Tech N' Gadgets

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Babybot

The world is changing, Dr. Hiroshi says that very soon it'd be difficult to recognize who's a robot and who's a human and that's what we call Android Science. He's already done it by creating Repliee.
There are robots being used to simulate medical teaching for newborn delivery so we have pregnant robots also.
We already have moving and working robots.

Before I could breathe easy that everything is there already in robotic form but the lifecycle of robot will always be the same i.e. it will always be programmed to do certain stuff which it'd execute but they can never grow in size and can not go beyond an extent BUT............
Scientists have developed a robot that learns to interact with the world in the way a human baby would. The robot called Babybot has been created by roboticists from Italy, France and Switzerland. ADAPT (Artificial Development Approach to Presence Technologies) first studied how the perception of self in the environment emerges during the early stages of human development. The developmental psychologists tested 6 to 18 month-old infants. The robot experiments with objects and learns how to use them.
The robot, which could provide researchers with fresh insights into biological intelligence, consists of a torso, a pair of cameras for eyes and a grasping hand. Its work can also have applications in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine perception. It has an in-built desire to physically experiment with objects on the table in front of it and an ability to assess different forms of interaction and learn from mistakes. For example, if the robot fails to grasp an object securely, it tries a different strategy next time. An unbidden skill developed by Babybot was the ability to roll a bottle across the table. The scientists found that the robot - programmed to be curious about objects - learned quite a bit from things placed in front of him on a highchair-like table. Its “brain” is actually a cluster of 20 computers, running several neural networks. This is software that mimics a biological neural system and learns in a similar way – by establishing and altering the strength of links between artificial neurons. By adjusting the neural network software and observing the robot’s learning behaviour, the roboticists can test different neuroscience models.
The researchers used what they called "synthetic methodology," which is basically how you learn by building something, a process of trials and errors. And they also looked at how babies were interacting with their environment. Says Giorgio Metta of Genoa University in Italy, a member of the research team, the goal is to build a humanoid two-year-old child, which will have all of Babybot’s abilities.
The next step is to build a fully humanoid version that's open source in both software and hardware. The project called Robocub will see the engineers refine their robot so that it can see, hear and touch its environment. Eventually, it will be able to crawl, too.

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