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The Gundersons get us ready for Basil, the robot of our dreams

A A A Comments (4) By Joel Warner Thursday, Dec 18 2008

...continued from page 6

They finish to rousing applause. As audience members surge forward to inspect Basil, Louise takes stock of the event. No, she's not too disappointed: "Because we were working on a deadline, it forced us to get a lot done." Now, thanks to the inspiration of Cafe Sci, they know Basil's brain works perfectly. He's been delivering tea all around the lab, not to mention a few beers. The mistake tonight wasn't the robot's, it was the stupid humans'. Plus, it's great to see her scientific peers fawning over Basil.

"We work in isolation," she says, "So it's nice to hear it's cool."

Basilâ€™s debut at the Wynkoop.

Ken Byles and Bill Llewellin watch the Gundersons in their lab.

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Still, the two are already pondering their next assignments. They have to teach Basil to recognize specific rooms, so he doesn't keep asking where he is all the time. And he has to get real peepers, in the form of video cameras. Finally, there's his graduation assignment: Roll down the street to Breckenridge Brewery and bring back a growler.

Of course, before all that, says Louise, "we have to re-think batteries."

But that's all for another day. Right now, the Gundersons and the Friends of Basil head for the bar. It's time for a beer.

This time, they'll get it themselves.

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Dug 12/28/2008 8:22:00 PM

Also, I think, if the author deleted, every other comma, in the article, it would flow, much better. ;)

Lance Roberts 12/22/2008 5:25:00 AM

This is nothing new really theory wise, just implementation. I've described the same basic system to people as far back as 1995. A robot only needs to associate one sense with another - so by touching things while it looks at them eventually it can learn to operate on sight alone and know how to avoid it etc. When it gets upgraded from Sonar to Camera it should have both at the same time so it can cross-learn. Reification is an interesting word for it though. I'd be interested in the reasoning algorithm used though - I've found with mine that as soon as theres lots of possibilities to choose from to solve a complex path the sheer computation needed is immense - no wonder humans don't really reason they just copy each other. The real speed to learning would be to make several other Basils, and let them learn different things, then combine their memories. A good test would be to see if Basil can open a door and go through it as part of a solution path - that would show the right level of reasoning.

BuildTheRobots 12/21/2008 7:12:00 PM

Lyrics to Build The Robots : Plastic parts and glue Doing everything I can do To build the robots. They're filling up the room 'Cause all that I ever do is Build the robots. I need assembly lines A crew and much more time. The money's all mine And my funds are getting thin. Probably have to rob a bank again. 'Cause I'm spending every dime and I'm spending all my time to Build the robots.