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Honda teams up with MIT and others to develop curious AI
Honda is teaming up with three universities on a project aimed at developing curious artificial intelligence. The new three-year initiative, dubbed the Curious Minded Machine, will work towards an intelligent system that can learn continuously, much like a human, and can actually "learn to learn," as children do. "Our ultimate goal is to create new types of machines that can acquire an interest in learning and knowledge, and the ability to interact with the world and others," Soshi Iba, a principal scientist at the Honda Research Institute, said in a statement. "We want to develop Curious Minded Machines that use curiosity to serve the common good by understanding people's needs, empowering human capability and ultimately addressing complex societal issues."
Honda's HEARBO robot can separate and locate four sound sources at once (video)
Robots are already adept at all manner of things, from hunting to feeling, but over at Honda's Research Institute, one team is focused on an ability bots aren't so hot at yet -- hearing. Puny humans can quickly deduce the direction of a sound and assess its significance, while also ignoring unimportant background noise. Honda is trying to replicate these traits with HEARBO, a robot with eight microphones hidden in its head. Using its HARK software system, HEARBO can distinguish between and locate the position of up to four unique sound sources simultaneously to within one degree of accuracy. It can also filter out din generated by its own 17 motors with a method called "ego-noise suppression." HEARBO's sound localization skills are shown in the first video below, while the second proves it can beat match, dance poorly, and isolate voice commands when music is playing and motors are whirring. The overall goal of Honda's efforts is to generally advance intelligent speech and sound recognition technology. We can't help but wonder, however, if bots will just end up using it to pinpoint our screams when the inevitable occurs.
