Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

Researchers have a working robotic fly. However, despite news stories of spying I can find no references to cameras or other spy equipment embedded in the flies so no need to panic yet.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are building a minuscule robot guaranteed to give new meaning to the old phrase, “fly on the wall.”

Known affectionately as “robofly,” the gadget is exactly what its name implies: a flying robot about the size of a housefly. It even looks a bit like a fly, although it will have four wings instead of two and one glassy eye instead of two beady ones.

Uncle Sam, who is bankrolling the project to the tune of $2.5 million and wants to see robofly airborne by 2004, will add the flying robot to its espionage toy box.

“The potential application of a robot based on a fly might be, in an urban environment, clandestine surveillance and reconnaissance,” said Teresa McMullen of the Office of Naval Research. . . [ read more Spy fly - Tiny winged robot to mimic nature's fighter jets ]

Scientists in England have a robot that powers itself eating flies so you can just get one of those to keep your home free of robotic flies.

r Chris Melhuish and his Bristol-based team hope the robot, called EcoBot II, will one day be sent into zones too dangerous for humans, potentially proving invaluable in military, security and industrial areas.

Melhuish, who is director of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the UWE, told CNN that the EcoBot II was a result of a quest for an intelligent robot that could function without human supervision.

“That means they need energy. It is one thing to have a robot getting its energy from a household socket, or maybe from the factory floor, but it is another thing when the robot goes outside buildings,” he said. [ read more Fly eating robot powers itself ]

But if you don’t have a fly eating robot — fear not and remove the tinfoil hat; Endgadget is reporting hawks are hunting down WowWee Dragonfly bots. I’m thinking if you are concerned about fly bots spying on you you just need to attract a few fly eating birds to your yard.

More information:
Robotic fly to descend on New York
Robotic fly gets its buzz
Tinker, Tailor, Robot, Fly

The Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology claims to have created robots that evolve and learn to communicate with each other.  The robots have a set of genes, flashing lights and there are battery sinks and sources in the environment.  Some robots evolved to tell others where sources and sinks were located.  Some told others sinks were sources while furtively using sources for themselves.

. . .By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate—lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they’d found food or poison. The fourth colony sometimes evolved “cheater” robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink.

Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. “Sometimes,” Floreano says, “you see that in nature—an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away—but I never expected to see this in robots.” . . . [ read more Robots evolve and learn how to lie]

So does that mean as operating systems incorporate ai that your computer will start lying to you?

“Of course your credit is not over drawn.  And I have no idea where that order for a memory and hard drive upgrade came from.”

Papers:
Evolution of Adaptive Behaviour in Robots by Means of Darwinian Selection
Evolutionary Conditions for the Emergence of Communication in Robots ( $$$ pdf )
Evolution of neural control structures: some experiments on mobile robots ( ps)
God save the red queen! Competition in co-evolutionary robots ( pdf )
Evolutionary Robots with online self organization and behavioral fitness ( pdf )

More information:
Laboratory of Intelligent Systems
The Evolutionary Robotics Homepage ( extensive list of links )

See also:
Talking Robots Podcast

Entirely too cool and too weird. We have robots that can do surgery at 1.8gs but not one that can put the laundry away. Does this mean housewives are going to be harder to replace than doctors?

. . . To demonstrate how that research is progressing, Silicon Valley-based SRI International and the University of Cincinnati held a series of tests this past September that sound like a cross between a PR stunt and a B-movie: human doctors squaring off against a robotic surgeon aboard a nose-diving DC-9 aircraft.During periods of zero gravity and sustained acceleration of 1.8 g’s, a robot made incisions and applied sutures on simulated tissue, while a human surgeon did the same. The purpose: to measure just how precise a remote-operated robot can be, especially in a turbulent or gravity-free environment. SRI hasn’t released its results, but according to PM Advisory Board member Dr. Ken Kamler, who participated in one of the flight tests, the robot seemed to hold its own?until its compensation software was turned off. “The difference was huge,” Kamler says. “It was virtually impossible [for it] to tie a knot.” But with compensation engaged, the bot performed as well as it did on Earth.And so the tests’ true purpose was to showcase SRI’s software. . . . [ read more Robot Surgeons Closer Than You Think]

The truth of the matter is that economics drives robotic development. When the robot is cheaper than the worker we replace the worker with a robot.

More information:
Prepping Robots to Perform Surgery
SRI International Medical Product Development

So far a lack of portable power is our biggest stumbling block in robotics and the portable internet. This is one way around that problem.

The next time you see something flapping in the breeze on an overhead power line, squint a little harder. It may not be a plastic bag or the remnants of a party balloon, but a tiny spy plane stealing power from the line to recharge its batteries.

The idea comes from the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio, US, which wants to operate extended surveillance missions using remote-controlled planes with a wingspan of about a metre, but has been struggling to find a way to refuel to extend the plane’s limited flight duration.

So the AFRL is developing an electric motor-powered micro air vehicle (MAV) that can “harvest” energy when needed by attaching itself to a power line. It could even temporarily change its shape to look more like innocuous piece of trash hanging from the cable. . . [ read more Spy planes to recharge by clinging to power lines]

More information:
AFRL
Small UAVs may recharge on power lines

The most important gain of automating oil platforms is that oil fields too small to be profitable become profitable when you can use a small automated platform to handle the oil.  Oil prices will have to remain high for this to be economically feasible. Robots will take over the world just as soon as it is economically feasible for them to do so.

In the future, offshore platforms could be run by robots alone, with human beings staying on land. . . .
At the control panel, Liljebäck has pre-programmed a huge range of rapid movements of the colossus inside the room. The robot arm glides silently back and forward on its beam, suddenly moves out in a wide arc to the left, and then straight towards the scientist, before turning downwards to the floor. Liljebäck says that the framework, traversing crane and robot arm weigh a total of seven and a half tonnes. It would not be a good idea to get too close.

Nor will the petroleum operators find themselves in close contact with the new robots when, if all goes according to plan, they are ready for installation in 2015. The operators will remain on land and control them from there, reducing both risks and costs. . .

[ read more Robots taking over the job on offshore oil drilling platforms]

More information:
Statoil Hydro
Sintef