Sunday, January 08, 2006

Do you think you will be replaced with a Robot ?



Dear all sorry for this long time not writting but actually i was too busy , any way here we go and i promise you isA to give you a big bunch of posts that i hopr u will like so let's go...

The title of the post seems a bit strange and you only see that at Science fiction films like Robot film for Will Smith for example, but actually it seems all that is going to be true and soon you may be replaced with a Robot :)


Current exsiting Robots:

Current Robots are used in tasks that are dangerous for human to do or human cannot do at all, for example as Robots sent to space and Robots send to discover places in Cold places or too hot places also Robots used nowadays in military tasks.

But actually Current Robots have a lack of less control on it due to it's complex design also it's too slow relative to human speed, so alot researches have been done and soon i read an article in the CNN indicating the birth of new types Robots Artificial Muscles.

New Robots: Faster, lighter, better:

This was the title at the CNN post, actually the post take my attention as i really like Robotics and AI because i think those two areas can do alot together.

The post said that a A new study has raised the potential for a new generation of robotic "artificial muscles" to be used to perform tasks currently impossible for humans, from carrying out dangerous repair work to assisting in complicated surgery.


But research conducted by nuclear engineering and materials science and engineering Professor Sidney Yip and his team at MIT has raised the possibility that artificial muscles could be made that would work 1,000 times faster than their human counterparts.

Actually that seems amazing and will open a new door to more researches in this Area and what.


Artificial Intelligence:

I think all of us know what AI means, and alot of topics descended from AI now used and are a hot topics of research, and for Building intelligent Robots alot have been and still done in this Area which really is increasng due to the progress made in the Researches.

Soft Computing is a collection of new techniques in computer science, especially in artificial intelligence, or computational intelligence or hybrid intelligent system.


Actually as Far as i know that Neural networks is strongly used in buidling intelligent Robots for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_computing

Sample Robots Currently exsits:

Asia and pacific have a flourishing researches in this Area and of course in USA and Europe, alot of Robotis have been developed for different areas including
Entertainment (e.g. Dog Robot to play wth childs),

Social Work (e.g. Robots Help blind people and people with specail needs),

Army needs (e.g Robots for discovering bombs),

Home Care Robots,

Robots for Space needs used by NASA for e.g. and alot more.

One of famous Robots manufacturars is Honda http://www.honda-robots.com/index_ori.html


Robots capabilities:

Current Robots can do alot of things similare or near human if you can say, and what support that is the current progress in topics like image processing, speech recognition, and of course in development in electronic chips and electronic devices.

I will give you a sample Robot that may exit soon some of this features already exits , the Robot will be able to:

1) Walk in Any direction.
2) Dance
3) Take speech Commands
4) Do a Face Recognition on the person stands over and according to his/her face state (e.g happy, sad, scared) it do an action to deal with the situation.
5) Also Robots will have artificial face muscles that can have a happy, sad , scared state and it will reflect that.
6) Robots muscles will be faster so they can do alot of things.
7) AI Software needs alot of instruction to be done, this concerns the Software Part, and according to Moor's law processor speeds will increase every 18 months so, AI Software will be better enabling more intelligent to Robots.
8) + all current Robots Cababilities which you may found at (http://www.honda-robots.com/english/html/asimo/subframe3.html)


Sure you can see in the above pic. Albert Einstein say hi to President Bush.

Robots Programming:

As far as i know Robots were programmed by assembly language and other low level languages and still, and as iam a Java Developer i searched for that actually i was surprised with what i found in that.

The first article i read when i searhed on Java Robotics was an article at Sun website, it talks about a Robot that soon sent to Mars doing some discoveries to NASA, and this Robot was programmed by Java3d ofcourse we all know for more on Mars Exploration Rover
http://www.java.com/en/everywhere/marsrover.jsp

Java Technology is used in programming Robots actually this area now is out of scope of the post so will try to write another post on that isA.

For more info on Java Robot programming http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/robotics/

Actually we can talk alot here but wait for a next post on Using Java For Robot Programming isA.

How to Build your first Robot?

For whom find the topic nice and wanna do it i found a great site moves with you in buidling your first Robot http://www.robotics.com/arobot/build.html



Finally:

I would like to say that every one can make Robot, its really an interesting thing but specially if you will do intelligent Robot, make your Robot with your hands collect chips and devices to build you own Robot, and Programme your Robot to be an intelligent one.

Alot of Researhes as you see in this Area building intelligent Robots, i wanna say that it's currently used in every thing in our life (in Developed Countries) so we have to move to this Area doing our best.

This area is a big and to build such intelligent amazing Robot it needs a team, one concerning for hardware, one for intelligent System Software and inside that one for speech one for image processing etc. but that's not mean you can't do it instead it means you have to work in a team and do read well to do a ggod thing and you will do it iam sure of that.

Wating to hear that someone do it:

If you find that Difficult i will tell you a story Honda pays Millions Millions of dollars for builiding thier Robot and on the other side a Japanese Student build a Robot with similar cababilties with 75$ only, so study work hard and you will do it but trust in your skills and choose a good team.


References:

http://www.robotics.com/arobot/build.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_computing
http://www.thetech.org/exhibits_events/online/robots/basics/
http://www.robotics101.com/

http://robots.engadget.com/
http://news.com.com/Hondas+robot+ready+for+office+chores/2100-11394_3-5992906.html
http://www.honda-robots.com
http://www.honda-robots.com/index_ori.html
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/12/06/robot.muscles/index.html
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/robotics/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/javarobots/

Java & Robots book:
http://www.scottsbots.com/

Neural Networks & Robots:
http://www.generation5.org/content/2005/neuroLego.asp
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/projects/project_271.html

others:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/roboticexplorers/robots_like_people.html
http://world.honda.com/run/
http://news.com.com/Photo+galleries+Robots+in+action/2009-1041_3-5746470.html?tag=st.ref.goo
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2005-04-06-honda-teaching-robot_x.htm?csp=34


ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE:
http://www.unm.edu/~amri/
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/10/09/popsci.muscle.man/

Nice video:
http://world.honda.com/ThePowerofDreams/run/mov-run-30.html

Technology is Going fast donna miss it, keep in touch you will find alot of technology stuff.


Note: I greatly appreciate any Comments, Suggestions and Questions.

About the Writer:

Name: Ayman Emam Gamil Mohammad.
Software Developer,

4th Year Computer Science Department,
Faculty of Computer & Information,
Cairo Universty.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice tech blog Ayman, go on.

Ayman Emam said...

Thanks for ur comment, and hope always to hear yours :)