Networking Robot's
Creating Awareness
Everyone has a unique perspective inside their head when they think about Skynet or The Matrix of what the world would look like if robots became self aware. Of course there are those of us like myself who envision a remarkable and utopian view, many people however have a negative or even a downright scared view of robots.The best tool in which we can change the world for the better is to better understand the technology that powers it. So of course despite all the warning signs from hollywood, the world of robotics is experiencing a re-revival. For which the world's smart guys are happy about!
The main issue in robotics today is that the physical size of the robot must house the computational and processing framework inside itself. This is one of the main problems engineers are facing today. Because even if our computers become much faster and smaller. The processing load a thinking, moving and decision making robot will require much more. Which is the main reason why they are so expensive, big and heavy.
A recent innovation by Rapyuta: The RoboEarth Cloud Engine, in which the developers are making the robots much smarter is by utilizing Cloud Computing to change our world! The idea that if we allowed access to the whole wealth of information available on the internet could make better/smarter robots. Of course just giving a robot unrestricted access to the internet isn't going to achieve anything, it's likely the robot will just watch YouTube video's all day instead of working. (Sound like anybody you know?)
RosCon2013 Track2 Day2 07 - Mohanarajah Gajamohan - Understanding the RoboEarth Cloud from OSRF on Vimeo.
Which is why the team at RoboEarth are developing a service platform that connects hundreds of thinking robots, to make them smarter. Each robot can learn from each other and can even help each other overcome challenges. To achieve this the development team uses very specific structures to organize and allocate power. Each physical robot, regardless of their location on earth. Has a "clone" or virtual copy of itself in the cloud. The cloud itself is made up from extremely powerful computer's. Which act's as the "Hive Mind" to do the actual heavy lifting.
In the Alpha release that came out this February the team released some really cool video's and pictures to help get them noticed. When I read the words "World Wide Web for Robot's" that got my attention right away!
If you think about robots in today's modern age. What you see are very controlled environments in which the robots can be programmed to react to every possible situation. But in our human world everything is always changing, always moving. For a robot to live along side of humans, it would need to be able to not run people over, or hurt anyone accidentally. The only way to archive this is by having hyper aware robots with massive thinking power. Allowing a group of robots to talk to each other , share data and learn from mistakes. streamed instantly to every robot in the group, house, block, city, state, you get the picture. So will this give us the possibility of a world where the most powerful thinking entity, is really just a huge brain, with each individual robot a neuron, they will one day make up the Invisible Brain.
