A Robot Learns To Fly

jerkychew writes: "For those of you that read my last post about the robot escaping its captors, there's more news regarding robots and AI. According to this Reuters article, scientists in Sweden created a robot that essentially 'learned to fly' in just three hours. The robot had no preprogrammed instructions on how to achieve lift, it had to deduce everything through trial and error. Very interesting stuff."

Oh great . . .

[min0r_threat]

Not only do we have to watch out for bird crap raining down on us, we now have robot excrement to worry about as well.

Somehow...

[madajb]

The fact that it "cheats" somehow restores my faith in robotkind....

-ajb

Well..

[squaretorus]

A robot has taught itself the principles of flying -- learning in just three hours what evolution took millions of years to achieve

Well. Assuming the birds were TRYING to fly, knew what lift was, and already had the equipment (i.e. wings) to achieve this.

This brings an image of stupid birds sitting around flapping randomly thinking "FUCK - I'm SURE this should fucking WORK! - Bastards - OOps, I just fell over to the left - does that mean my right wing was flapped right???? - Hey - John! WHAT DID I DO THEN????"

Hmm

[af_robot]

"However, the robot could not actually fly because it was too heavy for its electrical motor."

One small step for robot, one giant leap for robotkind

Re:Well..

[madajb]

Do you think it would have learned faster if they'd taken it up to the roof, and thrown it off?

"Hmm...my sensors indicate that I am falling at a rapid rate. Maybe I ought to do something about that. I'll try flapping this thing. Nope. How about together..that seems to be wor...."

-ajb

Cool

[TheCrunch]

Imagine a day where engineers build cool robots, upload the generic learn-to-do-stuff-with-your limbs program, leave it for a week or so to train up and get optimum calibration, then have it copy it's program onto subsequent batches.

I picture a robot aerobics class.. heh. But if anybody asks, I picture a robot boot camp.

This is how it starts

[Flounder]

Next thing we know, they'll be controlling the nukes, building Skynet, and killing all humans with Schwarzenegger lookalikes.

You're all doomed, I warned you!

I'll just get to packing my stuff, moving to a remote cabin in Montana and keeping a close eye on my refridgerator (I know it hates me, it keeps melting my ice cream).

Imagine the Wright Brothers...

[Kredal]

"Hey guys, look! We stood on really tall stilts, does this mean we're flying?"

That would have been something to see.

The robot stands proudly on it's wings, and tells the scientists "Look at me, I generated maximum lift, and I don't have to exert any force at all. Oh, and from here, I can see the mouse is climbing over walls to get to the cheese without going through the maze. You humans are so stupid!"

Work on the cheating algorithm

[RoboOp]

I am not sure if you can call what the robot was doing 'flying'. It was essentially just flapping its arms in the most effective way possible with whatever wing-like appendages given to it.

Now the cheating - that is the interesting part. When they have the algorithm down so that the bot hobbles out the door and purchases a ticket at the airport, then they will have a winner.

Re:very interesting

[Alan Partridge]

that's rubbish - what we really need is to give robots the ability to turn into cars and F-14s and then join together into a kind of super, Optimus-Prime type of device.

Finally!

[jstockdale]

Cheating was one strategy tried and rejected during the process of artificial evolution -- at one point the robot simply stood on its wing tips and later it climbed up on some objects that had been accidentally left nearby.
...
But after three hours the robot discovered a flapping technique
...
However, the robot could not actually fly because it was too heavy for its electrical motor.
"There's only so much that evolution can do," Bentley said.

Finally we understand the dodo's place in evolution.

Re:article just bloats

[Jedi Alec]

That's the next step. The damn thing figuring out that it's too heavy and:

1) doing everything it can to lose weight so as to be able to do what society is asking of it.
2) after long anorexic periods jumping off a bridge, inventing the concept of gliding half way, slowly setting down on the water and then taking digital anti-depressants until it shuts down.

Re:Evolution has achieved more

[Anonymous Coward]

amen!

Re:Somehow...

[Xaoswolf]

Cheat? Let me know when they make a robot smart enough to steal a plane. Now that's a smart robot.

Re:article just bloats

[OpenSourced]

Well, at least evolution succeeded in making birds that weren't too heavy for their own wings...

You can consider the poor bot some kind of turkey :o)

Robot Learns To Fly/Escape/etc.

[clickety6]

"It was amazing," said Dr. Heinrich Hienrichson, "Before I knew it, the robot had stolen my credit card, set up an account on Orbitz and booked two airline tickets to Mexico. Now the robot has escaped and my toaster appears to have gone misisng as well..."

HGttG quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah!.. What's happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?

Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of... yawning, tingling sensation in my... my... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This... let's call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation...

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn't it?

And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

Re:Well..

[Have Blue]

Oh no, not again...