Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson - January 10, 2014

PBS NewsHour Extra

Robots are increasingly being used to do all sorts of tasks, from
disarming bombs and helping people with disabilities to autonomously
vacuuming floors. However, there are still tasks that humans can do
easily, such as folding clothing, that are still a major undertaking
for even the most sophisticated robots.

“There's still no machine that can solve every day commonsensical
problems,” said Marvin Minsky, a cognitive scientist who was a pioneer
in the field of artificial intelligence. Over the years, he came to
realize a simple paradox: what’s hard for us is simple for robots and
what’s hard for robots is simple for us.

“What most people today are doing is saying, first let's get the
robot so that it can do the simple things, and then we will make it do
the harder ones. I think we should just turn it opposite,” he explained.

One of the toughest tasks in robotics is the walking motion, but
some labs are getting close. Boston Dynamics has created a four-legged
animal-like robot called Big Dog that simulates a natural sense of
balance and has the agility to break a fall.

Robert Playter of Boston Dynamics, who helped build Big Dog, said
that experimentation is key to create an effective machine.

“You have to push them,” he said. “Rather than try to build a
response to stepping on a rock or stepping on ice, what we try to build
is a fundamental sort of core concept of balance and how to behave in
the gravitational field.”

Other scientists are working on how we interact with robots,
including bridging the gap between machine and mankind with expressions
and body language. While it will be a while before we see anything like
the lifelike robots in Hollywood movies, the makers of Big Dog say that
all the pieces are finally coming together: intelligence, expressions,
dexterity and mobility.