Which "Laws" Should Our Modern Robots Use?

Ok science fiction/robot story fans, the next three lines  should be instantly identifiable. 

1)  A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2)  A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law.

3)  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.

If you said anything other that Dr. Asimov's three robot behavioral constraints.  Asimov used these"laws" as foils for his story plots concerning robot's behavior often with a conflict between a law and what the robot needs to accomplish.

The curious thing about these laws is that many people know of them and consider them real restrictions on anything vaguely robotic.  So the problem at hand is which laws can realistically be incorporated and which are beyond our tech. 

Case in point The robot controlled car.  Here is the instance that The New-Yorker 

• Your car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when errant school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk?

Chances are you have only a few thousandth of a second to make the complicated maneuver. 

Now add in all the robotic devices that the military uses.  I sounds almost impossible to implement and in the next  couple of decades the problem will most likely triple in complexity.

Here is the url to the New Yorker article.                        

Fly By Wire, Where?

Here is a question for ya...name the conveyance that takes input from the controller, feeds it to various computers through digital input.  These computers then make changes to the various other control systems that control how the vehicle responds.  This system is better known as fbw in many of the systems it is incorporated into. 

Now if you had said the General Dynamic's F-16 Flying Falcon (or Viper) using Fly By Wire tech. you would be right.... but we are not talking about planes.  No, cars!

That's right, in a partial step towards driverless technology, Nissan plans to sell cars controlled by steer-by-wire technology as early as 2013. 

Nissan says that the fbw system would transmit the drivers intention to the proper systems much faster than hydraulic and mechanical systems. 

Also the FBW system insulates the driver from unnecessary feed-back from the road, like uneven or rough driving surfaces.

It is bound to be greeted unenthusiastically by some drivers.  From the article:

• In 2004 Mercedes-Benz faced customers complaints that its Sensotronic brake-by-wire system - which used an electrical link to control vehicles' brake pads - sometimes failed.
• Although the vehicles had a hydraulic back-up it meant some owners had experienced longer stopping distances.
• The firm ultimately recalled about two million vehicles and dropped the feature.

Fly By Wire article here on BBC

Self Driving Car Test

I first saw this short demo and they titled it, Car for a Blind Man. Now that was most likely a bit of shock value because what this film really shows is a test of the Google self driving car. The fact that they put a blind man behind the wheel is a bit of theater in my mind, but you CAN see the value in the argument, however the self same argument can be said to work just as well on riding the public transport bus. Still and all, you have technology here that even though you see it working, there is still that wow factor one that makes it difficult too get it straight in your mind.

Check out this piece.

Google Robot Car Crashes?!

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. After 160,000 miles, Google's test-bed Toyota Prius crashed near Google HQ in Mountain View. Witnesses to the accident reported that the crash caused a five-car pile-up.

Google has been testing out the cars in California and Nevada and this was the first time one has had an accident. The bizarre accident occurred when Google’s car rear-ended another Prius that hit a Honda Accord, which struck another Accord that hit another Prius. The truly bizarre part of the accident witnesses are claiming the crash was the fault of a human at the car’s controls!

From the article:

• It’s not yet proven that a human was driving but experts say the car’s sensors, cameras and lasers would have avoided a collision.

Ironically here is Sebastian Thrun expounding on the future of robotic cars




Read complete story from the DailyMail online here

Cheap Fuel Cells, A Very Real Possibility

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a platinum-free catalyst in the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell that uses carbon, iron and cobalt. This could significantly lower the cost of fuel cells in general. Up to this point hydrogen fuel cells used platinum, lots of it. And as you know, the metal is rare and frightfully expensive (according to the Wired article, Platinum goes for $1800 an ounce! ouch!). The price of platinum alone will put the cost of even a modest car at around $50,000.

Hydrogen fuel cells offer all the benefits of an electric vehicle without the drawbacks, mainly that of short range and long recharge times.

Conventional hydrogen fuel cells us the platinum as a catalyst. The new design uses a carbon-iron-cobalt catalyst to complete the conversion of hydrogen and oxygen into water. The other good news is that the carbon based fuel cell is on par for durability with it's platinum counterpart.

The team at Los Alamos National Laboratory are hesitant to quantify just how much cheaper the new fuel cell would be, not because they fear that they have over estimated the saving, but under-estimated it. Platinum is likely to become much more expensive after car manufacturers start installing platinum based cell in 2015, but since the elements for the new catalyst are readily available, it is likely that it will vastly lower the price.

Wired Fuel Cell article
Wikipedia article on fuel cells

1000mph "Bloodhound" ssc in the works!

You thought the Thrust ssc was fast just because it broke the sound barrier? Well check out the mind numbing Bloodhound ssc that is in the works. This bad boy is is designed for speeds over 1000mph! Interestingly enough, several of the people involved in the Thrust vehicle also worked on the Bloodhound, including driver Andy Green. Builders look towards 2012 for completion and testing, though only a full sized model is all they have to show. But the video is damn cool. Check it out!

Supersonic Car Demo: Bloodhound SSC @ Yahoo! Video

Thanks to Tim Sayell for the link!

Audi Calamaro totally wild concept auto

I think the engineers at Audi have overdone it a bit with the recreational drugs, but I do have to give em a "hell yeah" with this totally off the wall bit of designer concept engineering. Most concept cars that I have seen has at least some grounding in conventional transport but not the effort that brought forth the Calamaro. This one goes so fast standing still that it doesn't even have wheels! Yep, a flying car. Well can you call it a car? I mean IT HAS NO FREAKIN WHEELS! But I would be so into calling shotgun in this ride.

<- Dvice ->

Meet the BMW "GINA"

We have been seeing many articles about the wildly different concept car from BMW called GINA, but other than descriptions and a few static images, we were left only guessing. Well let me treat you to a video of the car just sitting still and doing stuff that I swear you would drag your naked body over glass and hot coals just to drive around the block. Enjoy!