach the roboticists to think like a baby. And I mean that in a good way.”
Science fiction writer Henry Slesar envisioned this development many years ago, in his 1958 short story Brother Robot:
As time goes on, little Mac, the robot baby, is developing beautifully:
Update 01-Jul-2021: Read about the robot babies from Dr. David Keller's poignant 1934 story Life Everlasting. End update.
If you're curious about what baby robots might actually be like (they're a bit creepy, in my opnion), take a look at Affetto Child Robot With Realistic Facial Expressions, which also has links to more stories about baby robots.
Via The Atlantic; see also the paper A Bayesian Developmental Approach to Robotic Goal-Based Imitation Learning.
To test what they built, the researchers arranged two experiments. In one, a robot would learn to follow a human's gaze; in the other, the robot would learn to imitate a human moving fake food around a tabletop.
Feb 6, 1997:
This is a day twice-blessed for me. Today, at St. Luke's hospital, our first child was born to my wife, Ila... when I saw her this morning, I could not bring myself to mention the second birth that has taken place in my laboratory. The birth of Machine, my robot child...
At four months, Fitz is developing along normal lines. His little body has gone from asymmetric postures to symmetric postures, his eyes now converge and fasten on any dangling object held at mid-point.
As for Mac, he is developing even more rapidly. He is beginning to learn control of his limbs: it is apparent that he will walk before his human brother. Before long, he will learn to speak; already I hear the rumbles within the cavity of the soundbox in his chest.
(Read more about Slesar's robot baby)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/2/2015)
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 ")
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.' - Rog Philips, 1950.
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
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
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
