The Age of Thinking, Self-Developing Robots Has Finally Arrived
Institute of Robotics in Scandinavia (iRobis) has announced commercial availability of Brainstorm®, the world’s first “complete cognitive software system for robots”. The system turns robots into self-developing, adaptive, problem-solving, “thinking” machines. The system automatically writes control programs for any robot on which it is installed, dramatically shortening development time and cost. The same technology is used to allow robots to adapt to new circumstances and solve other problems while in operation.
The coming of such creatures has been predicted for decades. But how long does it really take to put thinking, self-developing robots on the market? This question was addressed recently at the RoboDevelopment Conference in Santa Clara, California. It really depends on when you start.
The first scientifically recorded effort to get a modern computer to learn took place in 1958. So if you started then, and guessed it would take about half a century, you would have been right. It didn’t happen all of a sudden. The first mobile robot to be controlled by artificial intelligence was created in 1966. By the 1980s, machine learning was widely recognized as a distinct scientific discipline with many disciples.
The secret ingredient in iRobis’ software is a method called “genetic programming” (GP). A number of scientists since the time Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species to the present day have suggested that human thought and problem solving follow the same pattern as natural evolution. Connections between simpler thoughts that make less sense together do not survive the process. Stronger relationships do, as part of the evolution of more complex thoughts and solutions. GP uses this idea to evolve arbitrarily complex computer programs.
GP developed out of the rich and varied research on machine learning during the 1980s and found its special defining moment in a 1992 book, Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection by Stanford University researcher John Koza. According to the textbook, Genetic Programming An Introduction, by 1998 more than 800 papers had been published related to GP by 200 authors.
One of those authors was Peter Nordin, the human brain behind Brainstorm. Dr. Nordin began publishing AI articles in 1992 and followed with an impressive run of systematic research on GP and robotics. In 1999, he presented An Evolutionary Architecture For A Humanoid Robot, a new GP based software architecture for robots. From 1998-2003 he ran The Humanoid Project at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Hundreds of robots of various types and sizes were created and the GP approach got plenty of exercise. That led to a contract with the Swedish Defence Department in 2006 to develop a commercial version of the software and the creation of iRobis, his 19th company to apply GP to a commercial product.
So if you’re Peter Nordin, starting work in the early 1990s, dedicating your career to GP and intelligent robotics, you can say that it takes 15-20 years to produce commercial software for thinking, self-developing robots – as well as sufficient funding of course.
His 1999 paper presented results of experiments carried out on a humanoid robot known as Elvis. The successful experiments included balancing, walking, bifocal vision, navigation, audio orientation, and object manipulation. Elvis’ hips moved appropriately when he danced, which may be the reason for his name. Since that time there have been improvements in the speed of evolutionary processing, the use of the robots’ “imagination” for planning, adapting, and problem solving, and advanced physical control such as hand-eye coordination among other things.
How long will it take to bring new “thinking,” self-developing robots to market? Brainstorm is the first tool for development of GP robotics system on the market. The development of a tool suggests a high level of technical maturity. How long will it take product developers to create robots using the tool?
An answer is suggested by the work of Almir Heralic, a former student of Peter Nordin turned professor. He created Humanoid Robot HR-2 using software implementing the GP architecture during a three-month project at Chalmers. At a cost of only $300, it rates quite well in the advanced robotics field. And the video documentation at the HR-2 website is pretty good too.
The announcement does not mean that Brainstorm is available to download for a free 30-day trial. In the short-term, iRobis expects to work directly with early commercial adopters and researchers to create prototypes with previously unseen levels of intelligent autonomous behavior and to prove the value of the system for rapid development and advanced experimentation. The search is on for high-value strategic partnerships.
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November 30th, 2008 at 2:46 am
If the reports that this article is based upon are correct, this is a terrifying moment in human history. As robots crowd humans out of an increasing array of employment opportunities, we as a society are going to need to move beyond consumer/capitalism to an entirely new means of distributing scarce resources.
If the reports in question are correct, there are going to be those that point to the industrial revolution and to the Luddites saying that all will be well. But the changes that true thinking machines will bring are unprecedented and enormously sweeping in scope.
In all probability, in an economy operated largely by thinking machines, it will be impossible for a consumer based economy to survive as the teeming masses with excess money to spend upon which a consumer driven economy depends will be entirely unemployed and thus not have excess money to spend on consumption.
Yes, I realize that the Luddites probably felt much the same way, as did makers of buggy whips with the introdcution of automobiles and workers in the field of automotive manufacturing with the introduction of robotic manufacturing. However, the economic damage to the common folk which may be on the way is far greater than has been seen previously.
Manufacturing employment will be annihilated, the damage to employment opportunities in the service sector will be only slightly less severe. Regrettably, while I can see the approaching storm, I cannot predict how we will survive it. Only that we will. Whether this will please the survivors or not remains to be seen
November 30th, 2008 at 3:00 am
The article at http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm called “Robotic Nation” is a highly insightful look at the possibilities that thinking machines introduce into the employment marketplace. I question the ultimate destination that the author believes that we are headed towards, as I reject the idea that an economy even remotely resembling the one we currently inhabit could survive the removal of such a vast percentage of the population from the employment (and thus the consumer) marketplace.
It’s definitely worth reading, but I advise doing so from a firmly skeptical point of view.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:24 am
I can’t wait. I would love to see a thinking robot tackle a feminist. I’d give it five minutes before the robotic rules about not harming humans cease to apply.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:37 am
Well of course technology continues to change and the character and types of some of the jobs humans do change with it. That’s nothing new. The greatest problem I see with the doomsday scenario that everyone will be unemployed is that means no one will be able to afford the robots.
I don’t think humans will be entirely dispensable in the near future. To the extent that there are problems, you can bet there are people working on them. There’s a whole lot of folks concerned about every aspect of the coming technological revolution – the new wave – even about robot ethics and morality. Robot religion?
But first things first. Robots are now taking over dangerous and extremely tedious work and that’ll all be first. Industrial robots have been doing physically strenuous tedious work for quite some time – and labor laws in some countries are so protective of workers that they can’t live without them. Prices dropped and wages rose as robots increased productivity.
The day will come when robots face down armed criminals (it’s already happened once that I have heard of) and they’re already on the battlefield disarming bombs and doing dangerous recon. If there’s a nuclear accident somewhere, … well, if you’re a Star Trek movie fan you’ll know what I mean when I say that Spock won’t really have to die in the 23rd century.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Creating humanoids – good audio in Media Player Classic. Didn’t play so well in Windows Media Player.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] deeper: More information about the technology and history behind iRobis Brainstorm® by Roger F. [...]
November 30th, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] The Age of Thinking, Self-Developing Robots Has Finally Arrived The Age of Thinking, Self-Developing Robots Has Finally Arrived [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
The problem isn’t economics. It’s lawyers. Whole new industries of legal intrusion to protect against “robotism” and “robot abuse” and to institute parallel universes of rights will spring up to sate the sewer dwellers.
Robots shouldn’t scare us. Lawyers should.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:44 pm
There will likely be mobile robot insurance similar to auto and general liability insurance. Some robots don’t need it at all – like a Roomba for example. Others are no more dangerous than a lawn mower. There is one case already of a large industrial lawn mowing robot that allegedly killed someone. I haven’t looked into the allegations at all – don’t even know whether it might be an urban myth. If it’s true, then I can’t see it as being significantly different from other industrial accidents.
March 15th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
There is a new age of technology that is upon us and artificial intelligence will be part of it. Aristotle once that slavery will end when a machine can be made that will do mundane tasks for us. Now some 2500 years later that day has arrived. What a minimum wage worker does for a dollar a robot will do for a dime. Things that are boring or dangerous will be done by machines as they never get bored and no one crys when a machine is damaged.
People need to get back to exploration and discovery. There are galaxies to explore.