A ROBOT has the ability to visualize itself moving in 3D space, granting the bot a quality that humans learn at birth.
The robotic arm is powered by artificial intelligence and can contort itself to avoid obstacles but some experts are hesitant to say it’s self-aware.
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Robots are impressive feats of engineering, but many of them are clumsy.
Even Boston Dynamic’s most impressive robot dog Spot fell over when it slipped on a banana peel.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering believe their robotic arm is the first robot that can “see” itself, New Scientist reports.
“To me, this is the first time in the history of robotics that a robot has been able to create a mental model of itself,” one of the study authors said.
The researchers surrounded the robotic arm with cameras and fed the video directly into the robot’s “neural network” – its AI mind.
The robot observed itself for three hours, tracking its own position in space in the form of data points – the team later added 10,000 more data points using a simulation, according to the study published in Science.
The team was able to generate a visualization of the robot’s neural network, where the arm would picture itself moving.
The robotic arm could model itself in 3D space with precision accuracy with an error margin of 1%.
A video of the robotic arm in action shows it angling itself around a box to touch a dot, as directed.
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The robotic arm and its neural network are demonstrating a uniquely human attribute by knowing their place in space.
The study said the robot’s self-awareness is “Perhaps not unlike our natural human ability to ‘see in our mind’s eye’ whether our body could fit through a narrow passage, without actually trying it out in reality.”
Others are less keen to grant the bot self-awareness.
New Scientist quoted an academic saying “There is potential for further research to lead to useful applications based on this method, but not self-awareness.”
Fears of AI networks overpowering mankind won’t be relieved by an agile robot that can react to surroundings.
But Boyuan Chen, the study author, added that the robot’s ability to see itself is “Trivial compared to that of humans, but you have to start somewhere,” in a press release.
