Artificial Intelligence once something that people thought could only come out of science fiction novels and movies. But today that could all change becauseof a robot called Cog. Cog is an artificial intelligence that its creatorshave given a body. He is the future of AI and a new beginning for the field.His creator , Rogney Brooks, a professor of electrical engineering and computerscience, thought of creating cog, from inspiration from an artificialintelligence that was depicted in the movie, "2001:A Space Odyssey." In themovie, Hal, the AI, controlled a large space craft. Instead of creating a brainin a box like in the movie, Rodney is putting the mind of a human into the bodyof a robot. Cog isnt yet a true humanoid robot. Right now he is little morethat a head, neck , shoulders, chest and waist. He is perched on a gray steelpedestal bolted to the floor of the Artificial intelligence lab at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Still no other machine has come closerto the humanoid robots of science fiction. Cog foreshadows the day in whichrobots will interact normally with us. Cogs creators are trying to do justthat.Cog is a very far cry from what HAL was thought, because he has some anatomy. HAL was just basically a brain in a box. What they are trying to accomplishwith cog, is to equip a brain with a body, that has sensors so that it can learnabout its environment on its own, much like a infant does.Creating a humanoid was a big leap for Brooks. His last venture in to the AIworld made a big impression on the artificial-Intelligence community. Hecreated small robots the scurried around like insects. It turns out though,that these small creatures have much in common with Cog. They both do no usethe usual AI approach that most other Mobil robots use. These other robots,would have to carry a complete map of the world that the machine will encounter. That would work fine in the lab, Brooks reasoned, but what about t...
