Friday, September 9, 2016

Collaborative Robots and When is the Football Team

The problem with autonomous robots is they try so hard to avoid hitting each other eventually they all 'freeze' in their 'safety bubble' spaces because any move will result in a compromise.  That, not surprisingly, wasn't good enough for scientists so they went back for another go at it.  (Science Daily:  Team of robots learns to work together, without colliding)

Assume a basic disclaimer on these since the message is not sci-fi and is always based on papers released on a peer-reviewed basis to accredited journals.  That science will always have been published in the last few days unless noted otherwise.  The extensions of the science may go to sci-fi on Ithaka but know always the foundation is real or the sci-fi is really just fantasy.  That's fine too but it's false advertising to pitch the Lord of the Rings as a search for gravity waves.


Collaborative tasking, swarm behavior, and other such phenomena of interaction between multiple entities goes into deep systems theory and you need a mind which crunches numbers like popcorn for that game.  That discipline may go out into number crunching similar to cryptography and no-one has any idea how they do it.

One immediate form of 'collaborative tasking' is in how to get a large number of autonomous vehicles on the road without them crashing into one another.  It's all very well for Google to drive about and announce, well, sure didn't hit anything that time but that's more dumb luck than systems.

Collision avoidance is only the first step and collision prevention, if you will, is the one beyond that.  We don't care what one autonomous car will do since we want to know what happens if you have a million of them.  OK, now drop that million cars on the DFW metroplex and go to rush hour.  What happens?  Will they crash into each other.  Will they all grind to a confused halt.  That's where this crew comes into it.


The applications are many but an unseen consequence is very little publication of science along the lines of psychology or sociology.  In other words, we seem more interested in the dynamics of machine behavior than we are in human behavior.  The young scientist in the rough but wish to consider that matter as there are still no more dollars in such disciplines than there ever came from them but it's also obvious human behavior is not at all well understood except in terms of learning from social networks which laundry detergent they 'Like.'  Well, that's impressive, isn't it.  Let's turn that right over to the Tibetan monks to study, huh?


Artists hardly ever do any 'collaborative tasking' so I risk alienating those of you who may be so inclined and I'm sure not looking your way, Mystery Lady (larfs).

(Mystery Lady:  you might look at your own way, Mutt or Jeff!)

Oh, sure.  I see this.  I couldn't be less collaborative without a shotgun loaded up ready with rock salt.


So here's your sci fi leap:  how about if your collaborative swarm of robots is taken collectively as a virtual type of 3D printer and they work together to make big stuff ... say, space stations and space ships.  Program those li'l metallic servants, shoot them into orbit, and, presto, watch them build a starship or some such while you grill wieners on the barbie in the backyard.  Not bad.

Note:  it's a bit high and inside but you may notice the resemblance in these li'l motobots to the Watchmakers from "The Mote in God's Eye."


As to when is the football team ... who cares.  We want that starship.

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