Japanese scientist unveils ‘thinking’ robot
Robots that learn from experience and can solve novel problems — just
like humans — sound like science fiction. But a Japanese researcher is
working on making them science fact, with machines that can teach
themselves to perform tasks they have not been programmed to do, using
objects they have never seen before.
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Humanoid
robot. AFP |
In a world first, Osamu Hasegawa, associate professor at the Tokyo
Institute of Technology, has developed a system that allows robots to
look around their environment and do research on the internet, enabling
them to “think” how best to solve a problem.
“Most existing robots are good at processing and performing the tasks
they are pre-programmed to do, but they know little about the ‘real
world’ where we humans live,” he told AFP.
“So our project is an attempt to build a bridge between robots and
that real world,” he said.
The Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network, or “SOINN”, is an
algorithm that allows robots to use their knowledge what they already
know to infer how to complete tasks they have been told to do.
SOINN examines the environment to gather the data it needs to
organise the information it has been given into a coherent set of
instructions.
Tell a SOINN-powered machine that it should, for example: “Serve
water”.
In a laboratory demonstration, the machine begins to break down the
task into a series of skills that it has been taught: holding a cup,
holding a bottle, pouring water from a bottle, placing a cup down.
Without special programmes for water-serving, the robot works out the
order of the actions required to complete the task.
The SOINN machine asks for help when facing a task beyond its ability
and crucially, stores the information it learns for use in a future
task.
In a separate experiment, SOINN is used to power machines to search
the Internet for information on what something looks like, or what a
particular word might mean. Hasegawa’s team is trying to merge these
abilities and create a machine that can work out how to perform a given
task through online research.
“In the future, we believe it will be able to ask a computer in
England how to brew a cup of tea and perform the task in Japan,” he
said.
Like humans, the system can also filter out “noise” or insignificant
information that might confuse other robots. The process is similar to
how people can carry on a conversation with a travelling companion on a
train and ignore those around them, or can identify an object under
different lighting and from various angles, Hasegawa said.
“Human brains do this so well automatically and smoothly so we don’t
realise that we are even doing this,” he said.
Similarly, the machine is able to filter out irrelevant results it
finds on the web.
“There is a huge amount of information available on the Internet, but
at present, only humans are making use of such information,” he said.
“This robot can connect its brain directly to the Internet,” he said.
Hasegawa hopes SOINN might one day be put to practical use, for example
controlling traffic lights to ease traffic jams by organically analysing
data from public monitors and accident reports. He also points to
possible uses in earthquake detection systems where a SOINN-equipped
machine might be able to aggregate data from numerous sensors located
across Japan and identify movements that might prove significant. In a
domestic setting, a robot that could learn could prove invaluable to a
busy household.
“We might ask a robot to bring soy sauce to the dinner table. It
might browse the Internet to learn what soy sauce is and identify it in
the kitchen,” said Hasegawa.
But, cautions the professor, there are reasons to be careful about
robots that can learn.
What kinds of tasks should we allow computers to perform? And is it
possible that they might turn against us, like in the apocalyptic vision
of Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
“A kitchen knife is a useful thing. But it can also become a weapon,”
he said.
While Hasegawa and his team have only benign intentions for their
invention, he wants people to be aware of its moral limits.
“We are hoping that a variety of people will discuss this technology,
when to use it, when not to use it.
“Technology is advancing at an enormous speed,” he said. “I want
people to know we already have this kind of technology. We want people
with different backgrounds and in different fields to discuss how it
should be used, while it is still in its infancy.”
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