The Ultimate Machine

 

Alan Turing was an expert mathematician and used his skills as a logician and cryptanalyst to decipher codes. He was the head of Hut 9, a section responsible for breaking German ciphers during the Second World War; he created a machine called the Bombe to find settings for the Enigma machine—a machine used to code. He is also known for theorizing mathematical trends in morphogenesis and most of all his contribution to computer science as he is widely considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.1 He designed detailed logical circuit diagrams and created an Automatic Computing Machine that could calculate aircraft trajectories from radar data.2 He also worked with artificial intelligence with the creation of the Turing test which involves a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior to be indistinguishable from a human being, and said in one of his papers that “machines can think.”3 This is the subject of our final project. I believe it is inevitable that we will eventually create a robot that resembles a human in its entirety.

Our project consists of many different technologies we have today and if these were theoretically melded together, it would create a moderately sophisticated robot with human attributes. For example, we have Siri which can respond to speech, Kismet that can respond to different aspects of speech such as anger, facial recognition with Smart Ads by Google, and free will from the Sims. My contribution to this theoretical robot and this project is skeletal muscle movements. This movement combined with reactionary sensors can provide for movement along any surface by analyzing the terrain, avoiding objects (including people), determining which route, balancing, and reacting (e.g. getting pushed over). A project by the name of BigDog has accomplished a lot of this by having sophisticated sensors to include joint positioning, joint force, ground contact, and object/route determination. A simple example that describes this is the picture and video below.4,5

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Additional contributions to the theoretical robot are internal controls which mimic our internal organs. BigDog has sensors that monitor hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine functions, battery charge and others. 4

The complex movements of the smaller joints also need to be considered such as the elbow, wrist and fingers that also twist and turn.  An example of this is a robot arm designed by Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. Just the fingers itself are powered by a web of 38 tendons connected to the forearm in order to have the complex movements desired. Also the hand is incorporated with degrees of freedom and an ability to exert a force to grasp varied objects.6,7

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1.       “Alan Turing.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 23 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_turing#Turingery>

2.       “Automatic Computing Engine.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 23 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Computing_Engine>

3.       “Turing test.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 23 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Test>

4.       “BigDog – The Most Advanced Rough-Terrain Robot on Earth.” BostonDynamics. 23 May 2012. <http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_bigdog.html>

5.       “Boston Dynamics Big Dog (new video March 2008).” 17 March 2008. YouTube. Online Video Clip. Accessed on 23 May 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww>

6.       Guizzo, Erico. “Building a Super Robust Robot Hand.” IEEE spectrum. IBM. 23 May 2012. <http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/dlr-super-robust-robot-hand>

7.       “Super Robust Robot Hand.” 25 Jan 2011. YouTube. Online Video Clip. Accessed on 23 May 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=YqmRKqFqiok>