LoriTech Robotics

The Website is Up--

2005-07-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.loritech.com/

CLICK TO ENTER:

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Robotics Learning Lab

Literature PREview

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Books I am taking advantage of on Amazon's partial-reading options.

Current State of Things - WED JULY 13

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Current state of things:

Guest Speaker #1:
Well-known Tampa area/New York theatre/film director whom will discuss the importance of extracting only useful information in the media, as well as being cautious of mistaken errors in distributed intentions of those being portrayed in relation to robotics technology.

Guest Speaker #2:
From CMU's Robotics Institute whom will inform about the current state of things on the field of robotics, as well as the history of his institution's robotics lab.

Materials:
I am currently attempting a list of the supplies that would be useful for the lab and the cost of each piece. My intended approach is that I don't want to under-estimate student's intelligence and do want to make this as flexible as possible-- in that, there will be a limited amount of students allowed in (approx. 10) and each will have individual attention for what they want to create. This would, of course, involve a scouting of local area shops that produce such supplies to be sure that we have easy access to any materials they may want to add to their robot that we may not immediately have on hand within the building. Last, the academic guide-book we plan on using for the course andwould be best if ordered for the students in a whole-sale manner to include in their lab cost.

Related/Thematic Posters

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Robot Components

Robots History - AAAI

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ROBOTS HISTORY - The Source of The Source of the Following

"How old are you?" she wanted to know.

"Thirty-two," I said.

"Then you don't remember a world without robots. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner better breed than we are."

-from I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Robot, which is derived from a Czech word meaning "menial labor," got its modern meaning from a 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), by Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938). The robots in Capek's play develop emotions and overthrow their human masters. A sinister "power struggle" with robots has long been a popular theme in science fiction --- for a change of pace, try Isaac Asimov's "I Robot" stories in which he consciously strove to depict robots as a benefit to society.

Today, robots are used in many ways, from lawn mowing to auto manufacturing. Scientists see practical uses for robots in performing socially undesirable, hazardous or even "impossible" tasks --- trash collection, toxic waste clean-up, desert and space exploration, and more. AI researchers are also interested in robots as a way to understand human (and not just human) intelligence in its primary function -- interacting with the real world.

Good Places to Start

Robot Pals. Scientific American Frontiers (April 13, 2005). Alan Alda [host]: "The problem with most robots is that they tend to be, well, robotic. They know nothing they aren't programmed to know, and can do nothing they aren't programmed to do. But for many applications where robots could be useful, they need to be more like humans, able to respond as a cooperative partner rather than a mindless machine. In this program, we'll meet some robots that are learning to figure out for themselves what their human companions have in mind."

Invasion of the Robots - From medicine to military, machines finally arrive. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com (March 10, 2004). "The robots are coming. And when they get here, they will take out the trash. Mobile, intelligent robots that can perform tasks usually reserved for humans are starting to creep into mainstream society and could become a multibillion-dollar market in a few years."

Thesketch of a robot Robotics Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin has "put together a small educational section which will enable you to explore the world of robotics." Among the topics covered are:

* Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (actually it's three plus a 'zeroth law')
* Benefits of Robots
* Degrees of Freedom <>
* Types of Robots

Robots! A website from The University of Birmingham. "Explore our site to find all about the real robots that we build - sporty robots, clever robots, smiley robots, and ... ooo, those pesky robots! Ask your questions about robots to our expert - Professor Robotnik! Read about robo-pets and robo-footballers! Build your own robots!"

* Among the questions that have been asked of the Prof are :"How can I build a robot that has a human personality?" and "What is a robot?"
* Be sure to see their richly illustrated History of Robotics.

The Future: AI. One of the chapters from Tom Harris' How Robots Work, available from the Howstuffworks web site. "Just as physical robotic design is a handy tool for understanding animal and human anatomy, AI research is useful for understanding how natural intelligence works. For some roboticists, this insight is the ultimate goal of designing robots. Others envision a world where we live side by side with intelligent machines and use a variety of lesser robots for manual labor, health care and communication. A number of robotics experts predict that robotic evolution will ultimately turn us into cyborgs -- humans integrated with machines. Conceivably, people in the future could load their minds into a sturdy robot and live for thousands of years! In any case, robots will certainly play a larger role in our daily lives in the future."

The Humanoid Race - Machines are getting more and more like the rest of us. A piece-by-piece guide to the globe's most advanced bots. By Robert Capps. Wired Magazine (July 2004; Issue 12.07). "With each advance in computing speed, battery capacity, camera and motor miniaturization, and software capability, the world grows closer to the ultimate goal of robotics: a walking, talking, feeling android worthy of our cinematic inspirations. Consider the progress of just the past 15 years. There are now robots that can get around on two legs, participate in simple conversations, and manipulate objects in rudimentary ways. ... And while there are a number of extremely complex problems to solve before we can make something as advanced as Sonny, the star of I, Robot, we're getting there, one piece at a time. To find out where the state of the art lies, Wired surveyed the projects that might one day add up to an android just like the rest of us. "

Robotics FAQs. Field Robotics Center, Carnegie Mellon University. Maintained by Kevin Dowling. A great place to find answers to frequently asked questions.

* Includes the FAQ: Where did the word "robot" come from? (The introduction of the term robotics is also covered in this FAQ.)
* Be sure to also visit the Field Robotics Center Projects for numerous web pages about robots built to perform various tasks---from asbestos removal to volcano exploration!

Robotics - Industry Statistics. Check out our fascinating collection.

Robots/ Mechanical Life. NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday With Ira Flatow (August 30, 2002). "This week, an automated convenience store opened in Washington. This robo-mart dispenses snacks, toiletries, and even DVDs. From housekeeping to the battlefield to your neighborhood convenience store, researchers are creating robots to live with us and work for us. In this hour, we'll look at how robots may change our lives. Plus, early attempts to create mechanical life." Guests: Rodney Brooks & Gaby Wood. You can listen to the radio broadcast by clicking here.

Robot Systems. "Robots are comprised of several systems working together as a whole. The type of job the robot does dictates what system elements it needs. The general categories of robot systems are: Controller, Body, Mobility, Power, Sensors, Tools." A clearly written text combined with lots of photos and links to actual projects make this page from ROVer Ranch, part of the NASA JSC Learning Technologies Project, a great place to start!

* Check out NASA's Robot Web Links, where you can get a preview of Robonaut (an advanced humanoid system), meet Urbie (the Urban Robot), learn about nanorobots, and much, much more.
* And for those of you looking for some exciting robot related projects & activities, see ROVer Ranch's K-12 Experiments in Robotic Software homepage.

The Big Picture - A Short History of Robotics and Thinking Machines. Part of the teaching guide for the Scientific American Frontiers in the classroom series: ROBOTS ALIVE!

Ethics for the Robot Age - Should bots carry weapons? Should they win patents? Questions we must answer as automation advances. View by Jordan Pollack. Wired Magazine (January 2005; Issue 13.01). "My definition of a robot is any device controlled by software that can work 24/7 and put people out of work. The machines are not intelligent. ... In case you missed them, today's most popular robots are ATMs and computer printers. While our hopes for and fears of robots may be overblown, there is plenty to worry about as automation progresses. The future will have many more robots, and they'll most certainly be much more advanced. This raises important ethical questions that we must begin to confront. 1. Should robots be humanoid? ... 2. Should humans become robots? ... 4. Should robots eat? ... 6. Should robots carry weapons? ... "

Timelines:

* Timeline: Real robots - "Robots are not new. They have been around for centuries in various forms. Here's a brief overview of the development of both robots and computers." From BBC News.
* Robots and Artificial Intelligence Timeline. From The Computer Museum History Center. An exciting tour which begins in 1948 . . . and in 1961, you'll meet UNIMATE!

Robots - They're beginning to walk, talk, and, yes, think like people. Is the age of the robo sapien just around the corner? By Irene M. Kunii and Otis Port. Business Week Online (March 19, 2001):

* Don't leave the page without checking out the article's several sidebars, including: Robot Milestones (extended), and What it Takes to Make a Robot.

Robotics miniFAQ for Beginners. By John Piccirillo. "This miniFAQ is intended as a source to find the answers to questions most often posed by beginners - where do I start?, what do I need to know?, where can I find information and supplies?, and where do I go for help?"

"The Robot Hall of Fame recognizes excellence in robotics technology worldwide and honors the fictional and real robots that have inspired scientific accomplishments. It was created by Carnegie Mellon University in April 2003 to call attention to the increasing contributions of robots to human endeavors."

Trivia Quiz: Who first used the term "robotics" in print ... and when?

Readings OnlineAI Magazine cover: Robocup

Robocup. AI Magazine 21:1 (Spring 2000). Among the many articles you'll find in this exciting issue are Overview of RoboCup-98 (Minoru Asada, Manuela M. Veloso, Milind Tambe, Itsuki Noda, Hiroaki Kitano, and Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar), AAAI-98 Robot Exhibition (Karen Zita Haigh and Tucker Balch), and Using Robot Competitions to Promote Intellectual Development (Robin R. Murphy).

Robot science puts on a friendly face. By Edward C. Baig. USA Today (April 30, 2003). "[I]n labs around the globe, researchers are devising a slacker's paradise in which loyal servants and other brainy machines tackle mundane chores, freeing us up for more fulfilling activities."

Io, Ganymede, and Callisto: A Multiagent Robot Trash-Collecting Team. By Tucker Balch, Gary Boone, Thomas Collins, et al. (1995). AI Magazine 16 (2): 39-51. The Georgia Institute of Technology won the Office Cleanup event at the 1994 AAAI Robot Competition with a multirobot cooperating team. This article describes the design and implementation of these reactive trash-collecting robots, including details of multiagent cooperation, color vision for the detection of perceptual object classes, temporal sequencing of behaviors for task completion, and a language for specifying motor schema-based robot behaviors.

AI think, therefore I am. Virtual agents feature Computerised characters that look, sound, move and seemingly think like real people are emerging from the realms of science fiction into everyday life. Superguide by David Braue. apcmag.com (December 16, 2003). "'We have agents embedded in trucks, excavators and individuals [robots] in order to mine the right material at the right time,' says Hugh Durrant-Whyte, research director at CEAS [Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems]. 'We do not approach it at all from a human point of view -- robots are really physical embodiments of agents. They won�t discuss Plato with you, but they can work 24 hours a day and have cooperation and negotiation strategies [to interact with each other].'"

The gentle rise of the machines. Robotics - The science-fiction dream that robots would one day become a part of everyday life was absurd. Or was it? The Economist Technology Quarterly (March 11, 2004). "Since 1939, when Westinghouse Electric introduced Electro, a mechanical man, at the World's Fair in New York, robot fans have imagined a world filled with tireless robotic helpers, always on hand to wash dishes, do the laundry and handle the drudgery of everyday tasks. So far, however, such robots have proliferated in science fiction, but have proved rather more elusive in the real world. But optimists are now arguing that the success of the Roomba and of toys such as Aibo, Sony's robot dog, combined with the plunging cost of computer power, could mean that the long-awaited mass market for robots is finally within reach."

The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot - When David Hanson set out to build a robotic head, he saw no reason not to make it look just like a human. Then he stumbled into [Mori's] Uncanny Valley. By Dan Ferber. Popular Science (September 2003).

The Courage to Doubt: How to Build Android Robots as a Theologian. Anne Foerst's talk presented at Harvard Divinity School, November 27, 1995.

* Also see: Do Androids Dream? M.I.T. Is Working on It. Claudia Dreifus interviews "Dr. Anne Foerst, 34, a researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of M.I.T.'s God and Computers project."

What We Can Learn from Robots. By Gregory T. Huang. Technology Review (January 2005). "On a crisp october day last year, Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute kicked off its 25th-anniversary celebration.... On the third day, it was Mitsuo Kawato’s turn to speak. The lights went down, and the director of the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, made his way to the stage to the beat of rock music. ... [T] here is a difference between him and other attendees. Kawato loves robots not because they are cool, but because he believes they can teach him how the human brain works. 'Only when we try to reproduce brain functions in artificial machines can we understand the information processing of the brain,' he says. It’s what he calls 'understanding the brain by creating the brain.' By programming a robot to reach out and grasp an object, for instance, Kawato hopes to learn the patterns in which electrical signals flow among neurons in the brain to control a human arm. ... 'This is very different from the usual justification for building humanoid robots --- that they are economically useful or will help take care of the elderly,' says Christopher Atkeson, a robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon."

Robots R Us. By Sam Joseph. J@pan Inc. (February 2002). "Move Over Aibo. We've all seen entertainment robots like Sony's Aibo turning tricks, but what of the competition? Can any of the bots roam beyond the playroom and have broader implications for society in general?"

Robots get friendly - Robots are acting more like people. newspaper with link to news index Will our attachments eventually become too strong? By Gregory M. Lamb. The Christian Science Monitor (February 5, 2003). "Of course, computers and their physical manifestations, robots, are already deeply embedded in our lives. In some sense, ATM machines, self-service gas pumps, and TiVo video recorders serve as rudimentary robots. Now, scientists are pushing to make these machines more sophisticated and humanlike, both in appearance [see related story] and intelligence. ... Some experts worry that attachments may become too strong [see the other related story: If you kick a robotic dog, is it wrong?], subjecting people to manipulation by clever programmers or unnatural reliance on machines for companionship."

Thinkers contemplate machines' effect on soul. By Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle. June 9, 2000. "By observing both humanoid robots and the people interacting with them, researchers have seen how important body movement and facial expression are in the development of learning and intelligence.

Educational Robotics. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 10, 1080-1089. P. Leroux, ed. (1999). Proceedings of the workshop at AIED 99.

Researchers smell success in developing 'robo-noses'. By Usha Lee McFarling. Knight Ridder Newspapers. Available from The Seattle Times. March 9, 1999. "With the help of a squadron of crawling robots and electrical engineer Rodney Goodman, Lewis is now taking the nose, literally, a few steps further. The new robots are learning to detect wind: When Goodman leans over and blows air at one of his creations, it obediently turns toward him. Once Goodman marries these wind-detecting robots to artificial noses, he says, they'll be able to crawl toward hidden objects and follow wafting scents by zigzagging back and forth like bloodhounds."

* for related info, check out our page about artificial noses

Domestic bliss through mechanical marvels? By Kevin Maney. USA Today (September 1, 2004). "Never mind the humanoid Automated Domestic Assistants walking rich people's pets in the movie I, Robot, or the accordion-armed Robot B9 in TV classic Lost in Space warning of danger on lonely planets. The real force driving the development of personal robots -- and what will eventually create demand for them in the marketplace -- is aging baby boomers. That's the secret among robotics researchers and budding robot companies. As the horde of boomers become old, they increasingly will be unable to care for themselves or their homes. They'll face a social and medical system straining to help them. But they'll be comfortable with technology. ... Robots that are likely to serve the elderly seem to fall into three broad categories. Though the categories don't officially have names, you could call them homebots, carebots and joybots. A look at those categories speaks volumes about what's going on in robotics -- and what's still beyond technology's reach. ... 'Whether or not you have to love your robot is another question,' Brooks says. 'I don't need my ATM to be cute.' Here is a great point of departure between U.S. and Japanese robotics research. U.S. labs and companies generally approach robots as tools. The Japanese approach them as beings. That explains a lot about robot projects coming out of Japan."

The Man-Machine and Artificial Intelligence. By Bruce Mazlish. From Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities - "A special issue edited by Stefano Franchi and Guven Guzeldere The Volume 4, issue 2 of the Stanford Humanities Review is devoted to the exploration of convergences and dissonances between Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities."

Rise of the Robots. By Hans Moravec. Scientific American. December 1999; pp.124-135. "By 2050 robot 'brains' based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per second will start rivaling human intelligence."

Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendant Mind. By Hans Moravec (1998). New York: Oxford University Press. An adventurous look at the future in which the author sees intelligent machines surpassing their human creators as the next evolutionary step. The author's web page includes an in-depth look at the book. You may also want to read the transcript of a November 1998 interview with Hans Moravec.

The Scientific Relevance of Robotics (Remarks at the Dedication of the CMU Robotics Institute). By Allen Newell. AI Magazine 2(1): 24-26, 34 (Winter 1980). "My first point, then, is to remind you that science doesn't fit any single mold. ... From where I stand, it is easy to see the science lurking in robotics. It lies in the welding of intelligence to energy. That is, it lies in intelligent perception and intelligent control of motion."

Human-Free Kick At Robocup 2002 - humanoids battle it out in soccer. By Dennis Normile. Scientific American Explore (September 23, 2002). "'The goal of RoboCup is to develop a team of robots that can beat the human World Cup champions by 2050,' says Hiroaki Kitano, a Sony artificial-intelligence specialist who is also president of the RoboCup Federation."

The Dream of Mechanical Life - Man and automata. By Hugh Ormsby-Lennon. The Weekly Standard (December 23, 2002 Volume 008, Issue 15). "A spate of new books [13 to be exact] addresses eighteenth-century automata, ventriloquists' dummies, and puppets--together with more recent avatars of chess computers, artificial intelligence, androids, robots, and cyborgs. Does 'computerization' challenge human identity as ominously as 'mechanization' previously seemed to? ... So, does artificial intelligence transcend Freudian nightmare now that it has come to suggest not itinerant showmen or tinkerers with clockwork but university scientists, computer moguls, and global corporations? Or does a scientist with an uncanny puppet always remain mad or charlatanical?"

Introducing robo-scientist - Could robots take over from graduate students in the lab? By Mark Peplow. Nature (January 15, 2004). "A robot scientist has been unveiled that can formulate theories, carry out experiments and interpret results - all more cheaply than its human counterparts. As far as artificial intelligence goes, the Robot Scientist - designed by Ross King of the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, UK, and his colleagues - isn't as smart as other computers, such as those that compete in international chess competitions. But combining the smarts of a computer with the agility of a robot wasn't trivial. ... Geneticist Stephen Oliver of the University of Manchester, UK, who helped to select the robot's research project, says there is potential for the robot to more than just drudgery. 'The next big step is to make our robot discover something completely new,' says Oliver, 'perhaps by applying it to drug discovery.'"

* Also see: "Robot Scientist" Said to Equal Humans at Some Tasks. By John Roach. National Geographic News (January 14, 2004). "It looks nothing like C-3PO of Star Wars fame, but a team of British scientists have created a 'robot' that can formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret results on par with the best of their human counterparts. ... The robot scientist, equipped with a wealth of information about biochemistry and sophisticated AI software, watches the yeast grow, generates a set of hypotheses concerning the function of the gene in question, and then plans an experiment that will eliminate as many of the hypotheses as quickly and cheaply as possible. The robot then conducts experiments by dispensing and mixing liquids using one machine and measures the growth of yeast with a second machine that feeds the results back into the system. It then evaluates the results against the set of hypotheses, generates new hypotheses, and the process starts again."

Emotionware. By Lynellen D.S. Perry (1996). ACM Crossroads Student Magazine. "The capability of displaying emotion seems to be a critical component of creating intelligent agents with whom humans can comfortably relate and communicate. The emotional aspect distinguishes a dead machine from an agent who is believable, alive, and trustworthy."

My Approach to Robotics. By Robin Popplestone, co-director of the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics at UMass. "Robotics is about the development of autonomous agents capable of functioning within a complex world. ... An intelligent robot is one which has a representation of its world in a form which supports the derivation of plans which can be executed to bring about a desired goal state of the world."

Robotic Vision. Feature of the Week for August 31, 2000 in NATURE. Follow the links to the featured articles, the related articles, and the supplementary information for the articles (where you'll find some video clips).

Robotics. A stimulating and diverse collection of online articles from Red Herring Magazine (Issue 81, August 2000).

Robotics and Autonomous Systems. A journal published by Elsevier that provides abstracts and some full-text articles, keyword searchable. Technical and scholarly. "Now affiliated with the newly-founded Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) Society."

Rescue Droids Stumble in an Urban Jungle. By Mark Sincell. Science Magazine. Volume 289 (August 11, 2000), Number 5481, p. 846. (Some viewers may incur a fee to view this article. The robot contest is also discussed in another article from AP.) "[F]our teams of engineers fielded mechanical contestants in the first annual urban ruin search-and-rescue competition--a simulated catastrophe created to test intelligent lifesaving robots that may one day lead rescuers to people trapped in the precarious rubble of collapsed buildings."

Robots and the Rest of Us. View by Bruce Sterling. Wired Magazine (May 2004; Issue 12.05). "Since when do machines need an ethical code? For 80 years, visionaries have imagined robots that look like us, work like us, perceive the world, judge it, and take action on their own. The robot butler is still as mystical as the flying car, but there's trouble rising in the garage. In Nobel's vaulted ballroom, experts uneasily point out that automatons are challenging humankind on four fronts. First, this is a time of war. ... The prospect of autonomous weapons naturally raises ethical questions. ... The second ominous frontier is brain augmentation, best embodied by the remote-controlled rat recently created at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. ... Another troubling frontier is physical, as opposed to mental, augmentation. ... Frontier number four is social: human reaction to the troubling presence of the humanoid. ... If the [First International Symposium on Roboethics] offers a take-home message, it's not about robots, but about us."

HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality. David G. Stork, editor. (1996). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Compares the book/movie computer celebrity with what has been achieved in AI.

Man and machine - Part 1: the quest for mechanical man. By Dheera Sujan. Radio Netherlands (November 26, 2004). "In her book Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, Gaby Wood documents the long history of humanity's fascination with mechanical representations of itself. And she poses the question - what do we want from a machine that simulates us? 'Is it supposed to be as close as possible to a human being, or to improve on that, and become superhuman? In the quest for mechanical perfection, does perfection mean infallibility (as in the computer), or innocence (as in the child)?' These questions have been around since the Enlightenment and the dawn of the age of machines; now researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence are returning to them as they gain renewed relevance. ... At what pointpoint does a humanoid machine achieve personhood? Dr [Anne] Foerst's search for an answer to this question has led her through a philosophical maze that has forced her to examine her own ideas on what it means to be alive. ... Fear has always been part of the fascination we have for the idea of reproducing ourselves mechanically. According to Dr Foerst, however, that won't happen if we take responsibility for our creation. After all, Dr Frankenstein didn't create a monster; the creature (never dignified with a name) only became a monster when he was rejected by his creator and the rest of mankind." You can listen to the broadcast via a link on the page.

Autonomous Mental Development by Robots and Animals. By Juyang Weng, James McClelland, Alex Pentland, Olaf Sporns, Ida Stockman, Mriganka Sur, Esther Thelen. (2000). , Science, Vol. 291, No. 5504; pages 599 - 600, 26 January 2001). "How does one create an intelligent machine? This problem has proven difficult. Over the past several decades, scientists have taken one of three approaches: In the first, which is knowledge-based, an intelligent machine in a laboratory is directly programmed to perform a given task. In a second, learning-based approach, a computer is 'spoon-fed' human-edited sensory data while the machine is controlled by a task-specific learning program. Finally, by a 'genetic search,' robots have evolved through generations by the principle of survival of the fittest, mostly in a computer-simulated virtual world. Although notable, none of these is powerful enough to lead to machines having the complex, diverse, and highly integrated capabilities of an adult brain, such as vision, speech, and language. Nevertheless, these traditional approaches have served as the incubator for the birth and growth of a new direction for machine intelligence: autonomous mental development."

* Also see: Developmental Robotics - A 2005 AAAI Spring Symposium.

Evolutionary robotics. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. "Evolutionary Robotics (ER) is a methodology that uses evolutionary algorithms to develop controllers for autonomous robots. It allows to automatically create robot controllers from an initially random population by selecting according to a predefined fitness function. ... ER relates to work done in the domains of Robotics, Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation."

Related Web Sites

AI on the Web: Perception and Robotics. A resource companion to Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" with links to reference material, people, research groups, books, companies and much more.

ASIMO - Say Hello to ASIMO. From Honda Motor Company. A fascinating collection of information (including FAQs, movies & teaching resources) about this humanoid robot whose name stands for Advanced Step in Innovative MObility.

Kismet: A Sociable Humanoid Robot. Well-written text complemented by delightful images, not to mention several video clips, make this an excellent site for getting to know a robot, up-close and personal.

* Meet the Humanoid Robotic Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
* Check out the Robotic Life Group and their fascinating projects.
* Interested in an article about the theological adviser to Kismet's creators ?
* ... and now introducing the newest social robot: Leonardo

Vikia and the Social Robot Project. "The goal of the Social Robot Project is to overcome the human-robot social barrier. Towards this end, we are in the process of developing a robot which bears a personality, and which can behave according to social conventions. The idea is that communication and interaction with robots should be easy and enjoyable, both for unfamiliar users and trained professionals. We want robots to behave more like people, so that people do not have to behave like robots when they interact with them."

* "At CMU [Carnegie Mellon University], Grace serves as VIKIA's sucessor as a platform for the social robots project."

Assembly Robotics Group, part of the Institute of Perception, Action, and Behaviour in the Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Home of Freddy, the Famous Scottish Robot: "Freddy (mid1960s - 1981) was one of the first robots to be able to assemble wooden models using vision to identify and locate the parts -- given a jumbled heap of toy wooden car and boat pieces it could assemble both in about 16 hours using a parallel gripper and single camera (1973)."

* For more information about Freddy - including a photo - check out this page from the seminar: Artificial Intelligence - Recollections of the Pioneers

Cogbotlab at Technischen Universitat Munchen. "Mission: to build robots that learn.
Tools: recurrent networks, Bayesian methods, reinforcement learning, evolution, optimal search, others. Theory: optimal universal learners, universal Bayesian induction, Kolmogorov complexity, Gödel machines."

Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the University of the West of England (UWE), home of Ecobot II, A robot powered on a diet of flies: "Energy Autonomy: Towards a truly Autonomous Robot ... One important factor for robots is that of energetic autonomy. Robots will be required to extract energy from the environment. In many ways robots will face the same problems as animals. An earlier phase of our work centred around the use of slugs as a bio-fuel. This resulted in the construction of the 'SlugBot' - a robot which could identify and pick up slugs to be used in an anaerobic 'digester'. This phase is now finished. Please follow this link for more details on the SlugBot project. The main objective of our work is to build energetically autonomous robots. We believe that MFC technology is a good way forward, as the robot will incorporate in its behavioural repertoire actions that involve search and get hold of food and also remain inactive until energy is sufficient to do the next task. This will be a paradigm shift in the way action selection mechanisms have been designed so far."

NASA's Robotics Education Project has a special portal just for students of all ages with exciting projects, education & career information, a variety of challenges & competitions, a collection of FAQs about many topics, and the opportunity to ask Dr. Robot a technical question!

How Robots Work. By Tom Harris. HowStuffWorks. "Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most exciting field in robotics. It's certainly the most controversial: Everybody agrees that a robot can work in an assembly line, but there's no consensus on whether a robot can ever be intelligent. Like the term 'robot' itself, artificial intelligence is hard to define. Ultimate AI would be a recreation of the human thought process -- a man-made machine with our intellectual abilities. This would include the ability to learn just about anything, the ability to reason, the ability to use language and the ability to formulate original ideas. Roboticists are nowhere near achieving this level of artificial intelligence, but they have had made a lot of progress with more limited AI. Today's AI machines can replicate some specific elements of intellectual ability."

"Botball is a hands-on learning experience in robotics designed to engage students in learning the practical applications of science, technology, engineering and math." As explain on the About Botball page: "Presented in your region by KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, the Botball Educational Robotics Program integrates science, technology, engineering and math with robotics to keep your students on the forefront of technology. Any middle or high school aged student can participate in Botball as long as the team has an adult contact. The organization of the team is up to the team leader."

* Be sure to check out the video gallery as well as their robot products and programming tutorial.

"FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multinational non-profit organization, that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today."

* "The FIRST LEGO League (FLL), considered the 'little league' of the FIRST Robotics Competition, is the result of a partnership between FIRST and the LEGO Group. FLL extends the FIRST concept of inspiring and celebrating science and technology to children aged 9 through 14, using real-world context and hands-on experimentation."
* "The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience�and a lot of fun. In 2005 the competition will reach close to 25,000 high-school-aged young people on close to 1,000 teams in 30 competitions. Our teams come from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Israel, Mexico, the U.K., and almost every U.S. state."

RoboCup. "RoboCup is an international joint project to promote AI, robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries."

* Also see: RoboCup-Rescue

"RoboFesta - Europe is part of an international movement to promote interest throughout Europe in science and technology through many different kinds of robotics activities. These include many exciting robot competitions for children and adults, expositions, technical meetings, and widespread media cover. RoboFesta began in Japan in 1999, and is rapidly spreading throughout the world."

* RoboFesta-UK
* RoboFesta-France
* additional countries and lots of resources can be found by way of links from any of the RoboFesta pages mentioned above

"RoboFlag is a new research platform developed by Cornell University. RoboFlag is a combination of Paintball and Capture the Flag, played with fully autonomous robots, in an adversarial environment. It extends and enhances the Robotic Soccer competition RoboCup by introducing a larger field, more players, local vision and obstacles. It incorporates distributed decision making and Human in the Loop capabilities."

Evolutionary Robotics - Co-evolution is just one of the fascinating projects you'll find at from DEMO's (Dynamical & Evolutionary Machine Organization) site. "Our work investigates both evolving controllers for robots and co-evolution. Ultimately, we aim for inexpensive robots that design themselves to address problems."

Robotics: sensing - thinking - acting. An online exhibit from The Tech Museum of Innovation. These are just some of the exciting resources that await you:

* Timeline: "a reference list of landmarks in fiction about people and technology, many of which are centered around robots."
* Classroom Activities
* Machines and Man: Ethics and Robotics in the 21st Century

"Robots and Society - Robots have a evolving role in society today. The following list outlines some of the ways in which robotics and artificial intelligence has an impact on our lives." From The British Council. Other related pages in their web site include: Research in Robotics and UK Companies.

The Robotics Institute at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. Check out their collection of projects and find out who Pearl is . . . and what a HeartLander does.

The Flocking Robots Project at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Information Technology, University of Zurich. "Flocking adresses a variety of important topics in the field of multiagent simulation and collective robotics which include agent interaction, kin recognition, and finally the emergence of collective behavior." And their flocking applet is simply beautiful!

IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. "The committee was founded to account for a steadily growing international community of researchers and engineers who develop robot systems providing services of various kinds to human users. ... This committee hopes to bring together researchers and developers from various disciplines such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science." Their site offers an impressive collection of links to research labs and companies doing work in the field of service robots.

Robotics Online from The Robotic Industries Association offers an assortment of very helpful resources including current news articles and Robotics Industry Statistics.

The International Federation of Robotics provides Robot Statistics as well as other useful information as does the The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Robot Books.com "Our Job is to sort through the many robotics books available today, and select, review, recommend, and sell, just those few that we feel are the very best. In addition to books, you will also find a selection of robot toys, movies, educational toys, magazines, and robot kits, that you can't find anywhere else on the web."

"Sodarace [a joint venture between: soda and Queen Mary, University of London] is the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to construct virtual racing robots. ... Sodarace is not just for fun. It is a shared competition for Artificial Intelligence researchers to test their learning algorithms while also being a play space in which to communicate the benefits of Artificial Intelligence research with a wide audience and promote a creative exploration of physics and engineering."

The Walking Machine Catalogue. Maintained by Karsten Berns. Be sure to check out the History section where you can read about such wonders as Georges Moore's Steam Man, a biped walking machine from the year 1893.

Related Pages e-news

* AI: the movie
* Assistive Technologies
* Autonomous Vehicles
* Business & Manufacturing
* Competitions & Events (from Student Resources)
* Emotion
* Ethical & Social Implications (such as: Should robots have legal rights?)
* General Index to AI in the news: Robots
* Hazards & Disasters
* Household Appliances
* Industry Statistics - Robotics
* Interfaces
* It's Show Time > video clips
* Medicine
* Multi-Agent Systems
* Philosophy - where the discussion covers questions such as: "Is it reasonable to ascribe consciousness to a droll and well-mannered aunt, yet deny it in a robot that behaves like one?" (this quote is from Colin Tudge's article)
* Robotic Pets
* Science Fiction
* Software & Hardware
* Sports

More ReadingsAI Magazine cover: Robot Competitions Over the Years

Not yet available online to non-subscribers -> Robot Competitions Over the Years: A Retrospective. AI Magazine 23:1 (Spring 2002).

Bonasso, Pete and Thomas Dean. 1997. Retrospective of the AAAI Robot Competitions. AI Magazine 18 (1): 11-23. "This article is the content of an invited talk given by the authors at the Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-96). The piece begins with a short history of the competition, then discusses the technical challenges and the political and cultural issues associated with bringing it off every year. We also cover the science and engineering involved with the robot tasks and the educational and commercial aspects of the competition. We finish with a discussion of the community formed by the organizers, participants, and the conference attendees."

Britton, Peter. 1995. Undersea Explorers. Popular Science 246 (May 1995): 39-42.

Buhmann, Joachim, et. al. 1995. The Mobile Robot Rhino. AI Magazine 16 (2): 31-38. Rhino was the University of Bonn's entry in the 1994 AAAI Robot Competition. Rhino is a mobile robot designed for indoor navigation and manipulation tasks. The general scientific goal of the rhino project is development and analysis of autonomous and complex learning systems. This article describes major components of the rhino control software, sketches the basic philosophy of the rhino architecture and discusses lessons learned at the competition.

Canny, J. F. 1988. The Complexity of Robot Motion Planning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Clarke, Roger. 1994. Asimov's Laws for Robotics: Implications for Information Technology. Parts 1 and 2. Computer(December 1993 (pp. 53-61), and January 1994 (pp. 57-65)).

Engelberger, J. F. 1989. Robotics in Service. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Engelberger, J. F. 1980. Robotics in Practice. New York: Amacom.

Fikes, R., P. Hart, and N. Nilsson. 1972. Learning and Executing Generalized Robot Plans. Artificial Intelligence 3: 1-4.

Goldsmith, Mike. Record entries for science prize. By Christine McGourty. BBC News (May 10, 2004). "The Aventis Prize is worth �10,000 to the winner and guarantees a sales rush. The prize, which includes a junior category, is managed by the UK's science academy, the Royal Society. ... The shortlisted books for the 2004 Junior Prize: ... Riotous Robots, by Mike Goldsmith (Scholastic Children's Books ) - In brief: From Frankenstein to nanobots, this is a comprehensive and entertaining guide to the history and future of robots. It explains the technical detail of how robots work in an accessible way. ..."
>>> Robots
-> back to headlines

Grepo, Stephanie V. 1996. Robot Ant-ics. Technology Review 99: 13-14.

Hinkle, David, David Kortenkamp, and David Miller 1996. The 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition. AI Magazine 17 (1): 31-45.

Hook, Dave. Robot Dreams -Build Your Own R2D2. Library Journal (November 1, 2002). "Collection Development: Building a robot involves knowledge of several fields such as electronics, motors, wiring, computers, programming, control systems, power systems, power transmission, mechanics, and fabricating. In creating a robotics collection, librarians need to consider their users' skill levels in these areas. Beginning enthusiasts may want to know where to start and how to go about building their first robot. The more experienced hobbyists will be more interested in where to find parts or code for programming their controller. ... Most of the titles listed here are for beginners and assume little previous knowledge, although there are also a few manuals for the more advanced hobbyist."

Horn, B. K. P. 1986. Robot Vision. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Jones, Joseph, Anita Flynn, and Bruce Seiger. 1999. Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation. 2nd edition. Natick, MA: A. K. Peters.

Kanade, Takeo, Michael Reed, and Lee E. Weiss. 1994. New Technologies and Applications in Robotics. Communications of the ACM 37 (3): 58-76.

Konolige, Kurt. 1995. ERRATIC Competes with the Big Boys. AI Magazine 16 (2): 61-67. This article discusses the development of the robot ERRATIC, the second-place winner of the 1994 AAAI Robot Competition. The perceptual and control architecture is described, as well as the robot's performance during the competition.

Kortenkamp, David, R. Peter Bonasso, and Robin Murphy, editors. 1998. Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots: Case Studies of Successful Robot Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. These case studies describe robots that have "left the lab" and been tested in the field. Includes descriptions of important algorithms and pseudo-code, and covers themes of navigation, mapping, vision, and architecture.

Lederman, Susan J. and Roberta L. Klatzky. 1994. The Intelligent Hand: An Experimental Approach to Human Object Recognition and Implications for Robotics and AI. AI Magazine 15 (1): 26-38. The scientific study of biological systems offers a complementary approach to more formal analytic methods favored by roboticists.

McDermott, Drew. 1992. Robot Planning. AI Magazine 13 (2): 55-79. "There are several strands of research in the field; I survey six: (1) attempts to avoid planning; (2) the design of flexible plan notations; (3) theories of time-constrained planning; (4) planning by projecting and repairing faulty plans; (5) motion planning; and (6) the learning of optimal behaviors from reinforcements."

Moran, Barbara, and Laura Van Dam. 1996. Robots on all Twos. Technology Review 99: 10-11.

Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. A lively and accessible overview of the field of robotics from the director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. The book covers historical development as well as social issues.

Murphy, Robin R. 2000. Introduction to AI Robotics. A Bradford Book, The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13383-0.

Nadis, Steven J. 1995. Fantastic Voyage. Omni 17 (January 1995): 9.

Nadis, Steven J., and Jerry Shine. 1996. Go Team, Go. Popular Science 248 (May 1996): 40.

Normile, Dennis. 1997. RoboCup Soccer Match is a Challenge for Silicon Rookies. Science 277 (September 26, 1997): 1933.

Nourbakhsh, Illah, Bob Powers, and Stan Birchfield. 1995. DERVISH: An Office Navigating Robot. AI Magazine 16 (2): 53-60. DERVISH won the Office Delivery event of the 1994 Robot Competition and Exhibition. Although the contest required DERVISH to navigate in an artificial office environment, the goal of the contest was to push the technology of robot navigation in real office buildings with minimal domain information. DERVISH navigates reliably using retractable assumptions that simplify the planning problem.

Pomerleau, D. 1993. Neural Network Perception for Mobile Robot Guidance. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Poole, David, Alan Mackworth, and Randy Goebels. 1998. Building Situated Robots. In Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach, 443-460. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Russell, Stuart, and Peter Norvig. 2002. Robotics. In Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Second Edition).

Ryder, Graham. 1996. Humans and Robots in the Geological Exploration of Planets. Ad Astra 8 (Nov/Dec 1996): 20-1.

Spice, Byron 1997. Look, No Hands: CMU Automotive Robot is Now Able to Control a Car on the Highway. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 30, 1997: Science & Environment, A6+.

Stone, Brad. 1997. Actually, Chess is Easy. Newsweek 129 (May 5, 1997): 53. Discusses robot competitions in the fields of navigation, aviation, and soccer.

Suplee, Curt. 1997. Robot Revolution. National Geographic 192 (July 1997): 76-95.

Thomson, Alan J. 1995. Object-Oriented Blowfly: A Study in Computational Neuroethology. AI Applications 9 (2): 15-25.

Thrun, Sebastian. 1997. To Know or Not to Know: On the Utility of Models in Mobile Robots. AI Magazine 18 (1): 47-54.

Yoshikawa, T. 1990. Foundations of Robotics: Analysis and Control. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fair Use Notice

©2000 - 2005 by AAAI

Mobile Robots: From Inspiration to Implimentation

2005-07-12T10:05:00.000-07:00

This will be the academic book being used for the Robotic's Learning Lab.

Guest Speaker from Carnegie Mellon University

2005-07-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

CMU'S ROBOTICS INSTITUTE - HALL OF FAME

Erick Chastain is a Senior at Carnegie Mellon University, and is currently studying Computer Science and Cognitive Science. He is currently working for the Robotics Institute (Auton Lab), making advanced inference programs that accurately predict what the user is doing using probability theory. A potential application is a search engine much more advanced than Google (but still acting on similar principles). In the past, Mr. Chastain has worked extensively with Sony AIBO dogs in Dave Touretzky's Tekkotsu lab, and has discussed and adapted code for use in various demos (particularly, a demo in which a dog plays tic-tac-toe) by constructing a map from the many different views of the robot. He also did work briefly with Jun Tani from the RIKEN Brain Institute in Japan on biologically-inspired robotics. His Chief experience is with Machine Learning and Neural Networks, though he has occasionally dabbled into robotics topics (most notably Rodney Brooks' work). His interest was originally in Robotics, and he was an avid follower of the battling robots craze, taking a class early on that used Lego Mindstorms and teaching children about robotics at San Jose, CA's Tech Museum.

Relevant work experience links:

Contact Information:
Erick James Chastain
Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science
echastai@cs.cmu.edu

Potential Lecture Topics:

Newell, Simon, and the History of AI, especially as related to Pittsburgh (and subsequent developments in the AI people in Pgh).
Game AI / Machine Learning
Computer Vision
possibly Touretzky's Cognitive Robotics slides, but sure right now.
Human / Machine Interfaces (robots that are controlled using your mind)
Neuroengineering (what the guys at UF are doing with making real neuronal networks control robots)
Artifical Life

Living Machines: Biologically-inspired robotics - MIT

Neuroengineering
Artificially created brains
Artificial Life
Embodied Robotics
Self-Organizing/Living Systems
Robots that are manipulated by thought alone
Social Robotics
Developmental Robotics

Mind Matters - by Hogan, James P.

2005-07-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

Currently reading to brush up on a refreshing A.I. Historical Overview.

AI HISTORY - AAAI

2005-07-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

HISTORY of AI - The Source of the Following

Perhaps the earliest examples of the urge to make artificial persons are the Greek Gods. ... As a present from Zeus to Europa, Hephaestus makes Talos, a man of bronze whose duty is to patrol the beaches of Crete. He thwarts invaders by hurling great rocks at them, or by heating himself red hot and squeezing trespassers in a warm embrace.

-Pamela McCorduck from Machines Who Think

The intellectual roots of AI, and the concept of intelligent machines, may be found in Greek mythology. Intelligent artifacts appear in literature since then, with real (and fraudulent) mechanical devices actually demonstrating behaviour with some degree of intelligence. After modern computers became available following World War II, it has become possible to create programs that perform difficult intellectual tasks. Even more importantly, general purpose methods and tools have been created that allow similar tasks to be performed.

Good Places to Start

A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence. By Bruce Buchanan, University Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh. A chronology of significant events in the history of AI, prepared for the Introduction to AI class at the University of Pittsburgh. [Note: We have begun to annotate his history by providing links to resources in AI TOPICS and elsewhere.]

A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. J. McCarthy, M. L. Minsky, N. Rochester, and C.E. Shannon. August 31, 1955. "We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." And this marks the debut of the term "artificial intelligence."

Also see this interview with John McCarthy.

The very early days. An interview (available in PDF, Quicktime, and Realmedia) with Donald Michie, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, and currently a visitor at NSW University of Technology. "Interested in AI from 1942, Donald Michie conceived, founded and directed the UK's first AI laboratory at Edinburgh, and has since been active in AI projects around the World. ... His talk will cover the period from 1942, when Alan Turing was a colleague at Bletchley Park, up to 1965, when the Edinburgh AI laboratory was truly launched. He will cover the theories, the practice, the personalities and the politics, and on past form may be expected to do so without pulling any punches." This is just one of the 4 presentations given at the October 2002 seminar, Artificial Intelligence - Recollections of the Pioneers.

Timeline exhibit at the Computer History Museum. "This timeline explores the history of computing from 1945 to 1990. Each year features illustrated descriptions of significant innovations in hardware and software technology, as well as milestones in areas such as commercial applications and artificial intelligence. When appropriate, biographical sketches of the pioneers responsible for the advances are included."

Computers - wonderful photos, specs and more about ENIAC, AVIDAC, Manchester Mark I, Pilot ACE, MIT Whirlwind, UNIVAC I, Micral, and many others.
Software & Languages - here are just two examples from this exciting collection:
- "Claude Shannon's 'The Mathematical Theory of Communication' showed engineers how to code data so they could check for accuracy after transmission between computers. Shannon identified the bit as the fundamental unit of data and, coincidentally, the basic unit of computation."
- " LISP made its debut as the first computer language designed for writing artificial intelligence programs. Created by John McCarthy, LISP offered programmers flexibility in organization."

Robots/ Mechanical Life. NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday With Ira Flatow (August 30, 2002). "This week, an automated convenience store opened in Washington. This robo-mart dispenses snacks, toiletries, and even DVDs. From housekeeping to the battlefield to your neighborhood convenience store, researchers are creating robots to live with us and work for us. In this hour, we'll look at how robots may change our lives. Plus, early attempts to create mechanical life." Guests: Rodney Brooks & Gaby Wood. You can listen to the radio broadcast by clicking here.

Timeline: Real robots - "Robots are not new. They have been around for centuries in various forms. Here's a brief overview of the development of both robots and computers." From BBC News.

The Big Picture - A Short History of Robotics and Thinking Machines. Part of the teaching guide for the Scientific American Frontiers in the classroom series: ROBOTS ALIVE!

Readings Online

As We May Think. By Vannevar Bush. Atlantic Monthly, July 1945. A vision of the future in which computers assist humans in many activities.

Claude E. Shannon: Founder of Information Theory. By Graham P. Collins. Scientific American Explore (October 14, 2002). "Shannon's M.I.T. master's thesis in electrical engineering has been called the most important of the 20th century: in it the 22-year-old Shannon showed how the logical algebra of 19th-century mathematician George Boole could be implemented using electronic circuits of relays and switches. This most fundamental feature of digital computers' design -- the representation of 'true' and 'false' and '0' and '1' as open or closed switches, and the use of electronic logic gates to make decisions and to carry out arithmetic -- can be traced back to the insights in Shannon's thesis."

Machine Translation's Past and Future. A timeline covering the span from 1629 through the year 2264! Compiled by Kristin Demos and Mark Frauenfelder (Wired, 8.05 - May 2000).

Knowledge Processing -- From File Servers to Knowledge Servers. By Edward Feigenbaum. "This chapter from Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Intelligent Machines (published in 1990) addresses the history and development of AI, and where it was headed, circa 1990." Excerpt: "Like all creators, scientists and technologists must dream, must put forth a vision, or else they relegate their work to almost pointless incrementalism. ... The early dreaming included dreams about intelligent behavior at very high levels of competence. Turing speculated on wide-ranging conversations between people and machines and on chess playing programs. Later Newell and Simon wrote about champion-level chess programs and began their work toward that end. Samuel (checker playing), Gelernter (geometry-theorem proving), and others shared the dream. At Stanford, Lederberg and I chose reasoning in science as our task and began work with Buchanan and Djerassi on building a program that would elucidate chemical structure at a high level of competence: the DENDRAL program."

Computers and Thought. Edited by Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman. AAAI Press. The following excerpt is from the Preface which is available online: "Computers and Thought is indeed a treasure. Some of the papers are as important today for their fundamental ideas as they were in the late 1950s and early 1960s when they were written. Others are interesting as early milestones of fields that have expanded and changed dramatically. Afew are interesting in that they represent work that simply did not go anywhere. Some of the papers describe key work that is not typically taught any more, but is 'buried' deeply in the conceptual structure of AI?a heritage that needs to be honored and preserved. ... Today?s young AI researcher can not easily imagine the excitement of the early years of AI, from which the papers of this volume are drawn." You can see which papers were included by viewing the Contents page.

Chapter 1 of Architects of the Information Society: Thirty-Five Years of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT, by Simson Garfinkel and edited by Hal Abelson (1999; MIT Press) is available online and contains information about the formation of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Also see the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science's timeline of major milestones.

Ramon Lull and the Infidels. By Clark Glymour, Kenneth M. Ford and Patrick J. Hayes. (1998) AI Magazine 19(2): 136. "Many of the fundamental ideas in artificial intelligence have an ancient heritage. Some of the most fundamental, surely, are that thinking is a computational process, that computational processes involve combining symbols, that computation can be made mechanical, and that the mathematics of computation involves combinatorics. All of these ideas have their origin, so far as we know, in the work of an eccentric 13th century Spanish genius, Ramon Lull (1232-1316). Lull's sources were partly mystical, but the interesting part of his thought drew from - or against - an analytic tradition in logic and combinatorics."

AI's Greatest Trends and Controversies. Marti A. Hearst and Haym Hirsh, Editors. IEEE Intelligent Systems (January/February 2000). A timely and thought provoking collection of views from AI scholars and practitioners.

In Pursuit of Mind: The Research of Allen Newell. By John E. Laird and Paul S. Rosenbloom. (1992). AI Magazine 13 (4): 17-45. A brief review of Allen Newell's research career, starting with symbolic computation in 1954, and continuing through the present involving Soar and its ramifications. Included within the article is a remembrance of Allen Newell written by Herbert Simon.

AI: Early History and Applications. Chapter One of George F. Luger's textbook, Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving, 5th Edition (Addison-Wesley; 2005), is available online. "As one of the originators of the science of operations research, as well as the designer of the first programmable mechanical computing machines, Charles Babbage, a nineteenth century mathematician, may also be considered an early practitioner of artificial intelligence (Morrison and Morrison 1961). Babbage's difference engine was a special-purpose machine for computing the values of certain polynomial functions and was the forerunner of his analytical engine. The analytical engine, designed but not successfully constructed during his lifetime, was a general-purpose programmable computing machine that presaged many of the architectural assumptions underlying the modern computer."

The man-machine and artificial intelligence. By Bruce Mazlish, Department of History, MIT. In Constructions of the Mind--Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. A special issue of the Stanford Humanities Review 4(2): Spring 1995. Stefano Franchi and Guven Guzeldere, editors. "In the history of mechanical contrivances, it is difficult to know how many of the automata of antiquity were constructed only in legend or by actual scientific artifice. Icarus's wings melt in the light of historical inquiry, as they were reputed to do in the myth; but was the flying automaton, attributed to a Chinese scientist of c. 380 BC actually in the air for three days, as related? (The same story is told of Archytas of Tarentum.) The mix of fact and fiction is a subject of critical importance for the history of science and technology; for our purposes, the aspirations of semi-mythical inventors can be as revealing as their actual embodiment in levers and gears."

The Great 1980s AI Bubble: A Review of The Brain Makers, by H.P. Newquist (book review), By Hans Moravec. AI Magazine, 15(3): 86-87. Also available from his list of publications.

Whatever happened to machines that think? By Justin Mullins. New Scientist (April 23, 2005; Issue 2496: pages 32 - 37). "This early success contributed to a sense of optimism that the problems of AI could be overcome, much of it based on the idea that some kind of grand unified theory of mind would emerge that would offer up a scheme to create artificial intelligence on a platter. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw feverish speculation about the impact intelligent machines might have on the world and the advantages they would bring to whoever developed them. The computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 movie 2001: A space odyssey summed up the visions being debated, and the fears they conjured up. It was against this backdrop that Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry announced, in 1982, a programme called the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project to develop massively parallel computers that would take computing and AI to a new level. ... An arms race of sorts ensued in which the US and Japan vied for supremacy." [Note: A brief history of AI timeline appears at the end of the article.]

The Dream of Mechanical Life - Man and automata. By Hugh Ormsby-Lennon. The Weekly Standard (December 23, 2002 Volume 008, Issue 15). "A spate of new books [editor's note: 13 to be exact] addresses eighteenth-century automata, ventriloquists' dummies, and puppets--together with more recent avatars of chess computers, artificial intelligence, androids, robots, and cyborgs. Does 'computerization' challenge human identity as ominously as 'mechanization' previously seemed to? ... So, does artificial intelligence transcend Freudian nightmare now that it has come to suggest not itinerant showmen or tinkerers with clockwork but university scientists, computer moguls, and global corporations? Or does a scientist with an uncanny puppet always remain mad or charlatanical?"

Book Review: M. Mitchell Waldrop's "The Dream Machine - J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal," by Bob Spinrad. Wired (October 2001/9.10). "Yet Lick insisted that computers had to connect to people on people's terms, not the machines'. The interface had to be intuitive. Expressed most vividly in his 1960 paper 'Man-Computer Symbiosis,' Lick's visions seem boringly familiar today: personal computers, graphical interfaces, voice interaction, the Internet (he called it the Intergalactic Computer Network), online reference sources, and what we now call intelligent agents."

Thanks to KurzweilAI, Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider is available online. "Written in 1960, this essay foresaw the growing dependence upon computers for more and more intelligent functions, and an age of human/computer interdependence in which the distinction between the two becomes increasingly blurred. Originally published in IEE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 411, March 1960."
also see: Waldrop, M. Mitchell. 2001. The Origins of Personal Computing. Scientific American 285 (6): 84-91.

Monster in a Box - The inside story of an ingenious chess-playing machine that thrilled crowds, terrified opponents, and won like clockwork. By Tom Standage. Wired (March 2002; Issue 10.03).

Also see his book, The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine.

A short history of the computer. Technology Research News. "The first general purpose electronic computer appeared more than half a century ago. The Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), which contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, required 1,800 square feet to rest its bulk, and cost three quarters of a million dollars, was the culmination of centuries of advances in computational devices, mathematics and electronics. ... The first graphics program, Sketchpad, was developed by Ivan Sutherland at MIT in 1962. The first computer game, Spacewar!, also emerged at MIT around the same time."

AI: the story so far. [ Parts 1 and 2 ] By Graeme Wearden. ZDNet UK. (January 23, 2001). "The term artificial intelligence, or AI, was coined at the ground-breaking Dartmouth conference of 1956. But man's interest in the notion that a machine could be given the ability to think can be traced back to the myths and stories of the ancient world."

Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. By Gaby Wood. Faber, 2002. Book extract available online from The Observer: "The 18th-century mechanician, Jacques de Vaucanson, made 'robots' that were capable of playing musical instruments as melodiously as human beings - but it was his incontinent duck that has fascinated down the ages."

Wise guys and living dolls - The line between machine and man has fascinated inventors and tricksters down the centuries. Book Review by Simon Schaffer. The Observer (2/24/02).

Women in Computing History - "A panel of pioneers of the 1940s & 1950s discuss their experiences, which range from programming the world's first computing machines to developing biomedical and graphical applications for computers. this video provides an opportunity to hear and learn the hidden history of the period and to confirm that Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper were not the only female contributors to the rich history of computing!" A video from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (1994-97) collection offered by The Multi-University/Research Laboratory (MURL).

Related Web Sites

Artificial Intelligence History. A detailed timeline from Stottler Henke Associates, Inc.

Milestones in the Development of Artificial Intelligence. By Mark Kantrowitz.

AAAI Fellows. A complete list the men and women whose longterm contributions to AI have placed them among this honored group.

Also of historical interest is the collection of AAAI Presidential Addresses

"The Charles Babbage Institute is an historical archives and research center of the University of Minnesota. CBI is dedicated to promoting study of the history of information technology and information processing and their impact on society." Don't miss their collection of oral histories.

The Computer Conservation Socitey (UK). "The Society was formed in 1989 as an initiative between the British Computer Society and the Science Museum of London. It was a time when the computer industry had existed for about half a century, and when many people had spent a professional lifetime in the industry. The industry had matured, but was still poised for ever greater technological and social changes as it had been from its beginnings in the 1940s. It was time to take stock and reflect on the extraordinary developments to date, and in particular, to be concerned that many of the pioneering people and hardware and software were fast disappearing."

Artificial Intelligence - Recollections of the Pioneers (Seminar, 11th October 2002): "'Artificial Intelligence' has been an objective for computer workers from Alan Turing onwards. Its pursuit has led to valuable application systems, and to theories of the working of the human brain, but also to great controversy and disputation. Four pioneers from various stages of the development will discuss the history, the achievements and the potential future."
- Donald Michie, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, and currently a visitor at NSW University of Technology: The very early days.
- Jim Doran, Essex University Edinburgh & Essex: the past & the future for AI.
- Aaron Sloman, Birmingham University: AI and the study of mind.
- Austin Tate, AIAI, University of Edinburgh: Putting AI to Use.

Computer History Collection at The Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Courses in the History of Computing. A list of universities offering courses in the history of computing compiled by Professor Martin Campbell-Kelly, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick.

History of Computing, maintained by John Impagliazzo, Professor of Computer Science, Hofstra University, New York. Collections include: Computing Museums and Useful History Sites.

Mind Models: Artificial Intelligence Discovery At Carnegie Mellon. An online exhibit from Carnegie Mellon's University Archives. "For a half century, Carnegie Mellon University has been a leader in the research and design of artificial intelligence (AI) - the creation of 'thinking machines'. Many of CMU's achievements came from pioneering work by professors Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell."

Software History Center. "The Software History Center is dedicated to preserving the history of the software industry, one of the largest and most influential industries in the world today. The industry originated with the entrepreneurial computer software and services companies of the 1950s and 1960s, grew dramatically through the 1970s and 1980s to become a market force rivaling that of the computer hardware companies, and by the 1990s had become the supplier of technical know-how that transformed the way people worked, played and communicated every day of their lives. The SHC is working to preserve for future generations information about the companies, people, products, and events that shaped the evolution of this vital industry."

Timeline. From The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Raymond Kurzweil. It covers the period from "10-15 billion years ago" to "2099 ... [and] Some many millenniums hence."

Timeline for the Evolution of Cybernetics. From the American Society for Cybernetics' (ACS) History of Cybernetics. "Cybernetics precipitated out of diverse threads of work fortuitously intersecting during the 1940's. In the ensuing decades, the themes circumscribing cybernetics' original definition diverged again to engender or facilitate the rise of an even greater diversity of fields, labels, and disciplines. ... [The timeline] is deliberately intended to reflect at least a sample of the many subjects and disciplines from which cybernetics descended and into which its themes subsequently flowed."

Related Pages in AI Topics

AI in the news collection - History
AI Quotations
Brief History
our FAQ Collection where you'll find the question: Do you know where I can find information about "old" AI programs, systems, and projects ?
The Future
Interviews and Oral Histories
Milestones in the Making? - from AI in the news collection
Namesakes
Tributes
our Wellspring Initiative

More Readings

Buchanan, Bruce G. 1983. Memos from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: An Introduction to the COMTEX Microfiche Edition. AI Magazine 4 (4): 37-41.

Cohen, Jonathan. 1967. Human Robots in Myth and Science. New York: A.S. Barnes. (Earlier printing: 1966, London: Allen and Unwin.)

Crevier, Daniel. 1993. AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence. New York: Basic Books of Harper Collins Publishers.

Dean, Thomas, James Allen, and Yiannis Aloimonos. 1995. Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Practice. Redwood City, CA: The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co., Inc. The end of each subject-oriented chapter gives a thumbnail sketch of major contributors in special fields within AI.

Feigenbaum, Edward A., and Julian Feldman., editors. 1995. Computers and Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This book, originally published in 1963, contains twenty classic papers by pioneers in the field of AI.

Freitas, Robert A. Jr. and William P. Gilbreath, eds. Advanced Automation for Space Missions. Proceedings of the 1980 NASA/ASEE Summer Study (NASA Conference Publication 2255). Portions of the report are available online, including the Introduction: "This document is the final report of a study on the feasibility of using machine intelligence, including automation and robotics, in future space missions. The 10-week study was conducted during the summer of 1980 by 18 educators from universities throughout the United States who worked with 15 NASA program engineers. The specific study objectives were to identify and analyze several representative missions that would require extensive applications of machine intelligence, and then to identify technologies that must be developed to accomplish these types of missions." Some of the other sections available online are Survey of Artificial Intelligence and History of NASA Automation Activities.

Gardner, Martin. 1968. Logic Machines, Diagrams, and Boolean Algebra. New York: Dover.

Glymour, Clark, Kenneth Ford, and Patrick Hayes. 1995. The Prehistory of Android Epistemology. In Computation and Intelligence: Collected Readings, ed. Luger, George F., 3-21. Menlo Park/Cambridge/London: AAAI Press/The MIT Press.

Hodges, Andrew. 1983. Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Hogan, James P. 1997. Mind Matters: Exploring the World of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Ballantine Publishing Group.

Also see: Voices in Your Head series hosted by Dave Slusher: "James P. Hogan and host Dave Slusher discuss how the film 2001 started Hogan on a career as an author, on his relationship with Marvin Minsky and the world of artificial intelligence...." (December 22, 2004).

Kowalski, Robert. 1988. The Early Years of Logic Programming. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 31: 38-43.

Kurzweil, Raymond. 1990. In The Age of the Intelligent Machine. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Chapters 1-6 (pp. 1-214).

McCarthy, John. 1978. History of LISP. In History of Programming Languages: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference, 1978, ed. Wexenblatt, R. L., 173-197. New York: Academic Press, 1981.

McCorduck, Pamela 1979. Machines Who Think. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company. A fascinating "must-read" that traces the quest for artificial intelligence back to ancient times, and then proceeds though various current topics with readable explanations and lively interview excerpts. [Updated in 2004.]

McCorduck's Machines Who Think after Twenty-Five Years Revisiting the Origins of AI. Book Review by Philip Mirowski. AI Magazine 24(4): Winter 2003, 135-138.
Excerpt from Pamela McCorduck's Letter to the Editor, AI Magazine 25(1): Spring 2004, 5:
- "Machines Who Think will be reissued by A K Peters Ltd. (Natick, MA) in March 2004. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition will contain a lenghty afterword.... It will also have two time lines, one where the history of AI is narrowly construed, and another where AI is cast into a far larger context of human endeavor...."

McCorduck, Pamela. Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence. A K Peters, Natick, Mass., 2004.

May 2004: AI at the Inception - A 25th-anniversary edition of a classic chronicles the fledgling science of artificial intelligence. Book review by Henry Fountain. Scientific American (May 2004). "When Machines Who Think was first published in 1979, it was an up-to-the-moment history. But in a digital world, that moment was an eternity ago, so McCorduck has appended a 30,000-word afterword to bring the reader up-to-date. ... Her story begins long before the advent of computing, in ancient thinking about the human need to make something in our own image. McCorduck sees AI research as the continuation of a long tradition of thought, encompassing everything from the Ten Commandments' prohibition against idols to Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein monster. ... That slow infusion of AI into everyday computing picked up speed after 1979, and in the afterword McCorduck gives a taste of these advances and of recent research in robotics, natural-language processing and other fields that are, in essence, AI spin-offs."

Markoff, John. 2005. What the Dormouse Said - How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. Viking. "An unparalleled history of how technology and the counterculture came together in the 1960s, created the cult of the personal computer, and shaped today's Silicon Valley."

See the many reviews from our AI in the news collection.

Minsky, Marvin. 1983. Early MIT Artificial Intelligence Memos: An Introduction to the COMTEX Microfiche Edition. AI Magazine 4 (1): 19-22.

Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. A lively and accessible overview of the field of robotics from the Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, including historical development as well as social issues.

Newell, Allen. 1984. Reports on Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University: Introduction to the COMTEX Microfiche Edition. AI Magazine 5 (3): 35-39.

Newell, Allen. 1983. Some Intellectual Issues in the History of Artificial Intelligence. In The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Machlup, F. and U. Mansfield, 187-227. New York: Wiley.

Newquist, Harvey P. 1994. The Brain Makers: Genius, Ego and Greed in the Quest for Machines that Think. Sams Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana. See the review by Hans Moravec.

Nilsson, Nils J. 1984. SRI Artificial Intelligence Center Technical Notes: An Introduction to the COMTEX Microfiche Edition. AI Magazine 5 (1): 41-52.

Patterson, Dan W. 1990. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-8).

Russell, Stuart, and Peter Norvig. 1995. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1-52) present a readable conceptual analysis of AI, including its history and problems in making an "intelligent agent."

Selfridge, Oliver G. 1993. The Gardens of Learning: A Vision for AI. AI Magazine 14(2): 36-48. "I have watched AI since its beginnings ... In 1943, I was an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and met a man whom I was soon to be a roommate with. He was but three years older than I, and he was writing what I deem to be the first directed and solid piece of work in AI (McCulloch and Pitts 1943) His name was Walter Pitts, and he had teamed up with a neurophysiologist named Warren McCulloch, who was busy finding out how neurons worked (McCulloch and Pitts 1943)."

Swade, D. D. 1993. Redeeming Charles Babbage's Mechanical Computer. Scientific American 268 (2): 86-91.

Woodbury, David O. 1959. The Translating Machine. The Atlantic Monthly (Volume 204, No. 2; pages 60 - 64). "Professor William N. Locke, head of MIT's modern languages department and a prime mover in machine translation, is not going to be satisfied even with this kind of short cut. He would like to have a machine that will translate material that is merely spoken to it. This is not so fantastic as it sounds."

At the AAAI-2000 conference in Austin, a visitor to the AI Topics booth asked if I could provide more information about Hephaestus and Talos. So for him and everyone else who is interested in Greek mythology, here are links to two pages (complete with illustrations) from Carlos Parada's Greek Mythology Link [http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/]:

Fair Use Notice

Brooks - A.I. Publications

2005-07-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

A robot that walks; emergent behaviors from a carefully evolved network
Abstract
The author describes a carefully designed series of networks, each one being a strict augmentation of the previous one, which control a six-legged walking machine capable of walking over rough terrain and following a person passively sensed in the infrared spectrum. As the completely decentralized networks are augmented, the robot's performance and behavior repertoire demonstrably improve. The rationale for such demonstrations is that they can help identify requirements for automatically building massive networks to carry out complex sensory-motor tasks. The experiments with an actual robot ensure that an essence reality is maintained and that no critical disabling problems have been ignored. The present work is based on the drawing of analogies between evolution in the animal world and robotic evaluation

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - They have already created a robotic replica of the rarely-seen coelacanth.

Minsky vs. Brooks

2005-07-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

Bob Hearn- MIT AI Lab: Putting Minsky and Brooks Together

About Bob Hearn: His Webpage

Artificial Intelligence: Definition, History, Etc.

2005-07-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

artificial intelligence
n. (Abbr. AI)

The ability of a computer or other machine to perform those activities that are normally thought to require intelligence.
The branch of computer science concerned with the development of machines having this ability.

artificial intelligence or AI

The means of duplicating or imitating intelligence in computers, robots, or other devices, which allows them to solve problems, discriminate among objects, and respond to voice command.

("artificial intelligence." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com GuruNet Corp. 09 Jul. 2005. )

artificial intelligence (AI), the use of computers to model the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning. Research in AI is concentrated in some half-dozen areas. In problem solving, one must proceed from a beginning (the initial state) to the end (the goal state) via a limited number of steps; AI here involves an attempt to model the reasoning process in solving a problem, such as the proof of a theorem in Euclidean geometry. In game theory (see games, theory of), the computer must choose among a number of possible “next” moves to select the one that optimizes its probability of winning; this type of choice is analogous to that of a chess player selecting the next move in response to an opponent's move. In pattern recognition, shapes, forms, or configurations of data must be identified and isolated from a larger group; the process here is similar to that used by a doctor in classifying medical problems on the basis of symptoms. Natural language processing is an analysis of current or colloquial language usage without the sometimes misleading effect of formal grammars; it is an attempt to model the learning process of a translator faced with the phrase “throw mama from the train a kiss.” Cybernetics is the analysis of the communication and control processes of biological organisms and their relationship to mechanical and electrical systems; this study could ultimately lead to the development of “thinking” robots (see robotics). Machine learning occurs when a computer improves its performance of a task on the basis of its programmed application of AI principles to its past performance of that task.

In the public eye advances in chess-playing computer programs have become symbolic of progress in AI. In 1948 British mathematician Alan Turing developed a chess algorithm for use with calculating machines—it lost to an amateur player in the one game that it played. Ten years later American mathematician Claude Shannon articulated two chess-playing algorithms: brute force, in which all possible moves and their consequences are calculated as far into the future as possible; and selective mode, in which only the most promising moves and their more immediate consequences are evaluated. In 1988 Hitech, a program developed at Carnegie-Mellon Univ., defeated former U.S. champion Arnold Denker in a four-game match, becoming the first computer to defeat a grandmaster. A year later, Gary Kasparov, the reigning world champion, bested Deep Thought, a program developed by the IBM Corp., in a two-game exhibition. In 1990 the German computer Mephisto-Portrose became the first program to defeat a former world champion; while playing an exhibition of 24 simultaneous games, Anatoly Karpov bested 23 human opponents but lost to the computer. Kasparov in 1996 became the first reigning world champion to lose to a computer in a game played with regulation time controls; the Deep Blue computer, developed by the IBM Corp., won the first game of the match, lost the second, drew the third and fourth, and lost the fifth and sixth. Deep Blue used the brute force approach, evaluating more than 100 billion chess positions each turn while looking six moves ahead; it coupled this with the most efficient chess evaluation software yet developed and an extensive library of chess games it could analyze as part of the decision process. Subsequent matches between Vladimir Kramnik and Deep Fritz (2002) and Kasparov and Deep Junior (2003) have resulted in ties. Unlike Deep Blue, which was a specially designed computer, these more recent computer challengers are chess programs that run on personal computers. Such programs have become an important tool in chess, and are used by chess masters to analyze games and experiment with new moves.

Bibliography

See D. Freedman, Brainmakers: How Scientists Are Moving Beyond Computers to Create a Rival to the Human Brain (1994); D. Gelernter, The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought (1994). "artificial intelligence." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press., 2003

The noun artificial intelligence has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the branch of computer science that deal with writing computer programs that can solve problems creatively
Synonym: AI
("artificial intelligence." WordNet 1.7.1. Princeton University, 2001.)

artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i.e. artificial) system. The term is often applied to general purpose computers and also in the field of scientific investigation into the theory and practical application of AI.

One popular and early definition of artificial intelligence research, put forth by John McCarthy at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, is "making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving", repeating the claim put forth by Alan Turing in "Computing machinery and intelligence" (Mind, October 1950). However, this definition seems to ignore the possibility of strong AI. Another definition of artificial intelligence is "intelligence arising from an artificial device". Most definitions could be categorized as concerning either systems that think like humans, systems that act like humans, systems that think rationally or systems that act rationally.

Artificial intelligence can be considered in two parts: "What is the nature of artifice?" and "What is intelligence?" The first question is relatively easy, although it leads to an examination of what can be manufactured. The limitations of classical computational systems, available manufacturing processes, or human intellect may all place constraints on what can be manufactured.

The second question raises ontological issues of consciousness and intelligence as displayed by humans, as intelligent behavior in humans is complex and often difficult to understand. Study of animals and artificial systems which are not simply models of what already exists are also considered highly relevant.

History

Development of AI theory

Much of the (original) focus of artificial intelligence research draws from an experimental approach to psychology, and emphasizes what may be called linguistic intelligence (best exemplified in the Turing test).

Approaches to artificial intelligence that do not focus on linguistic intelligence include robotics and collective intelligence approaches, which focus on active manipulation of an environment, or consensus decision making, and draw from biology and political science when seeking models of how "intelligent" behavior is organized.

Artificial intelligence theory also draws from animal studies, in particular with insects, which are easier to emulate as robots (see artificial life), as well as animals with more complex cognition, including apes, who resemble humans in many ways but have less developed capacities for planning and cognition. AI researchers argue that animals, which are simpler than humans, ought to be considerably easier to mimic. But satisfactory computational models for animal intelligence are not available.

Seminal papers advancing the concept of machine intelligence include A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity (1943), by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, and On Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), by Alan Turing, and Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider. See cybernetics and Turing test for further discussion.

There were also early papers which denied the possibility of machine intelligence on logical or philosophical grounds such as Minds, Machines and Gödel (1961) by John Lucas [1] (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/Godel/mmg.html).

With the development of practical techniques based on AI research, advocates of AI have argued that opponents of AI have repeatedly changed their position on tasks such as computer chess or speech recognition that were previously regarded as "intelligent" in order to deny the accomplishments of AI. They point out that this moving of the goalposts effectively defines "intelligence" as "whatever humans can do that machines cannot".

John von Neumann (quoted by E.T. Jaynes) anticipated this in 1948 by saying, in response to a comment at a lecture that it was impossible for a machine to think: "You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that!". Von Neumann was presumably alluding to the Church-Turing thesis which states that any effective procedure can be simulated by a (generalized) computer.

In 1969 McCarthy and Hayes started the discussion about the frame problem with their essay, "Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence".

Experimental AI research

Artificial intelligence began as an experimental field in the 1950s with such pioneers as Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, who founded the first artificial intelligence laboratory at Carnegie-Mellon University, and McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, who founded the MIT AI Lab in 1959. They all attended the aforementioned Dartmouth College summer AI conference in 1956, which was organized by McCarthy, Minsky, Nathan Rochester of IBM and Claude Shannon.

Historically, there are two broad styles of AI research - the "neats" and "scruffies". "Neat", classical or symbolic AI research, in general, involves symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts, and is the methodology used in most expert systems. Parallel to this are the "scruffy", or "connectionist", approaches, of which artificial neural networks are the best-known example, which try to "evolve" intelligence through building systems and then improving them through some automatic process rather than systematically designing something to complete the task. Both approaches appeared very early in AI history. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s scruffy approaches were pushed to the background, but interest was regained in the 1980s when the limitations of the "neat" approaches of the time became clearer. However, it has become clear that contemporary methods using both broad approaches have severe limitations.

Artificial intelligence research was very heavily funded in the 1980s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States and by the fifth generation computer systems project in Japan. The failure of the work funded at the time to produce immediate results, despite the grandiose promises of some AI practitioners, led to correspondingly large cutbacks in funding by government agencies in the late 1980s, leading to a general downturn in activity in the field known as AI winter. Over the following decade, many AI researchers moved into related areas with more modest goals such as machine learning, robotics, and computer vision, though research in pure AI continued at reduced levels.

Weak artificial intelligence

Weak artificial intelligence research deals with the creation of some form of computer-based artificial intelligence that can reason and solve problems only in a limited domain; such a machine would, in some ways, act as if it were intelligent, but it would not possess true intelligence or sentience. The classical test for such abilities is the Turing test.

There are several fields of weak AI, one of which is natural language. Many weak AI fields have specialised software or programming languages created for them. For example, the 'most-human' natural language chatterbot A.L.I.C.E. uses a programming language AIML that is specific to its program, and the various clones, named Alicebots. Jabberwacky is a little closer to strong AI, since it learns how to converse from the ground up based solely on user interactions.

To date, much of the work in this field has been done with computer simulations of intelligence based on predefined sets of rules. Very little progress has been made in strong AI. Depending on how one defines one's goals, a moderate amount of progress has been made in weak AI.

When viewed with a moderate dose of cynicism, weak artificial intelligence can be viewed as ‘the set of computer science problems without good solutions at this point.’ Once a sub-discipline results in useful work, it is carved out of artificial intelligence and given its own name. Examples of this are pattern recognition, image processing, neural networks, natural language processing, robotics and game theory. While the roots of each of these disciplines is firmly established as having been part of artificial intelligence, they are now thought of as somewhat separate.

Whilst progress towards the ultimate goal of human-like intelligence has been slow, many spinoffs have come in the process. Notable examples include the languages LISP and Prolog, which were invented for AI research but are now used for non-AI tasks. Hacker culture first sprang from AI laboratories, in particular the MIT AI Lab, home at various times to such luminaries as McCarthy, Minsky, Seymour Papert (who developed Logo there), Terry Winograd (who abandoned AI after developing SHRDLU).

Many other useful systems have been built using technologies that at least once were active areas of AI research. Some examples include:

Chinook was declared the Man-Machine World Champion in checkers (draughts) in 1994.
Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer, beat Garry Kasparov in a famous match in 1997.
InfoTame, a text analysis search engine developed by the KGB for automatically sorting millions of pages of communications intercepts.
Fuzzy logic, a technique for reasoning under uncertainty, has been widely used in industrial control systems.
Expert systems are being used to some extent industrially.
Machine translation systems such as SYSTRAN are widely used, although results are not yet comparable with human translators.
Neural networks have been used for a wide variety of tasks, from intrusion detection systems to computer games.
Optical character recognition systems can translate arbitrary typewritten European script into text.
Handwriting recognition is used in millions of personal digital assistants.
Speech recognition is commercially available and is widely deployed.
Computer algebra systems, such as Mathematica and Macsyma, are commonplace.
Machine vision systems are used in many industrial applications ranging from hardware verification to security systems.
AI Planning methods were used to automatically plan the deployment of US forces during Gulf War I. This task would have cost months of time and millions of dollars to perform manually, and DARPA stated that the money saved on this single application was more than their total expenditure on AI research over the last 30 years.

The vision of artificial intelligence replacing human professional judgment has arisen many times in the history of the field, in science fiction and today in some specialized areas where "expert systems" are used to augment or to replace professional judgment in some areas of engineering and of medicine.

Strong artificial intelligence

Main article: Strong AI

Strong AI is a term introduced by John Searle in 1980 in his article "Minds, Brains, and Programs". Strong AI research deals with the creation of AI where "the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind" (Searle 1980). Whether or not building strong AI is possible is an area of active philosophical debate, as well as whether strong AI can be made truly conscious. Strong AI is frequently the subject of science fiction stories and plays a major role in futurist speculations. Creating strong AI has long been the goal of many AI projects, but at present none have succeeded. It should be emphasised that the terms 'Weak' and 'Strong' do not mean that processors with Weak AI are necessarily less powerful than those with Strong AI.

Micro-World AI

The real world is full of distracting and obscuring detail: generally science progresses by focussing on artificially simple models of reality (in physics, frictionless planes and perfectly rigid bodies, for example). In 1970 Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, of the MIT AI Laboratory, proposed that AI research should likewise focus on developing programs capable of intelligent behaviour in artificially simple situations known as micro-worlds. Much research has focussed on the so-called blocks world, which consists of coloured blocks of various shapes and sizes arrayed on a flat surface. Micro-World AI (http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/pages/Reference%20Articles/what_is_AI/What%20is%20AI06.html)

Sub-fields of AI research

GOFAI - 'Good Old Fashioned AI'

Connectionism

Neural network

Artificial Life and Evolution

Modern Bayesian methods and learning

Friendly AI

Friendly AI

Applications

AI in Business

According to Haag, Cummings, etc.(2004) there are four common applications of Artificial Intelligence in the business setting:

Expert Systems
Neural Networks
Genetic Algorithms
Intelligent Agents

Expert Systems apply reasoning capabilities to reach a conclusion. An expert system can process large amounts of known information and provide conclusions based on them.

Neural Networks are AI that are capable of finding and differentiating between patterns. Police Departments use neural networks to identify corruption.

Genetic Algorithms are designed to apply the survival of the fittest process to generate increasingly better solutions to the problem. Investment brokers use Genetic Algorithms to create the best possible combination of investment opportunities for their clients.

An Intelligence Agent is software that assists you, or acts on your behalf, in performing repetitive computer-related tasks. Examples of its uses are data mining programs and monitoring and surveillance agents.

Logic programming was sometimes considered a field of artificial intelligence, but this is no longer the case.

Famous figures

Machines displaying some degree of intelligence

There are many examples of programs displaying some degree of intelligence. Some of these are:

Twenty Questions (http://www.20q.net) - A neural-net based game of 20 questions
The Start Project (http://start.csail.mit.edu) - a web-based system which answers questions in English.
Brainboost (http://www.brainboost.com) - another question-answering system
Cyc, a knowledge base with vast collection of facts about the real world and logical reasoning ability.
Jabberwacky, a learning chatterbot
ALICE, a chatterbot
Alan (http://www.a-i.com/alan1), another chatterbot
Albert One (http://www.cybermecha.com/Studio), multi-faceted chatterbot
ELIZA, a program which pretends to be a psychotherapist, developed in 1966
PAM (Plan Applier Mechanism) - a story understanding system developed by John Wilensky in 1978.
SAM (Script applier mechanism) - a story understanding system, developed in 1975.
SHRDLU - an early natural language understanding computer program developed in 1968-1970.
Creatures, a computer game with breeding, evolving creatures coded from the genetic level upwards using a sophisticated biochemistry and neural network brains.
BBC news story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3521852.stm) on the creator of Creatures latest creation. Steve Grand's Lucy.
AARON (http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/KCATaaron/STAFsample) - artificial intelligence, which creates its own original paintings, developed by Harold Cohen.
Eurisko - a language for solving problems which consists of heuristics, including heuristics for how to use and change its heuristics. Developed in 1978 by Douglas Lenat.
X-Ray Vision for Surgeons (http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/medical-vision/) - a group in MIT which researches medical vision.
Neural networks-based programs for backgammon and go (http://www.jellyfish-ai.com).

AI researchers

There are many thousands of AI researchers (see Category:Artificial intelligence researchers) around the world at hundreds of research institutions and companies. Among the many who have made significant contributions are:

To some computer scientists, the phrase artificial intelligence has acquired somewhat of a bad name due to the large discrepancy between what has been achieved so far in the field and some more usual notions of intelligence. This problem has been aggravated by various popular science writers and media personalities such as Kevin Warwick whose work has raised the expectations of AI research far beyond its current capabilities. For this reason, some researchers working on topics related to artificial intelligence say they work in cognitive science, informatics, statistical inference or information engineering. However, progress has in fact been made, and AI is today routinely employed in thousands of industrial systems around the world. See Raj Reddy's AAAI paper for a huge review of real-world AI systems in deployment today.

External links

General

Programming:AI (http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:AI) @ Wikibooks.org
University of Berkeley AI Resources (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/ai.html) linking to about 869 other WWW pages about AI
Loebner Prize website (http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html)
Jabberwacky - a learning AI chatterbot (http://www.jabberwacky.com)
AIWiki (http://purl.net/net/AIWiki) - a wiki devoted to AI.
~~AIAWiki (http://ai.squeakydolphin.com/) - AI algorithms and research.~~ (temporarily offline due to problems with spammers)
AI web category on Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Artificial_Intelligence/)
Mindpixel (http://www.mindpixel.com/) "The Planet's Largest Artificial Intelligence Effort"
OpenMind CommonSense (http://commonsense.media.mit.edu/cgi-bin/search.cgi/) "Teaching computers the stuff we all know"
Artificially Intelligent Ouija Board (http://www.bitesizeinc.net/index.php/ouija.html) - creative example of human-like AI
Heuristics and AI in finance and investment (http://www.geocities.com/francorbusetti/)
SourceForge Open Source AI projects (http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=133) - 1139 projects
Ethical and Social Implications of AI en Computerization (http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/ethics.html)
AI algorithm implementations and demonstrations (http://www.cs.unm.edu/~luger/ai-final/software.html)
Artificial Intelligence in a nutshell (http://artificial-intell.blogspot.com/2005/04/artificial-intelligence-in-nutshell.html/)
Marvin Minsky's Homepage (http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/)
MIT's AI Lab (http://www.ai.mit.edu/)
AI Lab Zurich (http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/ailab/)
School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh (http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/)
Informatics Department at the University of Sussex (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/)
AI research group at Information Sciences Institute (http://www.isi.edu/divisions/div3/)
Why Programming is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly Understood and Sloppily Formulated Ideas (http://metainformaciones.blogspot.com/2005/02/minksy-y-la-programacin.html)
aiKnow: Cognitive Artificial Intelligence (http://www.aiknow.net)
What is Artifical Itelligence? (http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/pages/Reference%20Articles/What%20is%20AI.html)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Logic and Artificial Intelligence (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ai/)
Mental Matrixes, Parallel Logic (http://research.zonebg.com/en/indexen.htm)
AI Search Engine (http://web.peoriadesignweb.com/dev/ai/)

AI related organizations

American Association for Artificial Intelligence (http://www.aaai.org/)
European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (http://www.eccai.org/)
The Association for Computational Linguistics (http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~acl/)
Artificial Intelligence Student Union (http://www.dotmotive.com/~aisu/)
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI GmbH (http://www.dfki.de/)
Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (http://www.auai.org/)
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (http://www.singinst.org)
The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (United Kingdom) (http://www.aisb.org.uk/)
AGIRI - Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (http://agiri.org/)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Experiential Mindstorm Robotics

2005-07-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Dylan Evans - Experiential Introductory Mindstorm Robotics

Flexible Learning - Theoretical Practicality

2005-07-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

Erick Chastain from Carnegie Mellon University has vonulteered as a guess speaker for the after-school childrens robotics lab. If he is here in time he will also serve as an aid for the more advanced stuff (programming). Possibly tutoring, as well.
---

So far, I am deciding to do this as a very flexible experiment for the children.

The goal is that everyone learns, despite their robotics level-- but attempt to target children with at least a little robotics background. Therefore, on the Orientation Day they will be provided the option of creating a robot with features as advanced as sensing and being programmable (etc.), but that they should create their robot at their own pace-- which may result in some students having to either come early and late (for extra tutoring, etc) and/or also work at home or to come back for another after-school robotics session in the future (based off of the teaching-model I create for LoriTech). I think my approach will be to integrate theoretical knowledge (so they understand what they are doing) with practical knowledge (so they can understand how to impliment this into current and future situations, as well as build on the skills that they have learned by using their own personal analogies to guide them.)

LoriTech Robotics

2005-07-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

The Benefits of After-School Robotics Courses

TECHNIQUES ARTICLE:

Why go Robo?

By Sandy Cutshall, Techniques Contributing Writer
It’s a toy...it’s a game...it’s a...teaching tool? Yes, building robots is a blast. But fun is only one part of the picture, as more and more educators across the country utilize robotics to teach complex science, mathematics and technology topics in and out of their classrooms.

Why do so many kids give up their free time to stay after school and work with Mars rovers, LEGO kits, and sumo-bots?

Robotics is a fun and engaging activity that appeals to a diverse range of students who want to try their hands at creating their own robot devices. Their teachers and mentors, meanwhile, like to see the young people acquiring hands-on experience in design, construction and problem solving.

Creating robots involves the practical application of physics, computer science, engineering and mathematics. By studying robotics, students can gain a deeper understanding of a variety of complex topics and apply the knowledge from these disciplines. The robots themselves are great teachers because they give immediate feedback to the student’s actions.

Teachers can integrate robotics into their existing curriculum or create an after-school program, helping students gain content knowledge and hands-on experience. Engineering mentors often help to guide the students in robotics, fostering important school-community partnerships.

Learning about robotics can also prove to be a lucrative process for students of all ages, as this emerges as a real career opportunity in our society. Estimates are that, by 2005, nearly one million robots will be used worldwide in such trades as the automotive industry, electronics and medicine.

Classroom Challenge

Most educators believe there is no better way to learn than through personal, hands-on experience. With robotics, students design, construct and program their own robots—as opposed to merely listening and passively absorbing lectured material.

Chris Blower, science teacher at Sandcreek Middle School in Idaho Falls, Idaho, has been working with middle school students for the past seven years building robots from plastic LEGOs. She lists many diverse benefits for her students, including an improvement in their logical thinking, mathematical and problem-solving skills. But, creativity is an important part of it as well, she notes.

“The students have to stretch their minds to design their projects,” says Blower. “They take risks and they learn to say, ‘That didn’t work,’ and ask ‘Why?’”

Another benefit of building robots, whether in the classroom or an after-school program, is that it requires students to work together in teams.

“It’s not only academics that these kids gain, but it’s also social and emotional skills,” says Blower. She notes that the students on these teams must learn cooperation and the ability to resolve disputes. “These are extremely important skills for this age group.”

Special needs students can also benefit from learning about robots in a variety of ways. Blower recalls a student with cerebral palsy who has transformed his whole perception of what he is able to do through creating robots.

“His fine motor skills have increased amazingly. It’s incredible what he can do now with LEGOs,” she says. “Many students who think they don’t have the aptitude discover so much about themselves in this way.”

Electronics and Computer Maintenance/Repair Teacher Curt Thomas at Hillcrest High School in Idaho Falls also sees a great advantage in using robotics with secondary students in an after-school program.

“Sometimes we educators can get stuck on theory,” he says. “But doing this gives students a chance to see how things actually work. They can figure out what they are doing in a real-life situation through troubleshooting. We leave the problems open-ended and they can use their imaginations.”

Real World Connection

Robotics is an innovative technology that has very broad and diverse applications in industry. No wonder private companies and governmental organizations are eager to support—and even become directly involved in—the teaching of robotics to young people.

In one such example, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) has partnered with local schools in the state to encourage robotics instruction at the middle school and high school levels. According to INEEL Engineer Matthew Anderson, the early exposure of engineering concepts can help inspire students to pursue particular academic and career paths.

“I see tenth graders getting information many engineers don’t learn until their third or fourth year of college,” says Anderson. “And this is not trivial stuff these kids are doing—this is what I use on a daily basis in my job.”

Anderson says that the INEEL offers training sessions to educators who then take back the information to the classroom and after-school robotics programs. Students also come in on the weekends to learn from Anderson and fellow engineer Mark McKay.

Aidan Browne, systems integration engineer at Hamilton Sundstrand (a division of United Technologies) in Connecticut, is also involved with robotics in his area. Browne is coach and mentor of the “Buzz Team” from Enrico Fermi High School and also heads up software and programming for the team.

Browne believes that the excitement generated by robotics programs can help break down some cultural stereotypes, such as the idea that engineers are geeks. “It allows these students to express their love for technology and may open up a path they never considered before.”

Browne sees great benefits for everyone in the relationships being made between industry and education through robotics.

“Companies are happy to make connections with kids at this level and get them excited about these topics.” He says that these relationships often continue for the students into summer internships and even future employment.

Battling Bots

Students almost always build their robots with a goal in mind—some kind of local, regional or national competition. There are a great many of these robotic challenges, races, and competitive events and the numbers continue to increase, as robotics becomes more popular in the schools.

One of the most notable national events is the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, a multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.

FIRST, which began 10 years ago with 28 teams in a New Hampshire high school gym, today encompasses more than 1,000 teams of 20,000 students competing in 23 regional events and a championship event. It is a nonprofit organization created by noted engineer Dean Kamen.

FIRST challenges groups of students and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard “kit of parts” and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in a series of competitions.

Browne’s “Buzz Team” of approximately 20 to 25 students competes each year in two regional and the national FIRST championship event. His team won the Chairman’s Award in 2002 and Browne was honored as the fifth “Unsung FIRST Hero” for his contributions to the event and the robotics community.

The competition is a huge draw to students. Browne recalls one female student who let him know that her original motivation to join the team was to get a trip to Disneyworld in Florida.

“She never expected to fall in love with it,” says Browne. This same student is now majoring in engineering and returns to help mentor high school students on the robotics team.

Not all competitions are as big as FIRST. One popular regional robotics competition is the RoboChallenge in the state of Idaho. It began modestly about nine years ago with the cooperation of the INEEL and today students from throughout the state come to take part.

“It’s growing by leaps and bounds,” says Coordinator Tonya Bunnell. Teachers Curt Thomas and Chris Blower both have their students participate in RoboChallenge, which is hosted at Hillcrest.

Blower says that the competition helps to ground her middle school students in a hands-on experience. “At this age, abstract concepts are much harder to grasp,” she says. “This competition bridges the gap from abstract to concrete. Students may not understand all the math concepts, but they can learn how to make their robot do what they want.”

Overall, such events are exciting, competitive and engaging. It may be interesting to watch two robots trying to find one another in a maze or push one another out of a circle. It can be intriguing to see how they can be programmed to follow a line, play hide and seek, or find the brightest light.

But what is most amazing of all is actually what stands behind all of these small electronic marvels: motivated students who are excited about learning.

Robotics Online

Learn more about robotics from these websites:
Home and Entertainment Robotics www.onrobo.com

Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology www.bestinc.org

FIRST Robotics Challenge www.usfirst.org

LEGO Mindstorms for Schools www.lego.com/eng/education/mindstorms

NASA Robotics Education Project* robotics.arc.nasa.gov

Planetary Society’s Red Rover Project www.planetary.org/rrrr

RobotBooks.com www.robotbooks.com

Robo Challenge www.inel.gov/capabilities/robotics/robochallenge/robochallenge.shtml

Robot Cafè www.robotcafe.com

Information on some of the different robotics competitions can be found at www.robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/competitions.htm, www.robotcafe.com/dir/ Competitions, and www.robots.net/rcfaq.html.
* Check out the “Cool Robot of the Week” at the NASA Robotics Education Project site. This honor is bestowed upon those robotics-related websites that portray highly innovative solutions to robotics problems, describe unique approaches to implementing robotics systems, or present exciting interfaces for the dissemination of robotics-related information or promoting robotics technology.

Sandy Cutshall is a regular contributor to Techniques. She works as a writer/editor in Mountain View, California, where she also teaches adults English as a second language.

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