Robotic fish that swim in schools and cooperate using artificial intelligence to detect and identify pollution in seawater have been created by SHOAL, an EU-funded group of researchers led by BMT Group. The goal is to cut the time required to detect pollution in ports and other aquatic areas from weeks to seconds, using the robotic fishes' chemical sensors for onsite analysis. The robots can avoid obstacles, determine where to look for pollution using mapping, locate its source, maintain a maximum communication distance from the rest of the school, send data underwater back to a base station, and return to it for recharging. (Source: BMT Group)
Thanks, Nadine. Olga's design is now a few years old--I looked for info on deployments or other more recent info about the prototype but haven't found any yet.
This is terrific stuff Ann. But put yourself in the soldier's position for a moment, trapped under heavy debris, when the Golum Krang robot rolls out of the smoke carrying a big-ass pipe in its hands, with a mechanical voice coming from its grill "I am Golem Krang. I am here to help you". Talk about SF movies in real life.
That's really funny, TJ! In reading and writing about all these robots and not having seen any of them up close and personally (yet), I have to say it does creep me out sometimes to think of how sophisticated these machines are becoming. While I appreciate the tasks they can accomplish, there is that whole "Terminator" worry lurking in the background. At what point do robots become smarter than us? (Hopefully never, of course, but the artificial intelligence being created today is getting pretty darned smart!)
Elizabeth, I'm not at all worried about a Terminator takeover. It's the base programming that we should worry about.
Modern airliners are fly-by-wire. Pilots give control inputs which tell the flight computers what the pilot wishes to do. The flight computers interpret that input and adjust the planes control surfaces, engines, etc. to best meet these wishes.
Flight computers today can override or discard a pilot's inputs if they're outside of acceptable range. Effectively, a computer engineer designing the control laws has overriden the pilot. Granted with the best of intentions, but it still means a set of rules set down by someone not in immediate control has more say in what happens than the pilot.
There was a Paris airshow crash back in the 90's I think it was, that can be attributed to the pilot and the flight computer having a difference of opinion. The aircraft made a low, slow flyby of the show with flaps down, gear down. The plane kept sinking slowly while the pilot was pulling back (go up!). The plane thought the pilot wanted to land (flaps down, gear down), and so igored the excessive pull-up input by the pilot.
Something similar happened to one of the YF-22 prototypes (also in the 90s). The pilot was in a similar situation (low, slow, flaps down, gear down), and decided to abort his landing. He went through full power into afterburner, and that confused the flight computer. Flaps down, gear down, but MAX throttle. Eventually, the plane crashed (after the landing gear retracted, but no injuries) because the plane got into PIO Pilot-Induced-Oscillations.
I totally understand, TJ. So if the underlying programming and technology is good, there won't be a problem and in fact, in some cases, robots know best. It's when the code under the covers is faulty that there could be issues with the behavior of these more sophisticated robots. Let's hope that all those working behind the scenes know what they're doing! (Well, of course they do, or we wouldn't have such clever robots.)
The problem with the robots and the controls is that all of that software is written by programmers. And, really, we all know it, programmers are NOT normal people. Actually, it goes way beyond that, which is to say that the problem will always be t6hat the computer systems don't know how to handle the exceptions. Even when they believe that all possible exceptions are covered, up pops another one. On top of that, artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. Of course, when designers attempt to prevent problems from dumb users any given system becomes much less useful, and often much less intuitive as well.
That type of problem is what's being addressed in work done by the University of Aberdeen, which we wrote about inHumans, Do You Speak !~+V•&T1F0()? http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=251721 so humans and robots can communicate at a distance about specific tasks the robot is engaged in, and change plans or tactics as necessary.
The gardening bot is the only silly one in the group. Isn't home gardening like a hobby or relaxing task? Otherwise, all those bots are useful. Much of the world around us, our electronics, etc are affected by robots.
I used to design and fabricate small steel bridges. What cut the bridge components? Industrial robots.
I like how robotics is being pushed early in the education system. A friend of mine hosts a robotics club for neighborhood kids. They have competed nationally, and still do so. Some of the kids from the group moved on to engineering fields in college. So, perhaps the next big bot revolution will come from a kid like this. We all need a robot personal assistant, am I right?
Cabe, I wouldn't want a gardening bot either. I like to get my hands dirty--shades of my toddler-era mudpie making--and connect with green things. But did you mean the CROPS harvesting robot or the Blue River weed puller? Neither one was for home gardening. Besides, I'm all for someone else pulling weeds.
I love the fact that robotics has gotten into high school competitions. I've seen tons of news items about those. I
The Blue River Technology weed puller serves as a reminder that robotic farming is already arriving. Deere was showing off autonomous tractors as far vack as 2008.
Chuck, I found pictures of a John Deere walking tractor at this link: http://www.theoldrobots.com/Walking-Robot2.html Don't know if this is the same one you mentioned, but in any case, it's sufficiently creepy: looks like a big bug to me.
Wow, I think that tractor's cool, Ann. Actually, it's better than the one I was referring to. We published an article about ithe other one a few years back. Unfortunately, the photos seem to have disappeared.
Ann and nadinej, Very nice slideshow. These robots look more artistic than functional. I'm. wondering what stage of robotic develeopment these machines are at? Some of them look like non functional machines instead of operating robots.
Actually, I was disappointed with this post. There are a lot of great concepts here, but very little that actually works. This points to some great directions that we can try to go, but it doesn't show much that we are actually doing. People can tout concepts all day, and even have a good idea about how to make them work, but that is a long step from having a usable system.
SparkyWatt, I agree. The slideshow was not impressive due to the unrealistic designs being proposed. I'm a firm believer that design concepts need to be validated using functional prototypes instead of "What If" imagery. Its about practicality thru functionality that truly brings a design to life.
SparkyWatt, I agree. The slideshow was not impressive due to the unrealistic designs being proposed. I'm a firm believer that design concepts need to be validated using functional prototypes instead of "What If" imagery. Its about practicality thru functionality that truly brings a design to life.
mrdon, to answer your question, 5 of these are in development (numbers 2, 5, 8, 10 and 11), and the other 6 are actually operational. Many readers want to see what's being developed, tried out, or even just thought of, as well as what's actually working.
Ann, Ok . Thanks for clarifying the slides. It's cool sometimes to see what is possible to what's practical. Imagination is truly the seed for innovation.
Is that a USB port on the fishes lower lip (I guess fish have lips) anyway, instead of sprinkling food in the water for the old-fashioned type of fish the port is probably for down-loading the "fishes" memory and for recharging the thing.
Some of the applications proposed were very good ideas, but some did seem to be quite unrealistic. The "service station" satelite is one that is quite a stretch in that it could only work with those packages designed to work with it.
In addition, all of the packages showing a system using only two wheels wind up beng fairly limited, since the effort to maintain balance will certainly reduce the types of surfaces that they can function on. That is even more so for those units mentioned as working in law enforcement or surveilence, where stability is vital. It would be quite simple to disable a two-wheeled robotic cop, for instance. Just toss a heavy coat over it's head and it is out of service.
BUt the ultimate realm of service robots is very large once we get past the unworkable concepts. That is where engineering enters the picture, because engineers usually have a better grasp of what can and can not work.
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