Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age

by David N.L. Levy

Book Overview

Consider this: Robots will one day be able to write poetry and prose so touching that it will make men weep; compose dozens or even hundreds of symphonies that will rival the work of Mozart; judge a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568812396
• ISBN13: 9781568812397
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: A K PETERS
• Length: 466 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Computer Recognition

Charge coupled device (CCD) count the number of electrons within each pixel. Each number is stored, so the whole image can be represented by a series of numbers. Computers can see my means of this device and attempt functional replication of the eye. In a color image the numbers represent both the hue and intensity of the pixel. One of the earliest vision problems to be subject to machine recognition was hand-writing technology. Character segmentation is important because printed characters can be of different size and can be separated by neighbor characters by different distances. The PDA made handwriting recognition an important field of research. The recognition system possess information about how the characters were written, writing direction and the writing order of the strokes and match with the shape of stored characters. In 1960, Israel Gelfand, at the USSR Academy of Science developed a successful natural handwriting technology. Stefan Pachikov founded paragraph International which SGI later buys. NHR technology underlying idea is that fact that cursive handwriting is a series of movements made by a writing instrument. Each movement can be represented by one more more of eight elements that are sufficient to describe all the trajectories of the pend found in the cursive letter of the Roman alphabet. The analytical word recognizer is based on a database of symbol prototypes and neural network generalized pattern recognition schemes and training. Human Face recognition differentiates unique physical attributes about a person face, the different heights, depths, and weights. Computer vision systems can pick peoples face out of a crowd almost instantaneously and measure various features of that face and compare the measurements with those faces stored in the database. Everyones face has distinguishable features for example peaks and troughs. There are about 80 of these features on the human face, including distance between the eyes, the width of the nose and the depth of the eye sockets. The computer after measuring the face creates a numerical number representing the face. Usually 14 to 22 of the 80 features in a face print is enough to complete the recognition process. Video surveillance system search for face in Low resolution image of the scene and switches to a high resolution search when a head-like has been spotted. Once a face is detected, the system determines then determines the position, size and pose of the head. The image of the head is then scaled up or down in size and rotated in the same size and pose employed for faces in the system's database. The most successful recognition system can match faceprints at 60 million per minute. MobileEye acts as a silent driver assisting with Forward looking, side mirror, and in cabin recognition. MobileEye can detect cars moving into the passing lane, distance ranges, and switch attention by changing colors indicating possible collision objects, pedestrians moving

A complete and expert analysis and collection of such a popular and innovative science

Robots Unlimited: Life In A Virtual Age by David Levy (leader of the winning team of the Loebner Prize Competition in 1997) is a highly researched and historically impressive documentation devoted to the past fifty years of research and development in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. As an informative and superbly written study, Robots Unlimited offers readers an outstanding historical survey and a seminal reference to the many intricacies of an ever-escalating modern science in these specialized fields, as well as knowledgeable and intuitive predictions of what the future may bring for robotic and artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Very strongly recommended to all students of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and relevant technological advancements, Robots Unlimited gives its readers a complete and expert analysis and collection of such a popular and innovative science.

An interesting overview of robotics and machine intelligence

Throughout the last five decades, fed by both curiosity and military requirements, the design and construction of robots has occupied the time of many researchers, and involved the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars. In this book the author presents an overview of robotics for a semi-popular audience, beginning with a fairly detailed summary of the early history of artificial intelligence. It should be remembered that robotics is but one subfield of artificial intelligence, and that the latter field encompasses much more than the building of humanoid-looking machines. And interestingly, when one compares the research forty or even fifty years ago with what is going on at the present time, it is readily apparent that the differences are more of quality rather than quantity. But intelligent machines do not have to take the form of humanoid robots. Hollywood and science fiction novels are partly responsible for this attitude, as are the philosophers, who insist upon the Turing test as being a genuine test for machine intelligence. It is evident when reading the book, especially the last part, that the author will not be convinced of the existence of intelligent machines until they do most, if not all, of the things that humans do. This includes the ability to make love, the ability to reproduce, the possession of legal rights, the possession of consciousness, and the ability to feel emotion and fall in love. A machine taking the form of a humanoid robot that was able to do all of things would certainly qualify as being intelligent. But there are many other types of machines, some of which exists today and are working in the field, that qualify as being intelligent, even though it is a different type of intelligence than what most humans are used to (or would acknowledge as such). This observation raises another issue that is noticeably lacking in this book, as well as in the history of artificial intelligence in general. This issue involves the adoption of a quantitative definition of machine intelligence that will allow its measurement. If one is to judge the progress in artificial intelligence, it is necessary to define criteria, possibly informal, for assessing to what degree one machine is more intelligent or of higher quality than another. The criteria must also be able to distinguish an intelligent from a non-intelligent machine. The Turing test is not entirely suitable as a criterion, since it emphasizes, somewhat myopically and exclusively, human intelligence as being the most objective measure. After careful study of the history of artificial intelligence, in this book and many others, as well as research papers, and through the development and practical use of `algorithms' that are deemed to be intelligent in some way, this reviewer arrived at an informal classification scheme for intelligent machines. Sometimes this scheme allows the quantitative measurement of machine intelligence, a `machine IQ' if you will, but usually i

Describing the Current State of the Art in Robotics

It's been about 50 years since the word Artificial Intelligence was coined. Since then there have been a number of television shows and movies about AI, but in real life AI has yet to produce a young boy to life an even quasi-normal life. Behind the scenes however, research has been going on to develop the sub-systems needed as a foundation of AI. In this book the author describes what's going on in computers about such critical areas as vision, speech, taste, smell and so on. The big problem, and what's covered in most of the book are what you might call the thinking components. How do computers think? How do they play games such as chess? Or one of the hot new items, play soccer. Then there are real problems like getting the computer to write fiction? Can a computer be programmed to transpose bits and bytes into thought, or love? There have been a number of books lately on robotic activities you can do at home. This one is a description of the state of the art in the research labs around the world.