Love Robot Holds Female Lab Intern Prisoner The robot Kenji at Toshiba's Akimu Robotic Research Institute was programmed by Dr. Akito Takahashi and his team to emulate certain human emotions, including love. However, Kenji began to display surprising behavior. The robot held a young female intern within its lab enclosure for a few hours, until she was freed by senior staff members. MuckFlash reports on Kenji in a posting titled, "Robot Programmed to Love Goes to Far." “Despite our initial enthusiasm, it has become clear that Kenji’s impulses and behavior are not entirely rational or genuine,” conceded Dr. Robotics Robotics is the branch of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science that deals with the design, construction, operation, and application of robots,[1] as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing. These technologies deal with automated machines that can take the place of humans in dangerous environments or manufacturing processes, or resemble humans in appearance, behavior, and/or cognition. Many of today's robots are inspired by nature contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics. The concept of creating machines that can operate autonomously dates back to classical times, but research into the functionality and potential uses of robots did not grow substantially until the 20th century.[2] Throughout history, robotics has been often seen to mimic human behavior, and often manage tasks in a similar fashion. Etymology[edit] History of robotics[edit] Robotic aspects[edit] Components[edit] Power source[edit]
Synthetic Police Are Coming: DARPA Engineering Autonomous Robots Susanne Posel Occupy Corporatism August 17, 2012 Because of the risks involved in rescue aid workers and human response teams, DARPA awarded Boston Dynamics, Inc. a $10.9 million contract to manufacture humanoid robots that are bi-pedal, built like humans and have a sensor head with on-board computing capabilities. These robots are being created to assist in excavation and rescue missions, according to DARPA . Kent Massey, director of advanced programs for HDT Robotics , who attended the DARPA meeting in which the purpose of the allocation of humanoid robotic technology was explained, said: “The goal of this Grand Challenge is to create a humanoid robot that can operate in an environment built for people and use tools made for people. These human-controlled robots will be strong enough to “clear a room” and “facilitate sentry control and combat causality recovery.” The Naval Research Laboratory interests SAFFiR, the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot.
Meet Nao: The first robot able to develop emotions and form a bond with humans By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 11:52 GMT, 13 August 2010 The first robot capable of developing emotions and forming bonds with humans has been unveiled by scientists. Nao has been designed to mimic the emotional skills of a one-year-old child and is capable of forming bonds with people who treat it kindly. The robot has been developed to use the same types of expressive and behavioural cues that babies use to learn to interact socially and emotionally with others. It is able to detect human emotions by studying body-language and facial expressions and becomes better at reading someone's mood over time as it grows to 'know' the person. It is also able to remember its interactions with different people and memorise their faces. Nao have been created through modelling the early attachment process that human and chimpanzee infants undergo when they are very young. 'This behaviour is modelled on what a young child does,' said Dr Cañamero.
Cloud Robotics: Connected to the Cloud, Robots Get Smarter Image: Cellbots In the first “Matrix” movie, there’s a scene where Neo points to a helicopter on a rooftop and asks Trinity, “Can you fly that thing?” Her answer: “Not yet.” Then she gets a “pilot program” uploaded to her brain and they fly away. For us humans, with our non-upgradeable, offline meat brains, the possibility of acquiring new skills by connecting our heads to a computer network is still science fiction. Several research groups are exploring the idea of robots that rely on cloud-computing infrastructure to access vast amounts of processing power and data. Imagine a robot that finds an object that it's never seen or used before—say, a plastic cup. Kuffner described the possibilities of cloud robotics at the IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots, in Nashville, Tenn., this past December. For conventional robots, every task—moving a foot, grasping an object, recognizing a face—requires a significant amount of processing and preprogrammed information.
Terminator-like killer robots worry UN Last updated 08:41 31/05/2013 BAE, one of the world's biggest arms firms, unveils the Taranis, a prototype killer robot. Should robots be allowed to take a human life, without direct supervision or command? Science fiction met reality at the United Nations in Geneva overnight, where this question was debated at a meeting of the Human Rights Council. UN special rapporteur Christof Heyns told the council that countries are developing armed robots that can kill without the need for human choice or intervention, and they need to call a halt before it's too late. "The possible introduction of LARs (lethal autonomous robots) raises far-reaching concerns about the protection of life during war and peace," Heyns said. Heyns presented a report on his research and called for a worldwide moratorium on the production and deployment of such machines, while nations figured out the knotty legal and ethical issues. "War without reflection is mechanical slaughter," he said. "Robots also do not rape." Comments
Do Kids Care If Their Robot Friend Gets Stuffed Into a Closet? "Please don't put me in the closet," cries the robot. Last week, we wrote about a study that looked at whether humans attribute moral accountability and emotions to robots. This week, we've got a study from the same group, the Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems Lab (HINTS) at the University of Washington, that takes a look at what kind of relationships children are likely to form with social robot platforms, and it involves forcing their new robot friend into a dark, lonely closet. The 90 children in this study were separated into three groups by age: 9 year olds, 12 year olds, and 15 year olds, with an equal mix of boys and girls. As with the previous study, the robot involved in the research was Robovie, a vaguely humanoid robot that was secretly teleoperated to give it the appearance1 of a sophisticated (but not necessarily unrealistic) level of autonomy and interactivity. Geez. Things get even more interesting when you break down the results by age. [ HINTS Lab ]
"Sue My Car Not Me: Products Liability and Accidents Involving Autonomo" by Jeffrey K. Gurney Jeffrey K. Gurney, University of South Carolina - Columbia Abstract Autonomous vehicles will revolutionize society within the decade. Based on those scenarios, this Article argues that the autonomous technology manufacturer should be liable for accidents while the vehicle is in autonomous mode. Suggested Citation Jeffrey K. IBM’s Watson Tries to Learn…Everything Steven Cherry: Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum’ s “Techwise Conversations.” Computers aren’t just getting better, they’re getting smarter. Sixteen years ago, a software program beat the reigning chess champion . IBM had spent seven years creating it, and it was time well spent. Two years ago, IBM’s Watson software beat the world’s two best players in the television game show “Jeopardy!” Since then, Watson has been put to work learning something a lot less trivial—medical diagnosis. But IBM is also looking to the long term. My guest today is Jim Hendler . Jim, welcome to the podcast. Jim Hendler: Thanks very much, Steve. Steven Cherry: I called this an open-ended three-year charter to make Watson smarter. Jim Hendler: That’s pretty much correct. Steven Cherry: So your students and colleagues will tackle a wide variety of problems, but there’s one that interests you personally, and that’s the thousands and thousands of open data sets around the world. Jim Hendler: Right.
How Should the Law Think About Robots? by Neil M. Richards, William Smart The robots are coming. We don’t mean this in a scary, apocalyptic way, like in The Terminator or Battlestar Galactica, or in a tongue-in-cheek way, like in the Flight of the Conchords song “The Humans are Dead.” What we mean is this: Robots and robotic technologies are now mature enough to leave the research lab and come to the consumer market in large numbers. This essay is an attempt to think through some of the conceptual issues surrounding law, robots and robotics, to sketch out some of their implications.
Brain Scans Show Humans Feel for Robots Star Wars’ R2-D2 shows that a robot—even one that looks more like a trash can than a person—can make people laugh and cry. Now, in research to be presented at the International Communication Association conference in London, scientists have shown that when the human brain witnesses love for or violence against a robot, it reacts in much the same way as if the robot were human. Engineers worldwide are developing robots to act as companions for people—for instance, to help the elderly at home or patients in hospitals. However, after the novelty of using a robot fades, people often feel less interested in using them. Scientists want to learn how to create more-engaging robots, but there has been little systematic research on how people react emotionally toward them. In other videos, experimenters acted violently toward the targets—for instance, strangling them with a rope. The researchers were surprised by how similar the brain responses to both humans and robots were.