A robotic revolution?
Submitted by agautam on Wed, 12/07/2011 - 2:53pm
We have all seen those science fiction movies set in the future where robots are smarter than humans and don’t need humanity to survive. But are we getting any closer to that vision? Are humanoid machines with greater intelligence in our near future?
The proof is in the pudding with IBM’s Watson. Watson is a distributed parallel computing system that won against all-time Jeopardy champions and is being put to use in drug discovery, law research and customer service. In addition to Watson, various Kinect powered robots and robots to take care of the elderly are also emerging.
We can see from these examples that although robots have gotten smarter, they are still not anywhere near human intelligence. I believe we are at an inflection point though, and in the next decade we will see smart robots that will help with household chores (we already have iRobot, which can vaccum) and perform menial tasks, allowing us to focus on more important ones.
Currently, there is a lot of research going in the labs at Google and other research institutes where scientists such as Andrew Ng are applying neuroscience principles to artificial intelligence to teach robots and machines to operate like humans. What do you think? Will there be a plethora of robots in our homes in the near future?
Robots have become very good
by Anonymous - 12/08/2011 - 2:18pm
Robots have become very good at trying to sell me ED pills...and I'm female. :-p
Interesting questions. From a
by Holly.Keller - 12/08/2011 - 11:12am
Interesting questions. From a few interactions that I've had with tech writers/press, it seems that the "Jetsons" home is a major point of reference for those with little understanding of what our industry does. Many times when we try to share images and content explaining what home automation and the "smart home" concept is all about, the writer will say, "This is great, but my readers want to see the REALLY crazy stuff - you know, the robot-mowing-the-lawn stuff." I wonder if consumers have the same mentality and would be open to the idea of robots running around doing their chores, or if it's just appealing to them as a novelty.