“What is General Intelligence?” is a short introductory article to the theory of “real AI”, Artificial Intelligence which is seriously intended to match human intelligence in generality. If you are reading an offline version, further material on general intelligence can be found at the Singularity Institute Continue reading
The manual that Graymark included with the Scooter kit has four major sections: Electrical theory, electrical construction, mechanical construction, and a testing & debugging section. If electrical construction is completed cleanly and correctly, then the debugging section is unnecessary. It’s a comprehensive, easy to read, step-by-step manual.
Once I was able to distinguish between all the different resisters, electrical construction was a snap. The directions are very clear and easy to follow. A little as left to be desired in the descriptions on the resisters. For example, the resisters used are of the four-color variety. (Three colors designate the value and the fourth color designates the variance in percentages.) All the other electrical parts were easily identifiable via their part numbers printed on the transistors and capacitors.
It does take a little to get used to soldering on a printed circuit board. By the fifth joint, however, soldering was easy.
Once the electrical construction was complete, I began the mechanical construction. The one difficulty I noticed was that, given the small size of the miniature nuts, bolts, and washers, the magnetic force of the motor is stronger than gravity. This made attaching the motor to the chassis especially challenging, but not impossible. Fortunately, the kit does come with about 12 spare nuts, a spare screw, and 5 spare washers.
Construction was completed in just under 7 hrs. Of course, that includes occasional breaks to refill my teacup.
Recommended tools for building the kit (in addition to the tools mentioned in the manual): A shallow bowl and a wet sponge to keep the soldering iron clean, and a relatively strong magnet to pick up all those tiny nuts, bolts & washers. (These have a way of jumping off the table.) Don’t forget some micro-tweezers that clamp on like vice grips.
Unfortunately, however, the Scooter seemed to require brand new batteries (2xAA) to function at all. But then it tends to go zipping off at around 15 -> 20 mph! I think I need to add a rheostat or resister somewhere to slow the motor down. (But that would then affect the timing circuit, composed of two capacitors, 1 mf and 40 mf. At any rate, unless I operate it with my arms around it (forming an arena), it goes zipping off the table to certain destruction!
Matt Bounding, a student at the University of Arizona, developed and built a robotic spider that automatically learns to walk whenever it include. The robot is equipped with a webcam; it analyzes the image and comparing them with the movement of their own feet, learning to walk. Continue reading
Higher intelligence and greater autonomy of more advanced robot systems increase the requirements for the design of a flexible interface to control the system on different levels of abstraction. In the Kamro (Karlsruhe Autonomous Mobile Robot) project, for example, an autonomous mobile robot (Fig. 1) for assembly tasks is being developed which also has the capability of recovering from error situations Lath and Remold (1994). Continue reading
How to give intelligence to robots? The servants of the future must be reliable and competent for the tasks to be performed. We should be able to fully rely on them.
The robots can become more intelligent by asking for help
A company in Palo Alto believes that the best way to make intelligent robots, they would seek help to humans. Continue reading
As advanced robot systems steadily gain higher intelligence and greater autonomy, the requirements for the design of flexible interfaces to control these systems will increase. This is for instance the case, according to Rembold et al. [1993], for the future use of intelligent robots in manufacturing or as service robots for different applications. Continue reading
The increasing intelligence and autonomy of modern robot systems requires new and powerful man-machine-interfaces. For example, a robot’s capability to autonomously recover from error situations corresponds with dynamic adjustments of robot plans during execution. This makes it difficult for an operator to predict and understand the behavior of the machine. Explanations and descriptions of why and how a certain plan has been changed would impose the acceptance of robots.
Descriptions are even more important in error situations which can not be handled autonomously. In this context, natural language is an effective tool of using robots in a more flexible manner. In this article, the joint efforts of the University of Karlsruhe and the University of Saarland to provide a natural language explanation for the error recovery of the autonomous, mobile, two-arm robot, KAMRO are reported.
The method of protection goals of the issued of a firearm projectile includes continuous monitoring and transmission of the location of a shell controller, which calculates its estimated trajectory based on real locations, and determines the position of the target, Continue reading
IBM has to teach a grant to develop a computer that has intelligence. Rationale – the alleged growing flow of information, which is already positively nowhere to add, except electronic brains. All incoming information quickly people can not handle (and whether we should, we ask), and the computer can only do so within the specified filters. Continue reading
One wonders if this guy has a life … Steven Spielberg, the famous American film producer and is currently filming with Peter Jackson, a film whose hero, our friend the Belgian Tintin first episode entitled “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, “Starring Jamie Bell and Gad Elmaleh, a release planned for the end of 2011. Continue reading