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Robot learns to recognise itself in the mirror22 August 2012 byHal HodsonMagazine issue 2878. Subscribe and saveFor similar stories, visit theRobotsTopic Guide NICO spends a lot of time looking in the mirror. But it's not mere vanity - Nico is a humanoid robot that can recognise its reflection - a step on the path towards true self-awareness. In fact, Nico can identify almost exactly where its arm is in space based on the mirror image. Justin Hart and Brian Scassellati at Yale University have taught Nico to recognise the arm's location and orientation down to accuracy of 2 centimetres in any dimension. It is a feat of spatial reasoning that no robot has ever accomplished before. Nico is the centrepiece of a unique experiment to see whether a robot can tackle a classic test of self-awareness called the mirror test. What does it take to pass the test? An animal (usually) has to recognise that a mark on the body it sees in the mirror is in fact on its own body. Only dolphins, orcas, elephants, magpies, humans and a few other apes have passed the test so far. Precise recognition of where its body is in space will be key if Nico is to get to grips with the mirror test, which by its nature is performed in 3D. Before it does, though, the robot will need to learn more about itself. The team plan to teach Nico how to recognise where its torso and head are, what shape they are, and their colour and texture so it can see and react to the mark on its body. Nico already understands how to connect movement of its limb to motion in its reflection, another important skill it achieved in an experiment in 2007
. "What excites me is that the robot has learned a model of itself, and is using it to interpret information from the mirror," says Hart. He and Scassellati presented the work last month at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Toronto, Canada. Mary-Anne Williams of the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, points out that robotic self-awareness is crucial if robots are ever going to work safely alongside humans. "Many robots today not only do not recognise themselves in a mirror, but do not recognise their own body parts directly," she says. "For example, a robot may be able to look downwards and see its feet but not recognise them as its own." Self-awareness is a basic social skill and without it robots will struggle to interact with people effectively, Williams adds. 
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Well. . .Fri Aug 17 22:15:10 BST 2012 by Eric KvaalenWake me up if it starts singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do".
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view threadWell. . .Wed Aug 22 19:08:04 BST 2012 by Polemoshttp://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=The_end_of_the_world
That's a good one, Eric!
The electromagnetic intellect of a robot operates with bound information, aslo known as discrete knowledge.
The electric intellect of a human operates with free information, also known as analog understanding:
"Bound information is always connected with a definite material structure, free information is abstract/symbolic. Free information is to a high degree independent from the carrier. Free information is connected with meaning and with goals (Zweck). In course of evolution several "phase transitions" from bound to free information are observed." —Ebeling, Werner ? Entropy, Information and Predictability of Evolutionary Systems ? in Hofkirchner, Wolfgang (ed.) ? The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information ? Routledge, 1999, p. 262
"Any fool (i.e., any robot) can know. The point is to understand. ... Imagination is more important than knowledge." —Albert Einstein
Read more: http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=The_end_of_the_world
http://twitter.com/rhamdu
Self-recognition is almost a pre-condition of life. It's how your immune system works. It's why spiders don't chew off their own legs. The mirror test is not a test of consciousness but of self-recognition under optical circumstances which don't often occur in nature. It's neat to program that into a robot, but it doesn't mean the robot has suddenly woken up into a world of subjective experience.
login and replyreport this commentGood Ai Work - But Don't OverinterpretWed Aug 22 11:49:30 BST 2012 by Polemoshttp://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=The_end_of_the_world
"It's neat to program that into a robot, but it doesn't mean the robot has suddenly woken up into a world of subjective experience."
It's good that you know it. But the point is to understand why it is so.
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