Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots
When National Geographic contacted me last week about writing an article about a robotics article they had published on the web I must say I was quite surprised.
The article itself is a very interesting one. It asks the question whether we are ready for all the robots that are slowly coming into our every day lives. Personally, I think the question is a moot one; robots are coming whether we are ready for them or not. With an ever ageing population in the western world and countries like Japan, we’re not going to be able to do without them. Robots will take care of our elderly and do the jobs nobody wants or can do.
The other question whether the robots will be ready for us is the more important one. Can robots fit in and find their way in our crazy, disorganized world? Much research is being done to making robots social.
The true test of intelligence will be a robot that can tell the difference between a sarcastic remark and a sincere one. I for one welcome our Robotic Overlords (or was I being sarcastic?)
The August edition of National Geographic will be on the stands on July 26.
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With no human coach at the controls, Virginia Tech’s robot soccer team dribbled, passed, and scored its way into the 2010 RoboCup “kid-size” semifinal in Singapore. The tournament founders’ goal is a robot team that will defeat the human World Cup champs by 2050. More cool photos can be found here in the gallery: [LINK]. |
Great post!
I agree about the making robots social thing. But robots should also become less dangerous (you wouldn’t wanna work next to an industrial robotic arm for example) so we’re probably at least a few decades away from really living with robots. At least that’s my opinion.
Development at the festo bionic learning network has been doing some research on that, so it might come a bit sooner (hopefully).
– leon (aka dimastero)
I think robots should be “easily” be able to detect sarcasm… if you say it in a “sarcastic voice”. (They can analyze sound waves, can’t they?) Typing it out/saying it monotone may be a different story.
Seeings how most of the engineers I work with can’t detect sarcasm, the hope of a robot actually doing it looms far off in the distance.
But whether or not robots and/ or software would be able to recognize it, why would one even sarcastically talk to a robot?
They’re here to help us get things done we can’t or don’t want to do, as Xander said, and if we want them to do that, what’s the use in saying things to them with double meanings?
Well that’s my opinion at least 🙂
– Leon (aka dimastero)