Research bots leverage open-source for child-like intelligence
Researchers from across Europe are being trained in Genoa, Italy, this month in advance of taking possession of their very own iCub: a robot designed to have the physical and sensory capabilities of a two-and-a-half year old child.
For the researchers involved, one crucial characteristic of the new robot is that both the hardware and software are open-source and designed for easy collaboration. Whether the researchers build better cognitive architectures, learning algorithms, sensors or limbs, once their work has been proved on the European Commission-funded iCub, it can be shared and used to improve the next generation of machines.
Though not the first open-source robot, iCub underscores a trend that is poised to increase the productivity of artificial-intelligence (AI) researchers, in the same way the open-source movement has enhanced work in other sectors of design.
"Open-source is an open faucet in a desert," said Olivier Sigaud, a professor at the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics in Paris.
There are two models for driving long-term progress in robotics:
industrial and academic, said Giorgio Metta, an assistant professor at
the University of Genoa and the Italian Institute of Technology who is
among the leaders of the RobotCub Consortium. Industry is very
well-organized and can devote effort and money to the field. Academia,
though less structured, represents a large proportion of robotics
researchers.
It is for the latter group that the open-source approach is so important.
"I'm perhaps too enthusiastic about it, but I see only advantages: better collaboration, reproducibility of results, shared debugging, faster improvement, etc.," Metta said. "For theoretical research, standard publication in scientific journals and at conferences is OK. For robotics, sharing code is better."
