The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Robotics - Essay Example

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Robotics The advent of the information technology in the twentieth century and the emergence of computer machines gave birth to the so called artificial intelligence or AI. By artificial intelligence, we mean a variety of intelligent behaviors and various kinds of mental labor, known as mental activities, can be realized artificially with some sort of real machines. (Li & Du 2008, 1)These intelligent activities include perception, memory, emotion, judgment, reasoning, proving, identification, understanding, communication, designing, thinking, and learning, among others. With this, artificial intelligence becomes a fundamental area in robotics and perhaps in perfecting an artificial human in the future. History The concept itself of artificial intelligence is not new. Although it is one of the newest fields of intellectual research, its foundations began thousands of years ago. The idea of creating an intelligent being was proposed and discussed in various ways by writers and philosophers centuries before the computer was even invented. For instance, the Roman poet Ovid wrote a story of Pygmalion, the sculptor, whose statute of a beautiful woman to life. Early philosophers have also discussed the question of whether human intelligence can be reproduced in a machine for ages. Much later in the age of industrial machines, Frankenstein was created by Mary Shelley while fiction began to mirror the goals of the most ambitious AI researchers with the movie, 2001 with the computer HAL displaying all the attributes of human intelligence. Artificial intelligence as a scientific field emerged in 1950s when a British mathematician, Alan Turing, wrote a now famous paper entitled Computing machinery and intelligence, in which he explored the question on whether machines could think. (Turing 1950) His answer to this question was to propose a game, the Imitation game, as the basis for a test for machine intelligence. While the Turing test was widely criticized when it was proposed, still it provided the first concrete goal for AI research. Later, in 1956, ten scientists convened a conference at Dartmouth College that predicted computers doing all human work as human engage in recreational activities and that it was assumed that that intelligent behavior was primarily based on smart reasoning techniques and that bright people could readily devise ad hoc techniques to produce intelligent computer programs. (Hunt 32) It was during this conference that the term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined. In the early day of AI, wrote Janet Finlay and Alan Dix (1996), research concentrated on applications that were considered to involve intelligence and reasoning and that from mid-1960s researchers began concentrating on applications such as perception, language understanding and general problem-solving. (4) AI in Robotics According to Menzel and DAluisio (2001), robotics did not acquire its present scope until the arrival of modern computers, which inevitably brought with it the idea of stuffing some sort of brain into the robot. (23) What AI most importantly contributes in robotics is its synergistic impact, integrating into robots the intelligence that increases its effectiveness. The relationship of these two fields is illustrated in the following description: The thinking or “brain function”, executed by a computer, is the domain of artificial intelligence. Sensing and manipulation are “body functions”, they are based on physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science. Planning and execution of tasks entail both the brain and the body, and so are affected by both artificial intelligence and robotics. (Hunt, 2) Specifically, AI is fundamental in smart robot’s knowledge of the environment in order to have a sophisticated degree of interaction with it. For instance, a robot must have knowledge of what objects are or could be around; actual and possible properties of the object; their possible relationship with the objects; and, the changes that can occur and how they affect the situation. These factors affect how a robot understands an environment and plan and carry out action to affect the environment. AI is also useful in interpreting information. A database is an example of an intelligent system that could be installed in a robot. With this, a machine could interpret images and language, in effect, facilitating the processing of information, and most importantly, the people’s interaction with the machine. This is necessary when it comes to reasoning – the ability to cope with unforeseen, incomplete, uncertain, and perhaps conflicting information and to act and react to it – which is a prerequisite of intelligent behavior. “Interpreting” and “reasoning” are two of the five elements that Hunt outlined as constituting a smart robot, the others being sensing, effecting and generating. (5) All of these, as previously mentioned require AI for a robot not just to function but to function in a cohesive and concerted manner. Indeed, because of AI, intelligence in robotics shifts from being a mere capacity to solve a problem to the capacity to enter into a shared world of significance. This is the reason why engineers are inching closer and closer to building cognitive artifacts in robotics. Future Trends There are great and wondrous robots in our future. Robots will assist the elderly and infirm into and out of wheelchair and beds, be conversant in several languages, intuit despair, watch over babies, and provide a sympathetic ear to the lonely. Clearly, as one looks back at the recent history of AI and robotics as well as the current trends, one can conclude that robots are indeed coming. Although the machines we saw were barely functional today, they are gaining in capacity. The discipline of robotics as the quirky union involving fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, mechanical engineering, psychology, anatomy, and half a dozen others, is moving faster than ever. In all these, one sees that the future of intelligent machines is dependent on the progress made in AI. In this regard, it is helpful to quote the pronouncement of Hans Moravec (1998), who is involved in an ongoing work in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, to illustrate the potential of robotics with AI: Research within semiconductor companies, including working prototype chips, makes it quite clear that existing techniques can be nursed along for another decade, to chip features below 0.1 micrometers, memory chips with tens of billions of bits and multiprocessor chips with 100,000 MIPS. Toward the end of the period, the circuitry will probably incorporate a growing number of quantum interference components… The 100 million MIPS to match human brain power will then arrive in home computers before 2030. (63) What is interesting in this prediction is in regard to how AI and robotics mutually reinforces each other towards an astounding breakthrough in the field. Consider: While we think that there is no obstacle in principle to the construction of artifacts that are equal to humans in intelligence and other cognitive capacities, it is by no means clear when such possibility might be actualized or under which circumstances. However, robot offered a way to achieve this because it can replicate a human body in its minutest detail. All in all, if we are to learn from the timeline of robotics and AI, the actuality of a perfect, autonomous and intelligent human-like robot in the near future seems to be still so far-fetched. However, one cannot deny that tremendous progress will be made. The point is that, as with all projections, robot futurism will follow the same pattern: some predictions will be on the mark, some will prove to be wildly optimistic and some unnecessarily pessimistic. However, it seemed that the future of robotics and AI rests primarily on the financial variable. According to Joseph Angelo, an examination of the technology areas into which significant amounts of the current federal research and development budget are being invested should provide some insight into where the breakthroughs may appear. (235) If we are to follow this line of thinking, robotics and AI will enjoy the most advances in the areas of space robotics, autonomous military vehicles and nanotechnology. Works Cited Angelo, Joseph. Robotics: A Reference to the New Technology. Libraries Unlimited, 2007. Finlay, Janet and Dix, Alan. An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. CRC Press, 1996. Hunt, Daniel. Smart Robots. Springer, 1985. Li, D. and Du, Y. Artificial Intelligence with Uncertainty. CRC Press, 2008. Menzel, Peter and DAlusion, Faith. Robo Sapiens: Evolution of New Species. MIT, 2001 Press. Moravec, Hans. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Turing, A.M. “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Mind 59, 1950. 433-460. 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