21 June 2015

Robot That Learns Like a Child

Two researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have made a robot that learns like a young child. At least, that's the idea. The machine starts with nothing -- it has to learn everything from scratch. The machine is called ‘self’. It analyses sound through a system based on the human ear, and learns to recognize images using a digital model of how nerve cells in the brain handle sensory impressions. It is designed to learn entirely from sensory input with no pre-defined knowledge database, so that its learning process will resemble that of a human child in early life. In the beginning, the robot knew nothing. It 'hears' sounds from a person speaking, and can connect these to a simultaneous video feed of the speaker. The robot picks a sound that the person appears to be emphasizing, and responds by playing other sounds that it associates with this, while projecting a neural representation of its association between the sound and pictures.
 
 
It doesn't show a video, but rather how its 'brain' connects sounds and images. The robot gradually absorbed more and more impressions of different people. Certain people, like guides, affected it more, because it 'saw' them often. The robot also learned to filter input. If a word is said in a certain way five times, and then in a different way once, it learned to filter away the standout and concentrate on the most common way, which is presumably correct. This processing happens during the robot's downtime. After a while, the robot was able to connect words and pictures together in a more complex manner, you could say that it associates sounds with images and connects them by itself. The robot is constantly under development, and the result is a robot that shows how it makes associations in a very pedagogical manner. It doesn't resemble any living organisms on purpose -- you're supposed to concentrate on its learning and the process behind it.

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