Rich's Robot MusingsA few questions from some smart eight year olds in East LA. Let's start with the word “robot.” Karel Capek coined it in his 1921 play Rossum's Universal Robots. The word robota literally means work, labor or serf labor, and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic languages. Traditionally the robota was the work period a serf had to give for his lord, typically 6 months of the year (definition from Wikipedia). These robots were artificial people made in factories. They had no souls and hence could be enslaved without trouble to their creator’s human conscience. Ultimately they rose to destroy their human makers and eventually became extinct because there was no one left to make them. Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot” series is my favorite exploration of the robots of science fiction. Susan Calvin is the star of the series. She is a human psychologist studying robots. November 26, 2009, Computer simulates cat brain, Not! A week or two ago IBM announced they had simulated a cat's brain using one of their super computers. The facts in their announcement are correct, but the conclusion is completely wrong. The fundamental mistake was that they simulated a neuron as a single point digital connection. The connections in a mammalian brain are far more complex than that. Each connection involves ion channels, multiple branches, electro-chemical interactions, and on and on. To quote Henry Markram's (the lead on the EPFL Blue Brain project) opinion on IBM's simulation, "These are point neurons (missing 99.999% of the brain; no branches; no detailed ion channels; the simplest possible equation you can imagine to simulate a neuron, totally trivial synapses; and using the STDP learning rule I discovered in this way is also is a joke). He wrote this in an open letter to the respected IEEE. I encourage you to read his letter. You can also take a look at my post below. To reiterate, there is no path from digital computers to the complexity of the human brain. November 10, 2009, How long before Star Wars robots? Here's a rare article that talks about how far away we are from having robots with human-like capabilities, rather than how close we are to that day. I definitely agree with the article. I don’t think we’ll see robots with anything like human reasoning this century or that we’ll necessarily ever see it. People who do say we’ll have robots with brains as powerful as humans generally base their argument on Moore’s law. Moore’s law says that the number of transistors on a computer processor doubles every two years. I have two issues with this line of reasoning. First, there is no guarantee that Moore’s law will continue to hold. It’s not a real law, like the law of gravity. It’s just based on an observation by Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore. Second, the interconnections in human brains are much more complex than binary computer connections. The connections in human brains are electro-chemical and involve firing rates. This makes them more like analog signals than digital signals. If we assume the resolution of a connection in a human brain is 10 bits and use a common estimate of 100 trillion connections in a human brain, then we would need a computer with ten to the power of ninety transistors! Even if Moore’s law did hold true, it predicts the Sun will burn out before we have a digital computer with the power of a human brain. Basically there is no path from digital computers to the complexity of the human brain. June 10, 2009, RoboGames is only a few days away! This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the world's largest robot show returns May 25, 2009, More government funding for robotics? Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) is looking to increase government funding for robotics. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/05/25/robot0525.html Of course I'm a supporter of robotics, but this spending is getting out of hand. Printing infinite money will eventually catch up with us. May 20, 2009, Robots in movies sampler From Marie in the 1927 silent movie classic "Metropolis" to the Terminator franchise, has a nice overview of movie robots through the years. January 24, 2009, "Glazed" a painting by Eric Joyner Take a look at Eric's website and consider buying some prints or a book or something else cool there.
December 13, 2008, Dancing Robots
April 12, 2008, Terminator Series Review First of all, I give a "two thumbs up" to the Terminator TV series. That's no small endorsement as I have very high expectations for the Terminator line (including the movies). The time travel stuff is always fun, but of course it's the robotics that I like. Unfortunately, we know what it is like when humans lack morality. This series explores super-humans with no morality. To all future roboticists: Please program Asimov's three laws into your creations. Jan 25, 2008, Robot Learning As mentioned below, only a fifth of the cost of deploying a robot on a factory floor is the cost of the robot itself. The rest of the cost is programming the robot, developing the tools and developing the manufacturing processes. A company called Skilligent is working to reduce the cost of programming the robot. They announced the commercial release of a robot learning software. The main concept behind the software is that it can learn skills directly from humans without programming. This opens the door for building robots that don’t require traditional programming as they can be trained “out-of-the-box” by a non-professional user. Jan 3, 2008, Indian robots toil on global shop floors Lower labor cost is the reason often cited for off-shoring manufacturing jobs. So why would it be cheaper to use robots in India than in the USA? It's because only a fifth of the cost of deploying the robot is the cost of the robot itself. The rest of the cost is programming the robot, developing the tools and developing the manufacturing processes. It will be a long time before we automate that part of the equation. |
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