Watson's Victory

In case you haven’t heard, over the course of the last few days there has been a series of Jeopardy episodes featuring Watson, an IBM computer, facing off against two of Jeopardy’s greatest players, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Although on the first night it looked like the game would be close, in the end Watson was the clear winner.

There are news stories about this all over the internet (MSNBC) so I want to look, instead, at some of the questions that arise from this event. In particular, was it a fair fight and what does this mean for robotics?

Was it fair?

Looking at the comments on some of the news stories out there I have noticed many people are crying foul. The biggest complaint I have seen is that Watson receives the question electronically as a text file which some claim gives him extra time to process the question and find an answer. The alternative would be for Watson to have some sort of visual device to read the question off the screen. Personally, I don’t think it would have made much difference. The questions are all displayed in the same general area using the same size, color and font. Under these circumstances it would have been easy (easy relative to the difficulty of building Watson) for the engineers at IBM to build a vision system that could quickly and accurately read the text. However, this project was focused on a computer understanding human language and not vision.

A second issue that has come up is how Watson buzzes in. According to an article at Wired, Watson uses a mechanical button pusher along with the same button as the other players. The article doesn’t mention the speed of the button pusher but since it’s mechanical I doubt it’s significantly faster than a human finger.

The third issue I have come across is that some claim the questions were of the type that favor a computer, meaning they did not include as many puns are other intricate features of language that would be very difficult for a computer to interpret. I can’t speak for this claim since I have no idea how the questions were selected and do not watch the show often enough to know if the questions used were typical of Jeopardy.

How does this effect Robotics?

In my opinion this is the more interesting and more important of the two questions I’ve posed. However, a complete answer is way beyond the scope of this blog, or my knowledge for that matter, but I do have a few thoughts.

An important aspect of robotics is the interaction between robots and people. Typically we communicate with robots through some sort of control mechanism which could be anything from a mouse to a lever or dial. When speech is used, it usually involves relatively simple commands like “pick up the ball” or “call Katie.” These methods work but if we could communicate with computers the same way we communicate with each other then we could use computers, and thus robots, far more effectively. One application suggested by IBM is having a computer analyze a patent’s description of symptoms to help the doctor make a diagnosis.

Let me know what you think. Was the game fair? Is Watson a breakthrough in computing technology or is it just a PR stunt by IBM? What are some other applications for this technology?

Need a Hand?

Have you ever looked at your hands and been amazed at how complex they are? In fact, the human hand has 27 bones, 24 degrees of freedom and 1300 nerve endings per square inch. It doesn’t take much to realize that trying to build a functional hand would be extremely difficult, yet people are trying to do it anyway. Why? Well, there are many different applications for robots with hands but the simple answer is this; we want robots to help us and to do that they need to be able to do what we do. Since much of what we do involves using our hands, it would be helpful for robots to have hands.

This article from wired.com gives some information on a number of different robot hands.

Research on robot hands has been going on for about 50 years and there are many examples of different robot hands using all kinds of different actuators (what makes it move), sensors, control systems and building materials. The first working robot hand was developed in 1960 by General Electric’s Ralph Mosher and had two fingers and 5 joints. However, it did not have any sensing capabilities.

A good example of a more modern hand is the Shadow Dexterous Air Muscle hand (#12 in the article). This hand has 24 degrees of freedom which is the same as a human hand. It uses 40 “Air Muscles” which require compressed air and electrical current to operate. The hand uses pressure sensors with a twelve bit resolution from 0-4 bars, which make it sensitive enough it to detect a quarter lying on the floor.

 

If you want more information the check our these pages: Spec Sheet and Shadow's website.

These examples barely scratch the surface of information about robot hand technology so hopefully I’ll have more posts on this topic in the future.

State of the Blog Address (self evaluation)

Please disregard the following, as it is part of the requirements for the class.

The 6 posts I have made so far mostly consist of information about robotics. Many of these posts have been regarding aids for the disabled with the two best being about the prosthetic arms and the robotic wheel chair. Both of these provide interesting information that should be easily understood by most people. However, the wording on both is a little dry and I plan to try and make future posts more engaging.

I have left comments on Trashy Energy in the Toilet Energy post. Also, there is a comment in Straining the Grid on the initial post about solar energy.

For the future of this blog I plan to continue my theme about robotics for the disabled but I will also branch out to a few other interesting applications for robots.

Robotic Wheelchair

This video is about a wheelchair developed at MIT that can navigate through a building on its own.

As mentioned in the video navigation and mapping algorithms have been around for a long time but what impressed me is how the wheelchair could learn the layout of the building from a guided tour in a similar way to how a person would. This not only makes the voice commands possible but also makes it easier to deploy the robot in a new environment.

There are, of course, still limitations to this flexibility such as the need for a number of preset Wi-Fi hotspots which the wheelchair uses in conjunction with a laser range scanner for navigation. These are necessary since it’s extremely difficult for a mobile robot to keep track of its own position as it moves.

There are many other examples of robotics being used in wheelchairs. If you’re interested, do a search on YouTube and see them in action.

Q&A

1.      What is the purpose of this blog?

This blog is intended to provide information about how the field of robotics can have a positive impact on people’s lives. Along with applications of robotics I would also like it to provide some easy to understand technical information about current and near future robotics.

2.      Who is the imagined audience(s) of this blog?

I imagine the audience to be college students, and random people who are bored at work and trying to kill time.

3.      Have my posts matched up with my purpose/audience?  What/who might I be overlooking in defining my purpose/audience this way?

Up to this point I think the blog has done a decent job of reaching the intended audience but I’m probably overlooking the people who actually work in the area of robotics. I think they would find this blog a little too general to be interesting.

4.      What can I do to encourage more reader participation with my blog?

Either ask more questions or write more interesting and thought provoking posts. Currently robotics does not involve too many controversial topics but there are many different issues that could arise at technology continues to progress.

5.      How can I expand my audience in this class?  Outside of this class?

I could use a wider variety of posts that would include information about more advanced technical information.

6.      How would I characterize the tone of my blog?

Serious but informal (most of the time).

7.      What do I hope to get out of writing this blog?

I would say a good grade but that answer is not allowed so I’m going to go with a chance to practice my communication skills and learn a little bit more about robotics in the process.

8.      What would I like others to get out of it?

I would like people to have a better understanding of how robotics is starting to work its way into society and the benefits that can come of this.

9.      What are the strengths of my blog/my blogging?

Links to a variety of different types of information sources such as videos, news reports and technical papers.

10.  What are the weaknesses?

Some parts are a little boring.

11.  Have I used a deficit model in my writing, or something else?  How would I know?

Definitely the deficit model, since its just information.

12. How have I characterized (implicitly or explicitly) science, engineering, and/or technology in my blog?

I think the general characterization in the blog is that science and technology can be helpful for most people.

Science Communication and Robotics

Investigating Science Communication in the Information Age discuses how communicating science to the public has traditionally been done and how it has began to change. Section 3.1 discusses how the media has been involved in science communication and concludes that it is the primary conveyer of scientific information to the public. Dr. Hansen also concludes that most science in the media revolves around nuclear, environmental or medical issues. This makes sense, since all three of these topics are the center of debate over public policy that could have a significant impact on most people’s lives. Thus, they are topics which people want to hear about.

After reading this section I began to wonder where robotics fits into the issue of science in the media. Robotics can play a role in nuclear, environmental and medical issues but it is not usually the item actually being discussed by most media outlets. There are, of course, a few examples here and there but for the most part it is not a very common topic. This is probably because the field of robotics is still in its infancy and not as much has been done to make it news worthy. However, robotics has the potential to have a significant impact on society in the future and as that happens will probably become more prominent in the media.