Open Source Robot for Household Tasks

bednarz brings us a NetworkWorld story about the development of a robot through an open source project. The objective of the project is to "take robotics from research into homes." Quoting: "One of its immediate goals is to build 10 robots and make them available to university researchers as a common platform that can be tinkered with and improved. Willow Garage will also supply 'an open-source code base integrated from the best open-source robotics software available,' President and CEO Steve Cousins said. In Cousins' video presentation, the first version of the robot could be seen vacuuming, picking up toys off the floor of a living room, taking dishes out of a dishwasher, and most importantly of all, using a bottle opener to crack open a cold, refreshing brew."

Re:One step closer to the singularity

[Anonymous Coward]

The singularity is bullshit. In order for an AI to have human level intelligence it's going to have to use inductive reasoning simply by virtue of the fact that there's very little that can be accomplished by deductive reasoning alone. Any entity that has the capacity to use inductive reasoning also has the capacity to make incorrect inductions.

Human level AIs are never going to be practical for real world problems because they'll have just as many ways of going wrong as human geniuses do. People who are capable of making intuitive leaps don't always make the right ones and even when they do solve problems, they may not be solving the problems you asked them to.

Re:One step closer to the singularity

[baboonlogic]

The real problem with singularity is that it implicitly assumes that the intelligence of various entities forms a totally ordered set and that we will soon discover or create some superior intelligence. That kind of a claim needs evidence and we have none. And on top of that we display a significant cognitive bias while looking at intelligence. An octopus's intelligence might be better than ours at the ocean's floor. As a species, our intelligence might be lower than that of chimpanzees (they didn't cause global warming). Can we compare human intelligence to that of HIV? To that of T-Rex? What does intelligence mean? Whatever it is, we don't seem to have objective criteria for defining it. We just seem to be content with some circular definitions that use human intelligence itself as the prototype and then claim that our intelligence is superior. That and the evidence-less concept of a total order in intelligence lies at the heart of "singularity".

Singularity is likely going to remain in the realm of "coming soon" forever.

Re:Hire a housekeeper

[QuantumG]

it doesn't need years of training

No, just decades upon decades of research and development.

Which costs money.

Which has to be recovered from customers.

just a software upgrade.

Whereas if I want my housekeeper to do something different this week I just tell her, and with minimal explanation, she does it.

Re:Anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

it's open source! if it doesn't do it how you want, go in and change things do it does!

Re:OOPS

[Tablizer]

And someone will write a virus, which will make one of them wash the garbage, load the dog in the dishwasher, wear your pants around its head, and start bumping its torso against your computer in a rather rhythmic pattern.

Those exist already. They're called "toddlers".