The field of robotics is becoming more and more sophisticated as a new branch of artificial intelligence is being applied into it. From plain robots loaded with pre-programming to achieved certain tasks to learning new skill which will let robots do things like human does. How is it possible?
An algorithms which can be used by robots in order for it to possibly learn all sorts of tasks by trial and error just like human does is in the works by researchers at the UC Berkeley, this particular algorithms is under the state of development which would someday lead to the creation of a home service robots which can perform but not limited to seemingly endless house hold chores.
Robots were born because of the tremendous load of pre-programming installed on it so it will be capable of handling and executing task.
While the new works being develop is different from the traditional and previous robots as is it set to adapt to the unknown it is indeed a significant move to the further investigation, if robots will ever intersperse with humans day to day life.
DEEP LEARNING
Deep Learning is a new branch of artificial intelligence and it is where researchers involved in Berkeley’s “People and Robotics Initiative” were turning to, as deep learning is inspired on how human brain’s neural circuitry perceives and interacts with the world.
In a press release, robotics researches Sergey Levine sais that, “For all our versatility, humans are not born with a repertoire of behaviors that can be deployed like a Swiss army knife, and we do not need to be programmed,” he also mentioned that, “Instead, we learn new skills over the course of our life from experience and from other humans. This learning process is so deeply rooted in our nervous system, that we cannot even communicate to another person precisely how the resulting skill should be executed. We can at best hope to offer pointers and guidance as they learn it on their own.
ADVANTAGE OF DEEP LEARNING
Recently we have already taken advantage of the advances offered by deep learning, lets say iOS Siri, Google’s speech-to-text program, or Google Street View, if you have used these particular technologies then you are one of the many people who have already enjoyed the new branch of artificial intelligence the aforementioned deep learning. Yet to apply this kind of intelligence to motor skills entails more works as motor skills is more complex compared to recognizing either sights or sounds.
GET TO KNOW BRETT
Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks a.k.a BRETT is a small personal robot used by the researchers for the recent experiments. Part of BRETT’s training is to perform series of simple motor tasks which includes placing pegs into holes or stacking LEGO bricks aside from series of tasks the algorithm which controlls BRETT it also includes a reward function which will then score BRETT based on how well he learns a new task. BRETT gets higher score if his movement will bring him closer to completing his task.
The training of BRETT yield overwhelming results. Given the location of objects in a scene, BRETT is typically able to master a new assignment within ten minutes. On the other hand, if BRETT doesn’t have the location of objects and instead needs to learn vision and motor control together, the process could take BRETT to more hours before it can complete the task.
In line with this, Pieter Abbeel of UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences said that, “We still have a long way to go before our robots can learn to clean a house or sort laundry, but our initial results indicate that these kinds of deep learning techniques can have a transformative effect in terms of enabling robots to learn complex tasks entirely from scratch,” he further say that, “In the next five to 10 years, we may see significant advances in robot learning capabilities through this line of work.”
Indeed this is a great news as household chores were tiresome, boring and not to mention it consumes a lot of time. So instead of giving away your precious time into cleaning the house you can save that time to sit back and relax, these robots will give a way for you to do the things you love most especially if you are home rather than being bothered of cleaning your cluttered living space.