Before The Robots Views

General Goods

You might think that robots are strictly a 20th century invention, but you'd be sorely mistaken: At the same time that the human race thought stomach aches were just tiny, enchanted dwarfs casting hunger spells, a few brilliant souls (possibly aliens) were actually building full functional robots. So maybe they're not R2D2 caliber, but who are we to judge? They built friggin' robots before there was toilet paper!

Everyone knows that, unless youe’re extraordinarily gifted, you need to crawl before you can walk. Turns out the same principle could also apply to robots. In a first-of-its-kind experiment conducted by University of Vermont (UVM) roboticist Josh Bongard, both simulated and physical robots were created that, like tadpoles becoming frogs, change their body forms while learning how to walk. He found that these evolving robots were able to learn more rapidly than ones with fixed body forms and that, in their final form, the changing robots had developed a more robust gait.

Currently, robotic arms and hands routinely grab and hold objects on factory floors, where the uncertainty has been engineered away, Smith says. By adding pre-touch to a robot, it can sense the shape and size of unfamiliar objects at close range and react accordingly. Smith hopes that by improving this close-range interaction, robots will be more useful in homes, able to bring an elderly person a glass of water, for example, or pick up objects on a floor before the Roomba vacuums.

There is also a problem in how much pressure is applied to the object. there currently pressure sensors on robots but they only work when the robot makes physical contact with the object. However another technique that solve both issues, determining shape of object whether it is still or moving and the amount of pressure applied would be to instead install ultrasound sensors which would be able to determine where and shape of abject as well as the density of the object so it can determine whether it is grasping an empty glass or a person or pet before it makes contact.