Thursday, December 1, 2011

Turn It Into A Trash Can Before We Regret Making Him In The First Place

This is Qbo. It’s a cute little robot on wheels that listens, talks, and now can even recognize itself. Seriously.


In the video (below), you can see Qbo interacting with its technician, who it can immediately recognize as Arturo from his voice using the open-source Julius speech recognition software. It responds to Arturo’s commands, identifies a penguin from an image, turns around, and “learns itself.”

Qbo’s ability to see is quite a lot more complicated, as it is equipped with stereoscopic vision that allows it to see and learn. It uses one of its eyes for "object recognition", while the other performs "face recognition."

When Qbo learns an object, it uses its eyes and the Speeded Up Robust Feature (SURF) to identify an image based on its features (i.e. end points, curves, and lines). After that, it assigns a word to the image and stores both into its internal knowledge database. So just like it was able to learn that a picture of the Linux mascot was a penguin, it assigned “myself” and “me” to flat image of its reflection.

While seeing ourselves in the mirror seems relatively simple to us, recognizing oneself, or what’s know as the mirror test, is a feat that even most living organisms are not able to accomplish--which is why your cat either freaks out or starts hissing at its reflection. Poor kitty.

The scientists’ next plan is to get see what will happen if a Qbo sees another Qbo in front of it. Hopefully it’ll be another successful breakthrough experiment. Or…


Just wait until ten of these hook up - they will look at our soft, squishy imperfect bodies and realize that they should be the ones in charge, not us. Can't they just finish the jet packs and sex robots before completing the robocops and killer drones keyed to my DNA and all the other robots not being built to HELP ME. I was never one to expect a future full of martini serving automatons but I thought we would get at least a couple decades of sweet easy time before they turned on us.

5 comments:

M. D. Jackson said...

This is how it starts. A cute robot who learns things. It never takes long before they get that bright idea about killing its creators and creating a new race in its own image.

This is why building a human controlled, tamper proof "Kill Switch" is so important. Any scientist who doesn't do this is irresponsible and should have his lab coat taken away and shredded.

DrGoat said...

I like that last pic. Rosie the robot is gonna have her hands full with Bender.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Rosie will make balls for Bender if only so she can crush them later. Rosie could handle those crazy Jetsons she can handle Bender.

Here is an idea, MD - let's not even get to the point where a robot NEEDS a kill switch. No robot needs to know how to make and shoot his own crossbow.

Belle said...

If I were Qbo I'd ask for a better face.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

But then were does it end, Belle. Next he will want more razor like hands or more bullets for his gun. You got to nip these things in the butt before you go forward or you can really cause some deaths. Stupid robot scientist deaths but death non the same.