The Biggest Challenge Facing Robotics

Robotics and the DARPA Robotics Challenge are all topics on this episode of The AI Minute. For more on Artificial Intelligence: https://voicesinai.com https://gigaom.com https://byronreese.com https://amzn.to/2vgENbn... Transcript: Probably the hardest difficulty roboticists face is object interaction. While robots can be physically much stronger than humans and operate in more extreme environments, at present, we are generally much more agile across a wider range of tasks. Humans have a skeletal system with two hundred bones overlaid with seven hundred or so muscles. It takes six muscles simply to move something as small as your eyeball. Replicating that kind of flexibility in a machine is exceedingly difficult. But even if you accomplished it, you still have the challenge of powering the creation. To give you a sense of the difficulty roboticists are facing, consider the DARPA Robotics Challenge, which took place from 2012 to 2015. In 2015, the finals were held. Popular Science summed it up by saying that “the biggest and most well-funded international robotics competition in years was a failure.” The robots had to drive a car, navigate across rubble, use a doorknob, find a valve and shut it off, and so forth. They didn’t have to do this by themselves using AI. The challenge was interested in whether they could perform these physical acts, not whether they could perform them with no aid from a human. Additionally, the entrants knew exactly what the robots would be asked to do. Even given that advantage, only a few of the 24 entrants finished a course that a drunken sailor on shore leave could’ve done. It seems like an easy challenge. What could be easier than turning a doorknob and opening a door? A lot of things it turns out. The robot has to identify the doorknob, navigate its hand to it, it has to squeeze it, but not too hard, and not too soft. The robot needs to determine the friction of the knob itself. It then needs to turn it. Humans can pretty easily tell if the knob is turning or if their hand is sliding on the knob. That is very hard for a robot. Humans can tell when to stop turning because of the resistance. The robot has to be trained to actually stop at some point before it breaks the door knob. Then, holding the knob in the open position, the robot has to push. How hard? Well, that’s extremely difficult to know ahead of time. How heavy is the door? Is it stuck? And then all of that is to naught if it turns out the door needed to be pulled, not pushed. http://bit.ly/2HuL6xy gigaom May 17, 2019 at 03:49PM