Season's Greetings from XCR-1 robot

The XCR-1 Robot by Pentti Haikonen performs a candle search task to wish you a happy Xmas!

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Season's Greetings from XCR-1 robot

The XCR-1 Robot by Pentti Haikonen performs a "Christmas Present Task" to wish you a happy Xmas!

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A review of ten conscious robots? Is this correct? Yes, but we are talking about classic TV robots, of course...

A review of most popular commercial conscious robots would be a nice post for this website, but I am afraid this is about science-fiction robots. Computer(Science)Schools.net have recently published a review of 10 classic robots, such as the  human-like Cylons (right picture) of Battlestar Galactica. How far are we from developing robots like these ones? This is really difficult to know, the singularity might be closer than we think, or it might never happen. One thing is for sure, the research on Machine Consciousness should provide us with some partial answers to these questions in the near-term.

In the meantime, we can also get some inspiration from science-fiction: see these 10 Classic TV Robots.

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Conscious-Robots team is the 2K BotPrize 2010 Competition Winner!!!

The third edition of the 2K BotPrize Competition was decided recently in Copenhagen, at the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. We are happy to announce that the Spanish team – Conscious-Robots – formed by Jorge Muñoz and Raúl Arrabales won this year edition of this competition, a Turing Test adapted to the domain of videogames [1].

Raúl Arrabales (left) and Jorge Muñoz (right) with the 2K BotPrize trophy (by Peter Reynolds)

The aim of the 2K BotPrize competition is to develop a computer game bot which is undistinguishable from a human player, i.e. able to pass the Turing Test. Although the Conscious-Robots bot could not completely pass the Turing Test, she achieved a humanness rating of 31.8%. As of today, the Turing Test level intelligence has never been achieved by a machine. However, this year the gap between humans and bots was reduced, having a small difference between the Conscious-Robots bot (31.8%) and the least “human” human player (35.4%) – see results. -> READ MORE.

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How to Make a Robot that Feels

This article is divided in two parts:

- A summary of Kevin O’Regan keynote talk at CogSys 2010 by Raúl Arrabales.
- An invited extended discussion about the self and the role of action in sensation by Kevin O’Regan.

How to Make a Robot that Feels

“How to make a robot that feels” was the title of the keynote talk given by Kevin O’Regan at the CogSys 2010 conference last week. During this talk O’Regan introduced the so-called hard problem of consciousness (as coined by Chalmers) and explained his sensorimotor approach to (phenomenal) consciousness [1]. This talk and related ideas are of special interest for Machine Consciousness researchers since O’Regan offers an account for sensory feel which virtually eliminates the hard problem, and therefore the explanatory gap itself. In the following I will try to summarize the key ideas that I got from both the talk and further discussions we had with O’Regan during the CogSys conference.

Using the redness of red, quite typical example in philosophy of mind, O’Regan addressed the problem of designing a robot that feels. Note that in this context the word feel is not used as in Damasio’s work, but to refer to the what-is-it-like or qualia associated to conscious contents, i.e. sensory feel.

[Use the "Read more..." button below to see the rest of the article]

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First of all, the mirror test is not exactly intended as a general test for consciousness, but a specific test for self-consciousness, and more exactly self-recognition. It is generally applied to some higher mammals and infants. The test consists on determining whether or not the subject can recognize its own reflection in a mirror. So far, only subjects belonging to the following species have passed the mirror test:

Mirror Test

humans (over 2 years old),
great apes (bonobos, chimps, orangutans, and gorillas),
rhesus monkeys,
elephants,
bottlenose dolphins,
rats,
and octopuses.

I think it is important to note that only a determined number of individuals of these species have passed the tests, while others generally fail to pass it. Obviously the test has to be adapted to each specie, although it typically consists on an odorless paint mark made in the forehead while the animal is anesthetized.

The mirror test has been considered by some researchers as one of the best available ways to test self-consciousness in organisms (see for instance how it is applied to Elephants in [1], and see [2] for an open discussion about the mirror test validity). Mirror test is famous thanks to its application to primates, as introduced by Gordon Gallup in the 70’s [3]. However, little work has been done in the application of the mirror test to robots.

Can we build a robot able to successfully pass the mirror test? And if so, does it really mean that the robot is self-aware?

Robot Mirror Test

Takeno et al. [4] at Meiji University in Japan claim that they have succeeded in achieving mirror image cognition for a robot. They define four steps for their experiments, where four robots are used: the self robot Rs, the other robot Ro, the controlled robot Rc, and the automatic robot Ra. The first two robots are endowed with the mirror image cognition system. The third robot is controlled by the self robot, while the last one moves automatically.

The four experiments are as follows:

1) The self robot Rs imitates the action of its own image reflected in a mirror.
2) The self robot Rs imitates an action taken intentionally by the other robot Ro as imitative behavior.
3) The controlled robot Rc is controlled completely from the self-robot to imitate his behavior.
4) The self robot Rs imitates the random actions of the automatic robot Ra.

The robot is able to recognize its own image reflected in a mirror without confusing it with the image of another robot with the same physical aspect. The mirror image cognition system is based on an artificial neural network. The aim of this system is to recognize and differentiate robot’s own behavior from other robot’s behavior. Takeno also suggests that imitation is a proof of consciousness as it requires the recognition of other subject’s behavior and then the application of that behavior to oneself.

The results described in the paper indicate that in some way the robots are passing the mirror test with an accuracy of 70%, but I am reluctant to claim that they are self-conscious. I would rather say that the present a-consciousness of their recognized image.

[1] http://www.conscious-robots.com/en/neuroscience/mammals-brain/elephants-recognize-themselves-in-the-m-3.html
[2] http://www.conscious-robots.com/en/forums-./test-for-consciousness/mirror-test/view.html
[3] Gallup, G.G., Jr. (1977). Self-recognition in primates: A comparative approach to the bidirectional properties of consciousness. American Psychologist, 32, 329-337.
[4] Junichi Takeno, Keita Inaba, Tohru Suzuki. Experiments and examination of mirror image cognition using a small robot. Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation, 2005. CIRA 2005. Full paper available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1554325

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