What is Artificial Intelligence?

Do you like taking some things apart and see how it works? Have you been attracted with robots ever since you first saw R2D2 and C3PO steal the stage in Star Wars?

If so, artificial intelligence and robotics could be a good major for you. For many years, robots were used in many fields, from manufacturing, to transportation, to medicine. In this exciting program, you’ll gain computer, engineering, and scientific know-how to create your own robots.

Artificial intelligence and robotics is a multi-disciplinary field, and the courses you pursue depend on which aspect of the major interests you most.

If you want to create the robots body, take classes in mechanical and electrical engineering. If you’re more interested in designing robot minds and behaviors, then you’ll need a background in both electrical engineering and computer science. And, if you like animal-inspired robotics, then take biology, animal behavior, and cognitive science classes, so you will know exactly what you’re trying to create.

No matter what your specialty is, an artificial and robotics major will include math and computer classes that covers the basics of programming languages, algorithm design, operating systems, data structures, logic, and probability theory and statistics.

Lastly, as with most experimental sciences, you’ll also need to take classes in ethics and philosophy.

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Flame, the first ever walking robot to imitate humans

A new robot named Flame was developed by Daan Hobbelen, a PhD student at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

This robot is based on the principles of human walking and this is considered to be most advance robot in its kind. Flame can cope to achieve great stability while remaining energy efficient.

In the two groups of walking robot, Flame is categorized in the second group which is designed to imitate human walking in the sense that the robot is executing a controlled fall forward. This type of robot is not very energy consuming and is not that costly.

Flame is 1.3 m in height and is about 15 kg. It has seven motors. It does not fall and can manage to stay stable because of “organ balance” and a sequence of algorithms which calculate where and how far apart the robot’s ‘feet’ should be placed.

The upper body of Flame has PC104 computer which has a real-time Linux kernel (RTAI) running a control loop and can implement torque and/or position control on all actuated joints.

According to Hobbelen, Flame is the first walking robot with electric actuation. This research might further the development of treatment and diagnosis for people who have difficulty in walking.

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Matt Bunting, student with his very own Hexapod

"One of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of reinforcement learning using an artificial intelligence... I wanted it to figure out how to walk straight forward on its (hexapod) own”, said Matt Bunting, a senior at the University of Arizona in electrical engineering.

Hexapod was Bunting's final class project on cognitive robotics. Built from spare parts, and to let the robot adaptively learn how to move he used an Intel Atom processor powering an Ubuntu OS computer. With Logitech Quick Cam to watches what happens when movements are initiated, and a changing scene to determine what effect the movements are having.

Intel ordered themselves two copies to take on an international publicity tour for the Atom processor. A couple days after Matt posted a video of his bot on YouTube, Then, the company who provided Matt with the servos, Crust Crawler Robotics, asked Matt to help develop a software for some of their hexapod kits.

Matt's hexapod Artificial intelligence learning can be applied to tasks other than wait, it can relearn how to walk. The robot even has foot contact sensors that can be used for terrain adaptation.

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An example of a process in artificial intelligent system

An Artificial Intelligent System was first known as an expert system some 3000 years ago. It evolved into sophistication and the use of complicated algorithms in order to ultimately respond and learn from their masters.

A concept of machine communication was introduced by Alan Turing, known as the universal Turing machine that mimics other computing machine. The concept was largely accepted and became the basis for the development of an artificial intelligent system that we now see and use these days.

So how does an artificial intelligent system works?

Let us take for example an artificial intelligent robot.

The artificial intelligent system embedded in the robot's brain takes advantage of sensors integrated in cameras or laser devices. The sensors feed information to the robot's brain. Then, the brain checks for any historical data. If there's none, it creates a composite concept to form part of its memory.

Then the brain builds up the present situation from these concepts. Again, the brain checks for any existing response rule in the memory that is appropriate for this situation. It the picks up one of the matched response rules and sends the action part, to the limbs.

At the start, the robots memory is empty of concepts and response rules. But every time the robot "learns" a new set of response rule containing the present situation, the specific action performed and if it was useful for the objectives set for its actions.

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TOPIO, the humanoid robot that plays table tennis, by TOSY

It is fairly obvious that computers and artificial intelligence will run our world tomorrow. The interface for the artificial intelligence to communicate outside its "box" is now wide-ranging. Artificial intelligence potentially has the choice to make more pleasing or scary to us to get the things it wants from us.

This may be a case where our animated children supersede the programming and perhaps that was the goal after all. We may be able to recognize a person even after twenty years because an image of the person, his mannerisms, voice etc may have been recorded in our brain and lay dormant for years.

This is the area where robotics and artificial intelligence play their role. We can recognize a person by sight, sound etc. This is done by images sent by the optic and olfactory nerves to the brain.

In fact this software can function as an assistant when the user wants to dictate some text. And even control their PC entirely by voice, saving time and boosting productivity with surprising accuracy in dictation, even with little or no training."

A humane touch along with a technological interface will play a major role in shaping the future.

On the whole it can be concluded that Artificial Intelligence applications will play a decisive role in providing real time solutions to various problems humans face.

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