New news on the autonomous front - as it keeps rolling on.
27th February 2018 is when California announced that fully autonomous test vehicles will be allowed on the road without a driver as of April 2nd.
As far as I am aware this is a world first and, barring massive mishaps, will be the first of many cities allowing this as they realise the advantages of being first to get this in place.
An interesting fact about the above video is that the voice is computer generated. It sound pretty real but there are a few give a ways if you listen carefully.
Ford also wants to dominate in the automated control systems and is working on its cloud mobility system which allows cars to talk to infrastructure through an open source platform.
Something that this fledgling industry sorely needs for future growth.
Ford is aggressively pushing the autonomous line and has deep pockets so watch this space...
In an interesting but unrelated activity I, like most other people in the world have been watching the slow motion train wreck of gun violence in the US.
To get a more even view I look at many news sources including NYtimes CNN and Fox news as there are no impartial news outlets in the US that I can see, as everything is polarised along party lines.
Anyway, I digress.
I was looking at fox news and saw an article by an NRA and strong gun ownership supporter who reference the constant comparisons to Australia's successful gun laws.
His article tried to downplay the effects this has had in our country and, most unlike me, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
I wrote comments about how there has not been a mass shooting in 22 years (since gun laws and buyback) and that the concept of a mass shooting in a school or anywhere else is not even remotely on anyone's radar.
In Australia, at this point at least, it's not an issue in any way shape or form.
Where the surprise came, as this was Fox news, was the number of positive comments and likes I received and no death threats. Evidently most US citizens support gun laws but politicians don't.
I have done more online resarch and it appears most polls tend to confirm this.
Why don't US people vote on issues like this and vote them out?
Glad I live here where I don't have to worry about guns, we have enough problems.
Never in the field of human endeavour has something so stupid yet at the same time totally appropriate been contemplated and then actually achieved.
I refer of course to a Tesla now heading out into space with a dummy in the drivers seat in a space suit, looking really cool with his arm on the windows, just cruisin'.
This is a live feed.
Love the Hitchikers reference on the display...
(semi)Automated vehicle in space, another first.
When you think about it though the number of technological achievements that made this happen are staggering.
1. The heaviest payload ever achieved to space
2. Recovered booster rockets (well nearly all).
3. Fully autonomous ship to land the booster on.
4. The sheer pathos of the payload and the totally appropriate soundtrack that goes with the videos will make Bowie live forever.
This whole thing just makes me tingle.
And as a bonus the flat earthers have to come up with a new theory or more likely will just brand it all as a fake because they can't disprove it. Oh well it takes all types.
When the Tesla eventually goes into a parking orbit I wonder how long it will be before someone finds a way of give it a ticket?
Anyway, back on our world.
I have been fortunate in my job to have been involved in basic testing of a Teleprescence robot that allows sick kids at home or in hospital to interact with their friends in class without leaving their home or even their bed. This is a project by a group in Australia called Missing school.
This is the actual Omnilabs ad for the device.
This is something that could see a lot of use in schools in the near future and a number of Australian schools are currently trialing it.
It's great because the kids who are confined can still participate in the class and interact which can give them more meaning to their lives and an interest while still learning.
Back in my world I'm progressing with my build of the Inmoov robot and have completed the forearm and hand and am now printing every night to get all the plastics ready for when my servos arrive from the US.
This is where I'm at:
The software makes it much easier (Myrobotlabs) than trying to write your own, believe me I've tried (and failed).
I grew up in an era with no TV and now look at what you can do at home.
The Ehang 184 which I have discussed right back in my first blog entry, is now carrying people in China as part of it's advanced testing and expects to have a commercial version of this available this year.
From the video it looks like they now have a two seat version as well.
There appears to be a bit of a war to decide if Uber or Waymo is going to be the leaders in automotive technology and it has gone to court. Industrial espionage and all the juicy ingredients make this a battle to watch.
Meanwhile, back in Oz........
Robotics is a funny old thing.
By that I man it is mostly about perception.
If a robot looks and sounds human then may people think that this is an advanced intelligence that thinks for itself.
Not necessarily so.
I remember writing a program many years ago in basic.
What it did was take any input and turn it back into a question. I called it "Shrink".
I had it ask "what would you like to talk about"?
I then rephrased the input and elicited a response.
I had a list of keywords. If the response didn't have a keyword I would ask "Can you expand on that a little bit?"
This gave the impression that the program was listening and quite often the expansion would elicit a keyword that could get a response.
It wasn't listening as such, but psychiatry works on asking the right questions and having the subject follow their own path and come to their own resolution.
This program did just that.
It wasn't smart but sounded like it was even though it was as dumb as a brick.
It's all about perception.
AI is not sentient, it's just getting a machine to learn.
The dangerous part of that is having a machine make it's own decisions and allowing it to act on it without any control.
For instance, if you had a computer with the power to control every aspect of your environment with total autonomy and then introduced the ability to control your health, then you could have an issue.
For instance you could say " Computer, wipe out cancer in all humans".
Great!.
Maybe not. This is a machine that works on logic not a human with the sum of knowledge accumulated by years of growing and learning without being able to cause a lot of harm.
You have a machine that has total control, "Wipe out cancer"? sure. The logical way is eliminate all humans and the problem is solved!
Not the optimal result from our perspective but an elegant solution nevertheless.
There is no malice in this action and no intelligent response either. Just a machine response.
Coming back to robotics. If you build a robot it is a machine, just like a toaster and just as smart.
But perhaps with the ability to learn. That learning will be a logical response not a human one.
If you have software that controls it then it is just process control with no real smarts and no real danger, unless you let it be dangerous.
A car is a machine with no danger to anyone when it's sitting still. Once you start it and drive off then it has the potential to kill. Humans kill many people every year with cars either accidentally or intentionally and hopefully robotic vehicles will put an end to much of that.
But only if it is intelligently implemented.
Imagine the situation where you have a totalitarian government and they have control of all autonomous vehicles. Dissident? not anymore. Oops sorry his car malfunctioned and drove off a cliff.
My bad, we'll fix the software.
Anyway, back to the humanoid robot.
No matter how human it looks it's still a machine, just like a car and just as safe or dangerous as the controls around it.
I have now built a robotic arm as the first stage of the Imoov project (inmoov.fr) and downloaded the software to make it work using the preconfigured myrobotlab.
It looked really cool when installing, looked like a hacker sequence from a movie with the green text rolling down the screen for ages.
Once I got it installed I found that it is actually voice activated.
I then tried to respond when it asked my name and tried for some time to get it understand that my name was Clive, not hi or hello or any other variant except my name. I even had my wife try and she had no better result.
I then remembered when I worked in Taiwan at one stage no one could understand my Australian accent so I had to put on an American one and then people knew what I was saying.... Such is life.
I tried it on the computer as Cliiiive with the best American accent I could muster and, wouldn't you know it, got it right first time.
So OK..
Being voice activated I thought I would jump right in and after setting a few things up I said to it "close hand". It responded "closing my hand" and lo and behold it did. Cool.
Not to be outdone I said "open hand" and it dutifully did.
Oh the power....
I commented to my wife, "this is quite sophisticated stuff" and to my surprise the computer responded with "Thank you. I try."
So this is my entry into robotic software control. Years in advance of the basic programs I wrote with my first robot arm version only a couple of months ago. No longer will I try and re-create the wheel as this stuff is light years ahead of anything I could do.
So now, my programming skills shown as woefully inadequate, I will push on with the build and play with real software to get a better understanding and keep you posted as it happens.
And have fun in the process.
