Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Robot Elephant Trunk Learning through Babbling
http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/robot-elephant-trunk-learns-like-a-baby-140314.htmhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129604.500-robot-elephant-trunk-learns-motor-skills-like-a-baby.html#.UyNi3k1OWUl
That means people who aren't robot experts wouldn't be able to train it to carry out simple tasks, limiting its potential usefulness in the real world. But now Steil and his colleague Matthias Rolf have changed all that, as they told a human-robot interaction conference in Bielefeld last week.
They used a process called "goal babbling", thought to mimic the way a baby learns to grab things by continually reaching – a process of trial and error that lets them work out which muscles they need to move. Similarly, the robot remembers what happens to the trunk's position when tiny changes are made to the pressure in the thin pneumatic tubes feeding the artificial muscles. This creates a map that relates the trunk's precise position to the pressures in each tube.
They used a process called "goal babbling", thought to mimic the way a baby learns to grab things by continually reaching – a process of trial and error that lets them work out which muscles they need to move. Similarly, the robot remembers what happens to the trunk's position when tiny changes are made to the pressure in the thin pneumatic tubes feeding the artificial muscles. This creates a map that relates the trunk's precise position to the pressures in each tube.
I just like the way the AI learns.
