#Prometheus creates an iconic AI

Last night I went to see the new Ridley Scott movie Prometheus (don't worry there aren't any spoilers to follow). I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and one of its highlights, for me, was a robot called David. David is indistinguishable from a person; you may remember in the 1979 movie Alien there was character, called Ash, that the crew don't even know was a robot. There's also a robot called Bishop in the sequel Aliens, though it prefers the term "artificial person."
    David is brilliantly played by Michael Fassbender, who gives the character that slightly creepy perfection, mostly carried just by his tone of voice, that HAL had in 2001. We had a lot of questions after the movie (it's that sort of film) and I wondered why the name "David?" The robot in A.I. is called David as well. Is this a coincidence?
    Below is a short film made by Prometheus' creators providing some back story for David, which shows just how good Fassbender is in the role.

Scientists use #Lego #robots for research (#Turing Machine)

It's true, Lego Mindstorm robots are not just expensive toys, they can be used by scientists for research, as this piece in the Guardian shows.  To prove the point here is a functional Turing Machine made entirely from Lego - all it's missing is the infinite tape, which would obviously require all the Lego in the world and then some.

Autonomous cars - sooner than you think

The US state of Nevada has just passed legislation  that would allow autonomous cars on it highways by March 2012. An operator of an autonomous vehicle would still need a current state driver’s license. The law defines an autonomous vehicle as “a car that uses artificial intelligence, sensors and GPS to coordinate itself without active intervention by a human operator.” The law also acknowledges that the driver does not need to be actively attentive if the car is driving itself. Without the law, inattentive driving would likely land you with some sort of reckless driving citation under the guise of previous laws.

The Stadtpilot autonomous car drives in Braunschweig, Germany

Why should we encourage the development of autonomous cars? Consider this, the US has lost 6,279 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Last year 33,000 people lost their lives in road traffic accidents in the US! The United Nations estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed and a further 50 million injured on the world’s roads. China recorded 96,000 deaths and India 105,000 traffic deaths. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of injury death amongst children worldwide, and even in the US they are the sixth leading preventable cause of death. Clearly, if we can do something to stop this carnage, we should. It turns out people are lousy drivers.

Robot to carry 2012 Olympic torch

The iCub Robot

A robot has been nominated to carry the 2012 London Olympic torch to commemorate the centenary of Alan Turing's birth. It's not certain if the robot, called iCub, will actually carry the Olympic flame, but there's no reason why it couldn't. The Next Web has an article on this. 

Nao Robot Video

I've taken a video of a welcome routine I've programmed into the Nao robot. The manufacturers tell me that this is the first Nao in New Zealand!




I've not had the time to do anything with it so far this week. A whole bunch of administrivia has occupied my time (same goes for the book sadly).

I. Robot

Well pretty much as predicted no work on the book has happened this week. The Nao has eaten up all my time left over from writing a research grant application, reviewing conference papers and marking assignments.

I've got to grips with the Nao's programming language which is quite easy to use and have been playing with its sensors. Voice recognition is a bit hit and miss but the two video cameras on it work very well. For example it can now turn around until it sees a know mark and then walk towards that point - small steps but important ones. The basic idea is to build up a collection of basic routines, like turn around or walk ahead and then combine these into more complex behaviours.

Got the robot working

Well I got the Nao robot connected via WiFi, I had to use a spare WiFi router I have and open a port through the firewall (couldn't do that of course on the WiFi at work).

I've also now programmed a welcome routine that shows of the robot's movements, and voice recognition. It's balance is very good, mostly, though it has fallen over a couple of times. It goes down with quite a bang as it's quite heavy and nearly 2 feet high.

I've also got it to count how many faces it can see in front of it which works reasonably well.  I'll try to put some video up of it (can you post video on this blog?)
In the meantime Aldebaran have some videos on their website (scroll down) and there are some on YouTube (search for Nao robot). Needless to say no book writing has happened so far this week.

Work not Play

Well sort of. If you've been following my tweets you'll have seen that I took delivery of a Nao robot.

These are made by a French company  Aldebaran Robotics  and are state-of-the-art pieces of robot kit (at $25,000 NZD they ought to be).

Mine announces it self as "Nao robot # 607" when it is switched on. I spent most of the day installing software, charging its battery (it doesn't come fully charged like an iPhone or iPad), and getting it connected via ethernet and failing to connect via WiFi.

That will be tomorrow's task and then I have to get it to do something useful. I suspect that my productivity for stuff other than this robot will be rather low this week!