Linguistics Could Help Future Driverless Cars Cooperate Better (thestack.com) 27
An anonymous reader writes: A team of swarm robotics researchers have applied a linguistics technique typically used in manufacturing to automatically program and control a 600-strong robot fleet. The scientists found that human error was significantly reduced, making the solution safer and more reliable than previous 'trial and error' approaches. The tasks in the experiments were defined by a graphical tool, which a machine then automatically translated to the bots. The supervisory technique uses a linguistics system through which the robots construct their own 'words', related to what they can 'see' and which moves they choose to action next. Robots will only perform actions from valid 'words', which means they are guaranteed to carry out the required tasks.
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Yes.
I want to hear more about carless drivers.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Not me. Hopefully once the tech takes off, manual driving will be illegal for folks like you who don't want driverless cars. That will allow the rest of us a safe and efficient mode of transportation.
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That will allow the rest of us a safe and efficient mode of transportation.
Possibly your children, but I doubt you will ever enjoy this tech. Sorry.
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Yes, because, as everyone knows, infinite safety is the only goal worth aspiring to.
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infinite
Please point out where I said this word.
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You didn't say it. You implied it.
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Ok. Please point out where I implied it.
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Reread your post and note the sweeping generalization you made. (see? I can be passive aggressive too! where do I get my medal?)
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The only thing I am reading is how you want to change the subject. "Sweeping generalization" has nothing to do with "infinite", just like the phrase "people drink water" doesn't imply "people drink infinite water".
Please make a point or provide a relevant argument, or feel free to end this silly thread.
Super misleading description and even article (Score:4, Informative)
This has nothing to do with communications between robots, and everything to do with finite-state machines being used to keep things in established states. The grammars are entirely internal to each robot's programming. There's a quote in the article from the research lead about machines programming themselves but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the contents of the paper. The paper talks about followers/leaders but communication is extremely limited ("I'm not on a team yet" "okay I accept you to green team") and the "leaders" don't send any instructions in the grammar they designed.
Unless I'm missing a big chunk of the paper, the robots don't construct their own words at all, unless you mean "they have a short list of actions they can perform in different states and they pick from that list".
It's a neat study, and it's useful to explore the best design techniques for large scale swarms, but it sounds cooler and way different than it actually is
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It's been known since 1957 that people do not use finite state languages; we use languages with at least the complexity of context free phrase structure grammar (Chomsky's claim back then was that grammars of languages had transformational power). And whether a language is finite state has nothing to do with how many words it has (as long as there's at least one); it's possible to use a phrase structure grammar with only one word (although it can be more difficult to prove that such a language is not finit
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Well, to be fair, there is a lot of fluff in 'humanities' that is not tolerated in the hard sciences.
Information free articles are information free (Score:2, Interesting)
First off, direct link [springer.com] to the corresponding journal article (open access).
The "linguistics technique" is apparently supervisory control theory [wikipedia.org]. I'm not too familiar with it, but apparently in supervisory control theory you model both the capabilities of the robots and the goals you want as formal system, in the form of discrete states for each actor, and events which cause transitions between the states (i.e. the robot is a finite state machine). These events can either be controlled (the robot performs an
Driverless cars ... (Score:3)
So, a lot like New York city cabbies then.