JellevanDijk.org

Sophie stuurde me deze

Drawing Robot at the MU, Eindhoven, Netherlands from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

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Yesterday I overheard colleagues talking about a robot, I couldn’t find out if it actually exists or whether it was presented as a concept. The one colleague said to the other (if I remember correctly):

“Picture this. The robot is wandering around in the factory. It doesn’t even know where it is, it only knows how to recognize the object and it knows how to act upon it”

(I think the robot he was reffering to is what they call a ‘pick-and-place’ robot that is able to do fast and acurate placing of micro-electronic elements, because that is what these colleagues’ research is about)

“So, this robot is wandering around, not knowing where it is, and at a certain point it encounters the object it must do the placing on. Of course it must first recognize the object as being the object. Then, upon recognizing the object, it will process the visual input and determine it’s own position in relation to the object. It will then recognize that it has not positioned itself correctly in order to be able to do the placement. So, it must know how to reorient itself, carry out that movement, and then place the unit”.

I think Gibsonian perception theory and embodied philosophy could provide a new angle on this story. An embodied philosophy would, I believe, not state the problem as it is framed above. Embodied philosophy would sort of turn the whole story upside down. According to embodied theory, the proces that in biologcal organisms underlies object recognition is not an ‘object recognition module’. Instead, it is precisely the re-orienting proces that ensures that you position your body ‘in the right way’ with respect to the object, that helps you recognize it for what it is. In fact, the gradual repositioning of your body with respect to the body *is*, to all ends and purposes, equivalent to “object recognition”.

Another way of putting this is that ‘recognition’ of an object is first and foremost ‘recognition of the object’s affordances’. The affordance of the object, that is “that set of behaviors that the object directly ‘afford’s, or elicits”, immediately set in motion in the organism reorienting movements that reposition the body towards, what Merleau-Ponty called, ‘maximal grip’. But this is, as I see it, a reciprocal relationship. So just as we can say that the object elicits in the body reorienting movements, we could also say that repositioning of the body is the process the organism uses in order to perceive the affordances in the first place. Both affordance and the behaviors that couple to it iteratively influence one another and just when the organism has taken the right perspective in order to be able to effectively ‘deal with’ the object, it will also recognize the object for what it is. And what it ‘is’, the object, *is* what the organism finds meaningful in doing with it.

So if this robot’s place on earth is to pick-and-place stuff on this object, then, at least according to an embodied philosophy,  should be functioning in such a way that it would *not* first recognize the object for what it is, but that it would use visual input patterns directly in order to continuously reorient itself towards the ideal position for doing the placing movement. And achieving maximal grip (positioning the robot such that it can do the placement) then amounts to “having recognized the object for what it affords”. The whole “object recognition module” in my colleagues scenario can be by-passed. What the robot would need, I speculate, is a layered, behavioral-based architecture similar to the architectures of Rodney Brooks’ robots. One layer above the ‘wandering’ layer would be an ‘orientation’ layer that would try to get maximal grip on objects that afford ‘placing my unit on’. I wonder what my colleagues think about this idea, because it is probably far away removed from the conventional perspective on robot control, in which embodiment and affordances are still relatively unknown concepts.

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Well, that is indeed a very intelligent question. Let us discuss that further over drinks, shall we? By the way, do you think I am the *real* Ishiguro or do you think I am the android?

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Hey see that intelligent guy asking that intelligent question to Hiroshi Ishiguro (the robot-builder that made a copy of himself), who was giving a key-note talk at CHI-NL (computer-human interaction conference)

Chi-Nederland conference 2009

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Ik neem alles terug. Nederland is gewoon de beste club. EK Robotvoetbal!

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waar mijn internetprovider zich al niet mee bezig houdt (en hoeveel goedkoper zou mijn abonnement kunnen zijn zonder al deze onzin?)

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Cool Speelgoed op:
http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/RoboTopobo/roboVideoQT.html

UPDATE
In deze post stond:
embed src=”http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/RoboTopobo/RoboTopobo.mov” width=”320″ height=”255″
Maar vervolgens gaat het filmpje altijd direct aan, dus dit ‘embedded’ gedoe heb ik eventjes weggehaald

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Vet filmpje over zelfstandig geevolueerde metalen insekten (nee joh het is nep natuurlijk), dat ik zag tijdens de tentoonstelling Genesis in het Centraal Museum een half jaar geleden. Ik ontving vandaag de bijgaande DVD, maar dit filmpje staat ook al op YouTube (zie ook de post die ik hierna ga plaatsen, die gaat over een soort cyborg-ziekte als je metalen implantaten hebt)

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Een oud bericht, toch even archiveren: De Vecna BEAR.
Teddybeer haalt gewonde soldaten van het slagveld: www.vecna.com

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Terug van vakantie -

Via Frouke deze post met 10 interessante robots ‘that may change the world’. (…but then again, maybe not… - zou ik er aan willen toevoegen). Nummer 4 was ook in actie te zien op een filmpje in het centraal museum in de tentoonstelling Genesis, die erg goed was. (Via de link kun je nog een filmpje bekijken).

Popularity: 16% [?]