Have any of you been following the advances of the Japanese in AI and Robotics?? I have a very old friend who is very into robotics and a memeber of the robotics society of america and editor of their newsletter. He mentioned in an article that the Japanese have a national robotics research program in effect which is a combined effort of all major Japanese electronics and industrial companies. Apparently they hope to be the world leaders in robotics technology by the year 2000. Has anyone seen the P2 or P3 robot that Honda made?? I watched a little show on the LEARNING CHANNEL which showed this walking bipedal robot. It was more than a walker. According to the show, it was smart too. It could fetch things from various parts of the facility, could use tools (like powertools) and was about the closest thing to a storm trooper I've ever seen.
I was going to attatch a photo.. But here's a nice website I found with some great pictures for those of you who havn't seen it.
http://www.walrus.com/~pietro/newpages/919p3photo.html
btw: on another point of interest, relating to Mars colonies, someone said they'd heard Japan announced they are entering the space race and they recently sent a probe to Mars AND announced they are planning a manned mars mission. Can anyone confirm or deny this based on some more legitimate source?
jeff
-- "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." -Albert Einstein ----------
>From: Michael Butler <mmb@best.com>
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: Cog
>Date: Sun, Apr 4, 1999, 2:11 AM
>
>> has a torso and a head so far. They assert that to learn like a human, the
>> computer needs a human-like body.
>
> Umm, I haven't seen what they're doing lately, but the core issue seems to
> be that to *think* like a human (including learning), the intellect has to
> be faced with the same sorts of sensorimotor issues and answers as humans,
> to the greatest extent possible. It's close (perhaps closer than
> analogous) to the observation that if you want a vision system to see like
> a human, it has to be fooled by the same optical illusions as a human.
>
> Trivial example of the former: what good is a tennis racket to an insect?
> How would you explain one to it? If you did, would it be able to use it?
>
> This _is_ ironically connected to themes in _The Matrix_, by the way. :)
>
>> http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/
>
> I'll check it out. Thanks.
>
> MMB
>
>