Teaching robots to learn

There have been numerous debates concerning robots, and their (possible) future involvement in our lives. This is an interesting question, because robotics as a scientific field is getting bigger and broader. Especially the field concerning artificial cognitive systems (ACS). This has become a very fragmented field with a very high degree of specialization during the last years. Some have focused on machine vision, human-robot interaction, others on optimizing two legged walking, just to name a few.

CoSy
In september 2004 EU launched a project called Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants (CoSy). This project is planned to end august 2008, so it has actually been going on for quite some time. What have they been doing all this time? Well, for starters, they have been trying to unify the fragmented fields within ACS technology - making these different yet related technologies work together is no simple task. The next generation of cognitive robots are still under development, but the complexity of the tasks being solved by robots is increasing dramatically these days. Mainly, one could say that these new robots are more aware of their enviroment and better to interact with humans. A good example of this is the Explorer:

Explorer, which is developed by the CoSy team, has a more human-alike understanding of its environment. Explorer can even talk about its surroundings with a human.

Take a look at the CoSy's homepage. There are many interesting video presentations for you to check out. Just scroll down at the pages below and have a look at the two main projects:

Explorer | Playmate

Question and Answer
Q: What could we expect from robots, are they part of our future?
A: Most certainly, yes. We think, that in the near future we will see robots performing errands of great diversity, but it will probably take some time before we can rely on them in daily life situations.

Q: What tasks can we expect them to perform?
A: Well, they are already moving our lawns and vacuum cleaning our floors (at least some),
so it wouldn't be completely off track to suggest that in 10 years they could be cleaning our entire house. The service sector is a perfect place for robots.

“In the future people may all be waited on by robots in their old age”.

Further reading on ICT results. Enjoy :)