Hoping this will spark a huge discussion on what everyone is looking for when it comes to their robot's AI.
AI is something I've been working on since before I even learned of EZ-Robots. My JARVIS replica from IronMan is coming up to being 3 years old come December and, while not started in ARC, over the last few months I've been porting parts over to ARC and those which are beyond the capabilities of ARC are integrated via Telnet. These include such things as voice controlled media playback, voice activated control of appliances, lights etc. and, well to be honest, far more than I can really explain right now.
Basically, up until now it is entirely built around home automation and automated media acquisition, storage, playback and logging. Recently I have been integrating and porting over parts of it in to ARC and where ARC is not capable of carrying out the actions, integration via Telnet so that ARC (and it's scripts) are aware of everything they need to be aware of (i.e. if media playback starts, EventGhost sends ARC a script command $mediaplayback = 1, when it's finished it sends $mediaplayback = 0 (that's a very simple example, it also sends more info on the media). This will be demonstrated soon by Melvin when I get around to making the video of him knowing what's on TV.
Like I said, so far it's mainly based around Media and Home Automation. What I want to discuss is...
What do you want in your robot's AI?
What do you want him/her to be able to do without human interaction? What do you want him/her to react or respond to? What do you want the AI to enhance? Why do you want AI?
And, for anyone who already has some kind of AI running; What does your AI add to your robot?
Hopefully this will spark up some interesting conversation, get some ideas out there, inspire others (and myself) to push on with the AI and make robots more intelligent
A robot must be useful, have a purpose. A good A.I. is the key to all this. So here is my list of goals:
To perform a useful purpose the robot must have certain features built in: *First and foremost it will need a room localization, mapping feature. @Toymaker has a handle on this feature. *Needs to be able to visually recognize certain things in its environment. @Toymaker has a handle on this feature. *Needs to have face recognition. @Toymaker has a handle on this feature. *To perform any type of work it must have arms or manipulators strong enough for any task it will
perform.@Toymaker has a possible handle on this feature. Depends on what it will be required to do. *Should be able to locate its own charger for recharging.
-Must be able to preform at least one household chore (to begin with) * I think the first achievable task (for me) could be to transport and empty the small trash cans that I have in each room of the house to a central large trash bin that is in the kitchen near the back door of my house.
Have to incorporate some means for the robot to pick up the trash can and be able to open the large trash
can lid. Each can could have a QR code for identification. How will it know if the can needs dumping or not? It may already be empty.
-Be able to provide a certain amount of security. * Intelligently patrol the premises. Knows what is normal. Alerts owner or others if it detects something out of
the ordinary.
-Be able to provide a certain amount of safety. * Detect fire * Mobile smoke alarm * Gas alarm * Carbon monoxide alarm. * Alerts owner or others if it detects anything. Verbally, alarm tone, or by phone.
-Be able to handle looking up things on the web such as weather, news, etc.
-Be able to retrieve and display emails on its screen.
-Be able to hold a reasonable conversation for purposes of entertainment or remembering dates and times.
-Be able to learn from conversations or through direct teaching. @Toymaker has a handle on this feature.
-Be able to play music on demand.
Even the most mundane of tasks around the home are incredible obstacles for most robots. I will endeavor to add more to this list as I think of it.
Rex, thats a brilliant list of goals! This is a great way to continue this thread and find out what functionality people are actually looking for from their robot companions. Did you ever see the older Ai video that I put up, our Ai core already does most of the things you are looking for like.
Able to look up weather, news and TV listings etc. Retrieve emails and also write emails with speech recognition (in those days it was with DNS10) Our Ai has a fully working conversation engine It can play music and videos on demand. Automated Skype interface
In case you never got to see it, here is the video of where our Ai was in late 2008
Tony
This is extremely awesome!, any estimate of cost for this A.I. when it does come out?
Never ceases to Amaze me.
;)
Lol Tony "your stupid" AI " I will remember that when robots take over the world"
My favorite was " who was the captain of the starship enterprise" She noticed that question had clear multiple answers and calls him on his shenanigans.
@Josh, You have made a very interesting observation about the Captains of the Enterprise.
This is a perfect example of our Ai getting something wrong which then had to be corrected by tutors (me in this case), the core had come to the conclusion that there were 3 Captains when it was on one of its self learning phases on the net.
Now I am a massive Star Trek fan and immediately realised that the Ai core had incorrectly answered the question as there were 4 Captains of the Enterprise the other one is Captain Pike (could be our Rich!). So after this the "knowledge element" on this subject was corrected, so if the question was now asked the Ai would now say 4 Captains, and include Captain Pike.
Once a (trusted) tutor has updated a "knowledge element" its associated confidence variable is increased. I use this (confidence) method to allow the Ai to recover from a lie or totally false data.
Tony
Haha I spell my surname differently so no, I haven't captained the enterprise
Generally it's mainly speech feedback which has been, and probably always will be the main focus on AI although what I want is for the physical stuff. For instance, if the robot detects dirt on the floor it will clean it up, knows it's time to feed the fish, it'll feed them, that kind of thing. although usually these things need dedicated robots (i.e. Squeegy) due to the space required to add those functions.
Ideally I want my robot to be like Rosie from The Jetsons
Or Lois from Runaway
Basically a robot maid since I'm useless at cleaning up after myself.
@rich something like a large version of this?: mini robot maid