The ability-
To tell the difference between Pringles and toilet paper is paramount in a Robo-butler; unless you have a penchant for that sort of thing...
We know that all of the objects in the picture below are chairs, right? But show this picture to a computer and see what happens. Getting computers to recognise generic objects is a hugely difficult task that’s complicated by variations of the same object (club chairs vs. office chairs vs. folding chairs) and by other objects in …
There's bound to be an automated Assibo ass-wiper somewhere on a Japanese drawing board even as we type.
Then again - why not? A lot of people want home help, and robot aid would be an excellent thing for the infirm and bedridden.
Ass-wiping, cleaning, shopping, and chatting 'bots are the beginnings of the next tech boom, which should be happening in (checks watch...) about 10 years for the expensive early adopters and 15 years for the consumer market.
(Just don't give the robots access to the planet's defence grid. Duh.)
"There's bound to be an automated Assibo ass-wiper somewhere on a Japanese drawing board even as we type."
Not on a drawing board, in commercial release even in 1986, when I did a tour of Japan as a teenager.
The Japanese are into loo tech to an almost unbelievable extent.
One evening after a meal with some Japanese friends I went to contemplate Zen on the throne and found it to be shaped like Captain Kirk's chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. I started messing with the buttons, all with idiographs i didn't understand on them. Pushed the first button. My bot started to grow warmer. That's interesting I thought. Heated seat. Pressed another button, Loo music. Pressed another. Airfreshner and a flush. Pressed another button, and blow me down, with a noise like R2 D2 tapping in to the Death Star main frame a chrome probe appears from the back of the loo, rotates round so a nozzle is pointing up and squirts warm soapy water up my Jacksie.
My mother is 80 and although intellectually still quite sharp she is physically infirm and cannot do many things on her own. She has to have other people, who she doesn't really know, strip her and wash her to stay clean, and on her worse days even help in the toilet. It's something she finds very degrading but unfortunately necessary. If she falls down, then because of our lovely British health and safety nonsense her nurses aren't allowed to pick her up and she has to wait wherever she's fallen while my brother or I are called out to pick her up or an ambulance has to be called to lift her up again if we're not available. The day a robot that can do all those things and can also monitor her vital signs and call for help if needed becomes commercially available I'll be finding a way to buy one! The whole "robobutler" concept goes way beyond a gimmicky man-servant, it could transform the quality of life of people who are currently suffering every day and it really can't come soon enough. This research appears to be bringing that a step closer to reality.
A robot capable of recognising rubbish and binning it (or recycling if that's your thing) would be nice to have, but what I'd find vastly more useful is one that can do the washing and hang the clothes up to dry and put them away again.
I realise that clothing might be too deformable for computer recognition by shape (yet) but going by colour (not necessarily in human-visible light) might work too.
A robot capable of recognising rubbish and binning it ..., but what I'd find vastly more useful is one that can do the washing and hang the clothes up to dry and put them away again.
But very dangerous to give it both functions. With my sartorial taste, it would probably end up binning all of my clothes!
I have the iRobot Roomba in my Bachelor pad. Brilliant bit of kit. I love it. I'm never vacuuming again. I also got a cordless Black and Decker hand vac for doing the bits the robot doesn't reach. My place has never been so clean. I would recommend it to anyone. Now for me a robot vac is exactly as equivalent and useful as a dishwasher, it doesn't quite do everything (you have to empty the dust bucket and have a quick go with the hand vac on places it can't reach). but then a dishwasher doesn't put the plates away either does it. Once you have one, you won't want to be without it. I mean why do the vacuuming yourself ? Why? And they don't cost much more than a regular vac.
Dyson had better get his act together and get his rumoured robot vac out, or his market, *poof*, is gone.
I'm not sure who is lower on the scale of credible, AI researchers of Cognition researchers.
(I'm sure there are good ones, but it seems a few took a leaf from the book of arts and media studies, and decided to just doss all day and write up some imaginations. At least the latter have a reason to write imagination down on paper. :P )
Although it sounds like there is still a lot of potential speed up to be had in the software architecture if 90% of the theoretical capability has not been used yet.
Thumbs up for move the idea of the "robot butler" (or for the slightly liess self indulgent a robot nurse) just a little step closer.
Of course that still leaves the mechanical elements.
Clothes recognition. Perhaps.
Pick up, iron and hang clothes on a hanger in your wardrobe. fuggeddaboutit (for now).
...was doing this years ago.
I'm sure I've seen one of James May's "boy's toys" programs where he met Asimo.
Asimo has the ability to to identify any object presented to it; James showed him a toy sports car, and Asimo replied "(toy) car". James (rather unsportingly) said "No, Asimo, its a <insert precise marque/model of car>". Asimo duly updated it's DB of objects.
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"Last time I went for a walk the postbox didn't have a label on it..."
Funny, because I'm sure the local postbox still has E II R and a label full of collection times on it.
Your mileage may vary depending on nationality, of course.
<-- Yes, yes I know.
If you want to differentiate a packet of bog rolls from a packet of crisps why not just read the bar code (that's what it's there for, after all)? If you're a vacuum cleaner I'd far prefer your developers spent time on getting you to climb stairs, and to be able to get the cobwebs off the ceiling, than teaching you to identify 57 varieties of chair.
The only thing a vacuum cleaner needs to know about objects in its path is not WHAT they are, but their properties: movable/immovable, fragile or prone to injury - and then to take a limited set of actions depending on those properties (and erring on the side of caution, natch).
> iRobot also makes military robots.
But at least there'll be a nice clean battlefield after their robots have killed / bombed / strafed the crap out of every living thing on or near it. (So long as there aren't any stairs).
Hopefully their revision control software won't get the robo-butler and military versions mixed up.
While the idea of computing every possible position in chess has been proved impossible, due to the number of positions being greater than the number of atoms in the universe (or thereabouts), a system that has a 3d record of everything isn't bound by the same constraint.
A relatively simple formula could create an index number for the viewed object and then compare it to a database (internet) for a match, or local server for those bots that are just wandering around your house looking for things to do.
Please send the cheques to Mr Cash, although there's no need to be so formal, just Cash, will not offend.
is the only thing saving us from the iron-fisted rule of our robotic despot overlords, AKA Skynet. Do we REALLY want robots that are smart enough to see how stupid people are ? One look at the aftermath of a rugby game, and they will know. The missile codes will be decoded world-wide, and 30 minutes later, no people, no civilization, and most importantly, NO BEER.
I know it hurts, but THINK before you ask for a smarter robot. Think how a rotating stainless steel arm and hand assembly would feel jammed through your rib cage. Do you REALLY want a smarter robot now. Hmmm ?
No? Then I wouldn't send you to the store to buy eggs!!
Maybe the robotic retina can tell the difference, but will it go to the store? Time will tell!
Some things are better left to humans! As for cleaning up a room, my father had an idea of fitting a garbage disposal in the center of my bedroom and every once in a while, hosing the place down to cure the "mess". Ah, my youth!
"Running DPM is highly compute-intensive. Each pixel requires about 100,000 floating-point operations, 10,000 reads from memory and 1,000 floating-point values stored."
Eh - give the problem to some demo scene programmers and they'll do it with 20 adds, three branches, and a fixed point multiply. And they'll still have time to hit the sauna.