Man’s New Best Friend
When the word “robot” hits our ears, our minds might generate several images: R2D2, The Terminator, Wall-E, or maybe that robot you saw in your school’s science fair in fourth grade. Whatever it is, science fiction movies have depicted robots in various ways, both in how they look and in what they do. The movie I-Robot shows us two kinds of robots: a personal aide and a rebel who begins to think for itself. The amazing thing: we’re getting closer and closer to both types.
The history of robots is long and complicated. In 1936 the first “robot” as AT&T’s Bell Labs created the Voder, where a person could use a specific keyboard to make the robot speak. More information on the Voder can be found here. Much of the next 30 years was spent dreaming of what lay in the future of robots, and the idea of robots was then popularized in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” where Hal 9000 was the robotic spaceship that interacted with the characters and could think for himself. Hal is shown in this video as emotional and independent, a far off fantasy from the robots that existed in 1968.
As research into artificial intelligence continued, the 90’s saw huge improvements with robots being built to act somewhat like humans and even being able to play soccer despite their less-than-smooth movements. Robots moved into the home before the 21st century as Sony introduced the AIBO, a robotic pet. By 2004, Toyota and Honda had created humanoid robots that they projected could one day assistant people around the house and in the workplace.
Researchers all over the world have created robots that are capable of things we never thought would be possible in our lifetime. Robots are now able to move and interact with their surroundings in unbelievable ways. There are robots that have learned how to make facial expressions and can match them with emotions, robots that mimic heel-toe walking like humans, and robots that solve Rubiks Cubes.
The physical capabilities of robots are astounding, but even more so are the mental processes many developers have come up with for the newest generation of robots. Researchers at the University of Southern California have built robots that have been used to teach kids Finnish as well as playground skills like sharing, while another robot has taught kids how to set the table. Tests have shown that many kids learn from robots as well as, if not better than, learning from human teachers, as this article indicates. Similar teaching technology is also in South Korea.
The learning is not just being done by the kids. Today’s robots even have the capabilities to learn through interactions with humans, as this article explains (see “Learning from Humans”). The robots are not just learning from the computer programming but instead from their experiences, demonstrating true artificial intelligence. With robots teaching themselves, we may be a lot closer to the future than we thought.
