Watching the Dynamites buzz around their private soccer pitch,
Prof. Alan Mackworth foresees a time when households will
be cleaned by tiny robotic vacuum cleaners thinking and working
together.
The Dynamites are remote-controlled toy cars–modified, six-inch
racing Porsches to be exact.
“They’re trying to be reasonably intelligent but for the
most part they look a bit stupid right now,” says Mackworth.
“They keep getting in each other’s way.”
At the moment, the Dynamites are gearing up for their inaugural
soccer tournament in Japan next summer. But Mackworth says
soccer is just a platform for testing his constraint-based
theories –theories which he believes hold the key to a safer
future.
As microprocessors proliferate at a dizzying pace, he claims
the controls under which many systems operate are becoming
more ad hoc. He says his systems and those of his colleagues–coded
to deal with specific constraints or problems–are the best
way to ensure safety whether on an airport runway or in an
elevator.
Mackworth’s goal with the Dynamites is to sharpen their perceptive
powers, their ability to co-operate, reason and take advantage
of opportunities–a tall order for humans, even more so for
robots.
Their soccer pitch, resembling a pool table, dominates one
wing of UBC’s Laboratory for Computational Intelligence (LCI).
Above the pitch hangs a colour video camera hooked up to a
modest-looking piece of computer hardware. This, however,
is no video game.
Computers attached to the overhead camera analyse what’s
happening on the pitch 60 times a second and convey this visual
information to separate off-board computers for each car.
The Dynamites are continually assessing speed, direction,
where they are in relation to partners, competitors, the ball
and the goal. And then, of course, there’s strategy.
“Can I get to the ball before the other guy? Should I back
off and play more defensively? They’re thinking all the time,”
says Mackworth.
As founding director of the LCI, Mackworth has watched it
develop into what many consider to be one of the best laboratories
for integrated intelligent systems anywhere. Under Mackworth’s
guidance, the lab has grown from a three-professor operation
in 1981 focused on computational vision into a team of eight
professors building hybrid systems in mobile robotics, telerobotics,
remote sensing, object recognition, decision-making and computer
reasoning.
In 1984, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR)
chose artificial intelligence and robotics as the first area
it would fund. Since then Mackworth has played a lead role
in establishing both the CIAR’s program in the field as well
as the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS),
a Network of Centres of Excellence Program.
In the LCI, Mackworth co-ordinates a team of colleagues,
staff and graduate students in an IRIS computational perception
project called Dynamo–short for Dynamics and Mobile Robots.
Joining the Dynamites in this initiative are Spinoza, a robot
with stereo vision which enables it to navigate unaided around
objects and sense their distance, and the Platonic Beast,
a robot which can move on different terrains without getting
stuck.
Last summer, a Carnegie-Mellon University team successfully
built a computerized car which drove itself across the country
under its own vision–a feat which has direct links with UBC’s
Spinoza.
A billion dollars of research money is also being spent in
California developing intelligent highways which feature platoons
of computer-guided cars able to change lanes, exit and monitor
erratic drivers nearby–all elements of the Dynamites’ game
plan.
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