Evolution Robotics' ER1 Reviewed

Anonymous Coward writes "A useful review of Evolution Robotics' ER-1 by the boys at Techfocus. It covers: construction, customization, hardware requirements, best features, programming, durability of equipment -- and all that good stuff. One interesting factoid is that the robot can recognize objects until the object is blocked - up to 40% - by something (like a piece of furniture). Techfocus aptly points out the Orwellian implications... Another thing that rocked my world is the notion that the robot is not as much of a drag on CPU as one might suspect. TF ran the unit on an NEC Versa VXi running Windows 2000, with a 900mhz CPU and 128mb of RAM, and encountered absolutely no problems. Encouragingly, if you want to further customize your robot, why not just write a script in C or Perl -- the manual even points users toward an app primarily based in Linux. What's not surprising: it's pricey. Also some nice pictures of how the robot really looks right out of the box."

Re:Real world robots

[Apreche]

They are available to consumers. You can buy Asimo if you want. It just costs rediculous amounts of money. Right now robots are only toys for geeks. Robots aren't good enough to customize themselves yet, so only a geek who can code can have a useful one. And geeks who can code usualy make neat things more often than useful things. Rich geeks who can code and will make useful things are few and far between. And if you were one, or are one, and you had say, a lawn-mowing robot. Would you let it go outside on its own? No! Someone would definitely steal it.

Robots will remain uncommon until much improved AI and sensory input is developed.

Re:I think I'll hold off...

[Daniel_Staal]

A Robot may not harm Humanity, or through inaction allow Humanity to come to harm.

The others are modified to place that one in front.

Re:Real world robots

[GooberToo]

My neighbor has one for mowing his yard. He stopped using it because it has to mow pretty much every day. This is because it's electric and can only mow low grass. Once the grass gets too high, it's can't move well or mow (bogs down too much). Plus, you have to constantly recharge it every day.

In other words, this time saving marvel required more time spread out every day of the week than it took to mow it once per week on a single day. Then, you always had the concern about someone stealing it, breaking it, or running a toy over, if you were not there to watch it.

Now then, when they make the cold fusion model, with self defense laser turret, I'm there! ;)

Another bit of the puzzle?

[Tailhook]

Voice identification, natural speech recognition, facial identification, autonomous navigation (land, sea and air,) character recognition and an enormous spectrum of heuristic algorithms used throughout the modern world from thermostats to missiles...

I've been thinking for some time about awareness. After I read Creation: Life and How to Make it book by Steve Grand, I began thinking that perhaps awareness isn't the mystery it is sometime built up to be. What if we eventually discover that being "aware" doesn't require the phenomenal amount of computation that is often estimated? What if we discover that natures method of achieving it is actually highly inefficient (in terms of...physical complexity?) and easy to replicate using digital hardware?

At this point it is feasible to build a machine that can find you in a crowd (you, specifically, from among many others) talk to you, understand your commands and then travel where you tell it. This is already beyond the means of most animals.

If what I suspect is true, cognition is a relatively simple closed loop goal seeking (that seems to be a contradiction) parallel algorithm connected to a vast repository of highly lossy associative storage that ceaselessly works to achieve reproduction. Awareness is an emergent property of the process. You are a side effect, in the same way the useful work of a LISP function is often implemented as a side effect.

I'm not a professional AI researcher and it probably shows. I'll take it from someone who is. Martha Pollack, a professor at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Michigan and executive editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research recently said, "It's a crazy position to be in. As soon as we solve a problem, instead of looking at the solution as AI, we come to view it as just another computer system."

The significant progress made in AI to-date appears to be the result of reverse engineering nature until the core implementation of some basic function becomes clear. Just how many interconnected functions are necessary before you have a "who"?

Erector Set

[Tablizer]

Our expectation of this product was that it would be relatively similar to setting up an Erector set, except with more complex circuitry.

I always considered erector sets to be better for robotics experiments than legos, but I don't see erector set stuff much anymore. Did they go bankrupt? If so, why hasn't a Chinese toy firm resurrected the concept?

Maybe its the name :-P