Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




ROBO SPACE
'Robo Brain' will teach robots everything from the Internet
by Staff Writers
Ithaca NY (SPX) Aug 28, 2014


From images and videos, Robo Brain can learn the relationships between humans and everyday objects.

Robo Brain - a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources - is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. The information is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format that robots will be able to draw on when they need it.

To serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave. Robotics researchers have been teaching them these things one at a time: How to find your keys, pour a drink, put away dishes, and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. This will all come in one package with Robo Brain.

"Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want. If a robot encounters a situation it hasn't seen before it can query Robo Brain in the cloud," said Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University.

Saxena and colleagues at Cornell, Stanford and Brown universities and the University of California, Berkeley, say Robo Brain will process images to pick out the objects in them, and by connecting images and video with text, it will learn to recognize objects and how they are used, along with human language and behavior.

If a robot sees a coffee mug, it can learn from Robo Brain not only that it's a coffee mug, but also that liquids can be poured into or out of it, that it can be grasped by the handle, and that it must be carried upright when it is full, as opposed to when it is being carried from the dishwasher to the cupboard.

Saxena described the project at the 2014 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, July 12-16 in Berkeley, and has launched a website for the project at http://robobrain.me

The system employs what computer scientists call "structured deep learning," where information is stored in many levels of abstraction. An easy chair is a member of the class of chairs, and going up another level, chairs are furniture. Robo Brain knows that chairs are something you can sit on, but that a human can also sit on a stool, a bench or the lawn.

A robot's computer brain stores what it has learned in a form mathematicians call a Markov model, which can be represented graphically as a set of points connected by lines (formally called nodes and edges).

The nodes could represent objects, actions or parts of an image, and each one is assigned a probability - how much you can vary it and still be correct. In searching for knowledge, a robot's brain makes its own chain and looks for one in the knowledge base that matches within those limits.

"The Robo Brain will look like a gigantic, branching graph with abilities for multi-dimensional queries," said Aditya Jami, a visiting researcher art Cornell, who designed the large-scale database for the brain. Perhaps something that looks like a chart of relationships between Facebook friends, but more on the scale of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Like a human learner, Robo Brain will have teachers, thanks to crowdsourcing. The Robo Brain website will display things the brain has learned, and visitors will be able to make additions and corrections.

.


Related Links
Cornell University
All about the robots on Earth and beyond!






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








ROBO SPACE
Russia's First Exoskeleton to Help Physically Impaired
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Aug 19, 2014
A team of Russian exoskeleton designers said Monday they were looking for disabled patients who would agree to volunteer for human tests in the country's unique ExoAtlet Project, according to Izvestia newspaper. "Preclinical trials are scheduled for autumn: we will look at how comfortable it is for different people to move around in an exoskeleton, and use the feedback to tune the control ... read more


ROBO SPACE
China Aims for the Moon, Plans to Bring Back Lunar Soil

Electric Sparks May Alter Evolution of Lunar Soil

China to test recoverable moon orbiter

China to send orbiter to moon and back

ROBO SPACE
Opportunity Flash-Memory Reformat Planned

Memory Reformat Planned for Opportunity Mars Rover

Scientist uncovers red planet's climate history in unique meteorite

A Salty, Martian Meteorite Offers Clues to Habitability

ROBO SPACE
Aurora Season Has Started

Russian, US Scientists to Prepare Astronauts for Extreme Situations in Space

Russia's Space Geckos Die Due to Technical Glitch Two Days Before Landing

US to Stop Using Soyuz Spacecraft, Invest in Domestic Private Space Industry

ROBO SPACE
Same-beam VLBI Tech monitors Chang'E-3 movement on moon

China Sends Remote-Sensing Satellite into Orbit

More Tasks for China's Moon Mission

China's Circumlunar Spacecraft Unmasked

ROBO SPACE
Science and Departure Preps for Station Crew

NASA Awaits Boeing's Completion of Soyuz Replacement

Belka and Strelka, the canine cosmonauts

Russian Cosmonauts Conclude EVA Ahead of Schedule

ROBO SPACE
Sea Launch Takes Proactive Steps to Address Manifest Gap

SpaceX rocket explodes during test flight

Russian Cosmonauts Carry Out Science-Oriented Spacewalk Outside ISS

Optus 10 delivered to French Guiana for Ariane 5 Sept launch

ROBO SPACE
Orion Rocks! Pebble-Size Particles May Jump-Start Planet Formation

Rotation of Planets Influences Habitability

Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star

Young binary star system may form planets with weird and wild orbits

ROBO SPACE
Experiments explain why some liquids are 'fragile' and others are 'strong'

The fluorescent fingerprint of plastics

Atoms to Product: Aiming to Make Nanoscale Benefits Life-sized

Yale's cool molecules




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.