Lab Rat: Robots have feelings, too
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2000/1130/tech-labrat113000.html
Rodney Brooks, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Artificial Intelligence Lab, believes that the killer application for
robots is remote presence -- in battle, in policing, on the playground,
and even in the home and office.
During my recent visit to MIT in Boston, the Australian-born robotics guru
demonstrated why developing human-like emotional, sensory, and response
systems is necessary for robots to become as pervasive as the PC.
"In battle, you can't have the commander hacking away in C++," says Mr.
Brooks. "He has to be able to tell the robot, 'Go down the hill, take a
look, and tell me what's going on.'" In turn, the robot has to be able to
demonstrate that it has understood the command; a nod of its robotic head
would suffice. In a sense, then, the robot's artificial intelligence is
really a very sophisticated user interface.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:17 MDT