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Robots To Clean Your Kitchen And Play A Game Of Hockey?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2009) — Alexander Stoytchev and his three graduate students recently presented one of their robot's long and shiny arms to a visitor. Here, they said, swing it around. And so the visitor tentatively gave the robot's left arm a few twists and twirls. The metal arm is heavy, but still moves easily at its shoulder, elbow and wrist joints.

Then the graduate students hit some keyboard commands and the robot replayed those exact arm movements.

It was all incredibly quick, smooth and precise.

Stoytchev, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, says it won't be long before robot technology is something we'll all see and experience.

"We'll have personal robots very soon," Stoytchev said. "We're waiting for the first killer app. Hopefully, we can contribute to that."

Star Wars

There's a little R2-D2-shaped trash can near the door to Stoytchev's lab in the new Electrical and Computer Engineering Building. Turns out the Star Wars movies were an inspiration to a young Stoytchev back home in Bulgaria.

"My interest in robotics stems from the day I saw Star Wars for the first time," the 34-year-old said. "I must have been in second or third grade at that time, but the two robots in the movie (R2-D2 and C-3PO) left a lasting impression on me."

That impression led Stoytchev to his high school's computer club and then to computer science studies as an undergraduate at American University in Bulgaria. He moved to Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology for graduate work in computer science. He was at Georgia Tech when he started working with robots.

His research specialty is developmental robotics, a blend of robotics, artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience and philosophy.

"It's one of the newest branches of robotics," Stoytchev said. "People have learned that it's unrealistic to program robots from scratch to do every task, so we're looking at human models. Humans are not born knowing everything. It takes a really long time to develop skills."

Stoytchev and his students are trying to figure out how a robot can learn what children learn over the first two years of their lives. (And child development is something Stoytchev is learning firsthand; he and his wife have a 2-month-old son.)

Graduate work

Stoytchev's graduate students are working to develop software that will allow their lab robot to learn and use different sets of skills:

Shane Griffith, who's from Cedar Rapids and is studying computer engineering and human computer interaction, wants the robot to learn on its own which everyday objects can be used as containers and which cannot.

Jivko Sinapov, who's from Sofia, Bulgaria, and is studying computer science and human computer interaction, wants the robot to learn how to use objects as tools.

Matt Miller, who's also from Cedar Rapids and is studying computer science, wants the robot to learn language.

Combine that developing software with existing robotics hardware, and you've got a useful, smart robot.

"The essential goal of developmental robotics is for robots to learn how to learn," Miller said. "We want them to learn how to take a situation, adjust to it and learn from it."

A robot, for example, could learn to use containers by putting a ball in a bucket and seeing what happens when that bucket is pushed across a table. Is the ball pushed along with the bucket? Or is it left behind? The researchers believe that simple interactions like these hold the key to capturing the common-sense knowledge about the real world that comes naturally to people but is so difficult to capture in software code.

A future with robots

Stoytchev was attracted to Iowa State in 2005 by the College of Engineering's reputation and research capabilities. And now he's directing Iowa State's Developmental Robotics Laboratory and making his own research contributions.

It's work that has him looking ahead.

"In the not-too-distant future, we will have personal robots just like we have personal computers today," he said. "The robots of the future will be generalists. They will be employed in a large variety of tasks that require a lot more smarts and autonomy than is currently possible. They will have the ability to learn how to perform new tasks on their own without human intervention."

(based on: http://www.sciencedaily.com)

6. Match the words and word combinations with their English equivalents:

7. What words from the text are defined? Choose them from the databank:

Databank: a graduate student, precise, neuroscience, to contribute, to stem, an interaction, computer engineering, a smart, inspiration, to adjust.

1) One who has received an academic degree or diploma; 2) stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity; 3) any of the sciences, such as neuroanatomy and neurobiology, that deal with the nervous system; 4) to adapt or conform, as to new conditions; 5) to originate; 6) a person who has knowledge, aptitude, or skill in a variety of areas, as contrasted with a specialist; 7) exact; 8) a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical engineering and computer science required to develop computer systems; 9) to help bring about a result; 10) a mutual or reciprocal action or influence.

8. Write an abstract to the article Robots To Clean Your Kitchen And Play A Game Of Hockey?

9. Discuss the questions:

1) Will the world change in the future due to the development of computer technologies?

2) Do you agree with an opinion that writers of science fiction often foresee the future?

3) What movies about the future intergration of computer technologies into human lives have you seen? Describe one of them (10 sentences).

4) Do majority of these films have cheerful endings or are they obscured by gloomy anticipations?

5) How can different technical implants be good for a human’s health and life achievements? Will there be androids in the future?

6) Should robots merely be considered tools, such as guns and computers, and regulated accordingly?

7) Are we ethically allowed to give away our caretaking responsibility for our elderly and children to machines, which seem to be a poor substitute for human companionship (but perhaps better than no—or abusive—companionship)?

8) Will robotic companionship for other purposes, such as drinking buddies, pets, or sex partners, be morally problematic?

9) At what point should we consider a robot to be a “person,” eligible for rights and responsibilities? If that point is reached, will we need to emancipate our robot “slaves”?

10) As they develop enhanced capacities, should cyborgs have a different legal status than ordinary humans? Consider that we adults assert authority over children on the grounds that we’re more capable.

11) The West sees robots as menacing, Japan sees them as helpful – how about you?

12) What kind of economic chaos would there be if robots took over our jobs?

13) Do you think robots will ever have emotions or be able to love?

10. Read and translate the abstracts from a novel:

“Case was twenty-four. At twenty-two, he'd been a cowboy a rustler, one of the best in the Sprawl. He'd been trained by the best, by McCoy Pauley and Bobby Quine, legends in the biz. He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the con sensual hallucination that was the matrix. A thief he'd worked for other, wealthier thieves, employers who provided the exotic software required to penetrate the bright walls of corporate systems, opening windows into rich fields of data. He'd made the classic mistake, the one he'd sworn he'd never make. He stole from his employers. He kept something for himself and tried to move it through a fence in Amsterdam. He still wasn't sure how he'd been discovered, not that it mattered now.”

“His job was to make sure the intrusion program he'd written would link with the Sense/Net systems when Molly needed it to. He watched the countdown in the corner of the screen. Two. One. He jacked in and triggered his program. "Mainline," breathed the link man, his voice the only sound as Case plunged through the glowing strata of Sense/Net ice. Good. Check Molly. He hit the Simstim and flipped into her sensorium. The scrambler blurred the visual input slightly. She stood before a wall of gold-flecked mirror in the building's vast white lobby, chewing gum, apparently fascinated by her own reflection. Aside from the huge pair of sunglasses concealing her mirrored insets, she managed to look remarkably like she belonged there... He could feel the micro pore tape across her ribcage, feel the flat little units under it: the radio, the Simstim unit, and the scrambler. The throat mike, glued to her neck, looked as much as possible like an analgesic dermadisk. Her hands, in the pockets of the pink coat, were flexing systematically through a series of tension-release exercises. It took him a few seconds to realize that the peculiar sensation at the tips of her fingers was caused by the blades as they were partially extruded, then retracted. He flipped back. His program had reached the fifth gate. He watched as his icebreaker strobed and shifted in front of him, only faintly aware of his hands playing across the deck, making minor adjustments. Translucent planes of color shuffled like a trick deck. Take a card, he thought, any card. The gate blurred past. He laughed. The Sense/Net ice had accepted his entry as a routine transfer from the consortium's Los Angeles complex. He was inside. Behind him, viral subprograms peeled off, meshing with the gate' s code fabric, ready to deflect the real Los Angeles data when it arrived.”

(from A Neuromancer by W. Gibson)

11. Match the words with their translation:

12. Answer the questions:

1. Who are the main characters of the novel? What are their names? 2. What differs them fom orinary human beings? 3. How does Case earn for living? 4. What was Case discovered in? 5. Where could Case flip into? 6. Would you like somebody to intrude into your brains? Would you like to know what other people think?

13. Read and translate the article:

Читайте також:

1. As Mr. Weasley vanished, Bill and Charlie entered the kitchen.
2. At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, redheaded figure in a long nightdress, who appeared in the kitchen, gave a small squeal, and ran out again.
3. But as he stretched out a hand towards it, a centaur’s hoof descended upon the wand and it broke cleanly in half.
4. C. Below you can see a rather spacious area which you can use as your dream kitchen. Furnish it. Don’t forget to name the items correctly.
5. Harry stood in the kitchen, clutching the mop for support, as Uncle Vernon advanced on him, a demonic glint in his tiny eyes.
6. Harry took a deep, steadying breath. His head was beginning to ache again. He wanted more than anything to get out of the kitchen, and away from the Dursleys.
7. Harry waited until they could hear Xenophilius moving about in the kitchen downstairs before speaking.
8. Harry, Ron, and Hermione did not linger at the table, as the arrival of Madame Delacour, Fleur, and Gabrielle made the kitchen uncomfortably crowded.
9. Hermione dropped her spoon and pulled toward her the sheaf of notes and maps that she and Ron had been examining when Harry had entered the kitchen.
10. Kitchen Evolution
11. Lupin released Harry and fell back against a kitchen cupboard.
12. Mad-Eye Moody was now sitting at the kitchen table swigging from a hip flask, his magical eye spinning in all directions, taking in the Dursleys’ many labour-saving appliances.

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