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Jan. 30, 2009
Alexander Stoytchev and his three graduate students recently
presented one of their robot's long and shiny arms to a visitor.
Here, they said, swing it around. And so the visitor tentatively
gave the robot's left arm a few twists and twirls. The metal arm
was heavy, but still moved easily at its shoulder, elbow and
wrist joints.
Then the graduate students hit some keyboard commands and the
robot replayed those exact arm movements.
It was all incredibly quick, smooth and precise.
Stoytchev, an assistant professor of electrical and computer
engineering, says it won't be long before robot technology is
something we'll all see and experience.
"We'll have personal robots very soon," Stoytchev said. "We're
waiting for the first killer app. Hopefully, we can contribute
to that."
Star Wars
There's a little R2-D2-shaped trash can near the door to
Stoytchev's lab in the new Electrical and Computer Engineering
Building. Turns out the Star Wars movies were an inspiration to
a young Stoytchev back home in Bulgaria.
"My interest in robotics stems from the day I saw Star Wars for
the first time," the 34-year-old said. "I must have been in
second or third grade at that time, but the two robots in the
movie (R2-D2 and C-3PO) left a lasting impression on me."
That impression led Stoytchev to his high school's computer club
and then to computer science studies as an undergraduate at
American University in Bulgaria. He moved to Atlanta's Georgia
Institute of Technology for graduate work in computer science.
He was at Georgia Tech when he started working with robots.
His research specialty is developmental robotics, a blend of
robotics, artificial intelligence, developmental psychology,
developmental neuroscience and philosophy.
"It's one of the newest branches of robotics," Stoytchev said.
"People have learned that it's unrealistic to program robots
from scratch to do every task, so we're looking at human models.
Humans are not born knowing everything. It takes a really long
time to develop skills."
Stoytchev and his students are trying to figure out how a robot
can learn what children learn over the first two years of their
lives. (And child development is something Stoytchev is learning
firsthand; he and his wife have a 2-month-old son.)
Graduate
work
Stoytchev's graduate students are
working to develop software that will allow their lab robot to
learn and use different sets of skills:
Shane Griffith, who's from Cedar Rapids and is studying computer
engineering and human computer interaction, wants the robot to
learn on its own which everyday objects can be used as
containers and which cannot.
Jivko Sinapov, who's from Sofia, Bulgaria, and is studying
computer science and human computer interaction, wants the robot
to learn how to use objects as tools.
Matt Miller, who's also from Cedar Rapids and is studying
computer science, wants the robot to learn language.
Combine that developing software with existing robotics
hardware, and you've got a useful, smart robot.
"The essential goal of developmental robotics is for robots to
learn how to learn," Miller said. "We want them to learn how to
take a situation, adjust to it and learn from it."
A robot, for example, could learn to use containers by putting a
ball in a bucket and seeing what happens when that bucket is
pushed across a table. Is the ball pushed along with the bucket?
Or is it left behind? The researchers believe that simple
interactions like these hold the key to capturing the
common-sense knowledge about the real world that comes naturally
to people but is so difficult to capture in software code.
A future
with robots
Stoytchev was attracted to Iowa
State in 2005 by the College of Engineering's reputation and
research capabilities. And now he's directing Iowa State's
Developmental Robotics Laboratory and making his own research
contributions.
It's work that has him looking ahead.
"In the not-too-distant future, we will have personal robots
just like we have personal computers today," he said. "The
robots of the future will be generalists. They will be employed
in a large variety of tasks that require a lot more smarts and
autonomy than is currently possible. They will have the ability
to learn how to perform new tasks on their own without human
intervention."
Yes, he said, "The robots are coming. Are we ready?"
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