The Playful Machine

The Playful Machine PDF Author: Ralf Der
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642202535
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Autonomous robots may become our closest companions in the near future. While the technology for physically building such machines is already available today, a problem lies in the generation of the behavior for such complex machines. Nature proposes a solution: young children and higher animals learn to master their complex brain-body systems by playing. Can this be an option for robots? How can a machine be playful? The book provides answers by developing a general principle---homeokinesis, the dynamical symbiosis between brain, body, and environment---that is shown to drive robots to self- determined, individual development in a playful and obviously embodiment- related way: a dog-like robot starts playing with a barrier, eventually jumping or climbing over it; a snakebot develops coiling and jumping modes; humanoids develop climbing behaviors when fallen into a pit, or engage in wrestling-like scenarios when encountering an opponent. The book also develops guided self-organization, a new method that helps to make the playful machines fit for fulfilling tasks in the real world. The book provides two levels of presentation. Students and scientific researchers interested in the field of robotics, self-organization and dynamical systems theory may be satisfied by the in-depth mathematical analysis of the principle, the bootstrapping scenarios, and the emerging behaviors. But the book additionally comes with a robotics simulator inviting also the non- scientific reader to simply enjoy the fabulous world of playful machines by performing the numerous experiments.

The Playful Machine

The Playful Machine PDF Author: Ralf Der
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642202535
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book

Book Description
Autonomous robots may become our closest companions in the near future. While the technology for physically building such machines is already available today, a problem lies in the generation of the behavior for such complex machines. Nature proposes a solution: young children and higher animals learn to master their complex brain-body systems by playing. Can this be an option for robots? How can a machine be playful? The book provides answers by developing a general principle---homeokinesis, the dynamical symbiosis between brain, body, and environment---that is shown to drive robots to self- determined, individual development in a playful and obviously embodiment- related way: a dog-like robot starts playing with a barrier, eventually jumping or climbing over it; a snakebot develops coiling and jumping modes; humanoids develop climbing behaviors when fallen into a pit, or engage in wrestling-like scenarios when encountering an opponent. The book also develops guided self-organization, a new method that helps to make the playful machines fit for fulfilling tasks in the real world. The book provides two levels of presentation. Students and scientific researchers interested in the field of robotics, self-organization and dynamical systems theory may be satisfied by the in-depth mathematical analysis of the principle, the bootstrapping scenarios, and the emerging behaviors. But the book additionally comes with a robotics simulator inviting also the non- scientific reader to simply enjoy the fabulous world of playful machines by performing the numerous experiments.

How to Grow a Robot

How to Grow a Robot PDF Author: Mark H. Lee
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262043734
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
How to develop robots that will be more like humans and less like computers, more social than machine-like, and more playful and less programmed. Most robots are not very friendly. They vacuum the rug, mow the lawn, dispose of bombs, even perform surgery—but they aren't good conversationalists. It's difficult to make eye contact. If the future promises more human-robot collaboration in both work and play, wouldn't it be better if the robots were less mechanical and more social? In How to Grow a Robot, Mark Lee explores how robots can be more human-like, friendly, and engaging. Developments in artificial intelligence—notably Deep Learning—are widely seen as the foundation on which our robot future will be built. These advances have already brought us self-driving cars and chess match–winning algorithms. But, Lee writes, we need robots that are perceptive, animated, and responsive—more like humans and less like computers, more social than machine-like, and more playful and less programmed. The way to achieve this, he argues, is to “grow” a robot so that it learns from experience—just as infants do. After describing “what's wrong with artificial intelligence” (one key shortcoming: it's not embodied), Lee presents a different approach to building human-like robots: developmental robotics, inspired by developmental psychology and its accounts of early infant behavior. He describes his own experiments with the iCub humanoid robot and its development from newborn helplessness to ability levels equal to a nine-month-old, explaining how the iCub learns from its own experiences. AI robots are designed to know humans as objects; developmental robots will learn empathy. Developmental robots, with an internal model of “self,” will be better interactive partners with humans. That is the kind of future technology we should work toward.

How to Speak Machine

How to Speak Machine PDF Author: John Maeda
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399564438
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Visionary designer and technologist John Maeda defines the fundamental laws of how computers think, and why you should care even if you aren't a programmer. "Maeda is to design what Warren Buffett is to finance." --Wired John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent interdisciplinary thinkers on technology and design. In How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future. Technology is already more powerful than we can comprehend, and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire. And when a program's size, speed, and tirelessness combine with its ability to learn and transform itself, the outcome can be unpredictable and dangerous. Take the seemingly instant transformation of Microsoft's chatbot Tay into a hate-spewing racist, or how crime-predicting algorithms reinforce racial bias. How to Speak Machine provides a coherent framework for today's product designers, business leaders, and policymakers to grasp this brave new world. Drawing on his wide-ranging experience from engineering to computer science to design, Maeda shows how businesses and individuals can identify opportunities afforded by technology to make world-changing and inclusive products--while avoiding the pitfalls inherent to the medium.

Beyond Zero and One

Beyond Zero and One PDF Author: Andrew Smart
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1682190072
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
“Andrew Smart deftly shows why it’s time for us to think deeply about thinking machines before they begin thinking deeply about us.” —Douglas Rushkoff, author, Escaping the Growth Trap,Present Shock, and Program or Be Programmed “Provocative and cool.” —Cory Doctorow “Forget the Turing test—will the supersmart AIs that we hear so much about these days pass the acid test? In this playful, informative, and prescient book, Andrew Smart brings psychedelics into dialogue with neuroscience in order to challenge the whiz-bang computational views of human and machine sentience that dominate the headlines. Giving robots LSD sounds like a joke, but Smart is dead serious in his critique of the hidden and sometimes dangerous biases that underlie both popular and scientific fantasies of digital minds.” —Erik Davis, host of “Expanding Mind” and author, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information “Philosophy, psychedelics, robots, and the future; consciousness and intelligence, what else do you desire? Here you will see why those machines that reach singularity will be smarter than us and take over the world—and shall need to be conscious…and maybe they can only be conscious if they are human enough. The thesis of the book, and the path shown us by Smart, leads to a great trip, of imagination and philosophy, of maths and neuroscience.” —Dr. Tristan Bekinschtein, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge Can we build a robot that trips on acid? This is not a frivolous question, according to neuroscientist Andrew Smart. If we can’t, he argues, we haven’t really created artificial intelligence. In an exposition reminiscent of crossover works such as Gödel, Escher, Bach and Fermat’s Last Theorem, Andrew Smart weaves together Mangarevan binary numbers, the discovery of LSD, Leibniz, computer programming, and much more to connect the vast but largely forgotten world of psychedelic research with the resurgent field of AI and the attempt to build conscious robots. A book that draws on the history of mathematics, philosophy, and digital technology, Beyond Zero and One challenges fundamental assumptions underlying artificial intelligence. Is the human brain based on computation? Can information alone explain human consciousness and intelligence? Smart convincingly makes the case that true intelligence, and artificial intelligence, requires an appreciation of what is beyond the computational.

Talking to Robots

Talking to Robots PDF Author: David Ewing Duncan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524743615
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan considers 24 visions of possible human-robot futures—Incredible scenarios from Teddy Bots to Warrior Bots, and Politician Bots to Sex Bots—Grounded in real technologies and possibilities and inspired by our imagination. What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate about our human-robot future? For even as robots and A.I. intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology–it’s also about what robots tell us about being human.

A Playful Path

A Playful Path PDF Author: Bernard De Koven
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1304351823
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A Playful Path, the new book by games guru and fun theorist Bernard De Koven, serves as a collection of ideas and tools to help us bring our playfulness back into the open. When we find ourselves forgetting the life of the game or the game of life, the joy of form or the content, the play of brain or mind, body or spirit, this book can help us return to that which our soul is heir.

The Playful Revolution

The Playful Revolution PDF Author: Eugène Van Erven
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780253207296
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
" The Playful Revolution is an entertaining journal.... exemplary... " --Illusions " The Playful Revolution breaks new ground by documenting developmental theatre in Asia in its current socio-political and economic ethos... " --New Theatre Quarterly "[T]his book is the account of a personal journey through Asia, a written documentary of a quest to find political theatre that really works and that possesses a vitality and passion that the contemporary Western theatre seems to have lost." --from the book In this groundbreaking book, van Erven reports on the liberation theatre movements throughout Asia, which include a diverse collection of creative artists whose politics range from liberal to revolutionary but who all share a common goal of using grass-roots theatre as an agent of liberation.

The Imagination Machine

The Imagination Machine PDF Author: Martin Reeves
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1647820871
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A guide for mining the imagination to find powerful new ways to succeed. We need imagination now more than ever—to find new opportunities, rethink our businesses, and discover paths to growth. Yet too many companies have lost their ability to imagine. What is this mysterious capacity? How does imagination work? And how can organizations keep it alive and harness it in a systematic way? The Imagination Machine answers these questions and more. Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, Martin Reeves of Boston Consulting Group's Henderson Institute and Jack Fuller, an expert in neuroscience, provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a process for creating ideas and bringing them to life: The Seduction: How to open yourself up to surprises The Idea: How to generate new ideas The Collision: How to rethink your idea based on real-world feedback The Epidemic: How to spread an evolving idea to others The New Ordinary: How to turn your novel idea into an accepted reality The Encore: How to repeat the process—again and again. Imagination is one of the least understood but most crucial ingredients of success. It's what makes the difference between an incremental change and the kinds of pivots and paradigm shifts that are essential to transformation—especially during a crisis. The Imagination Machine is the guide you need to demystify and operationalize this powerful human capacity, to inject new life into your company, and to head into unknown territory with the right tools at your disposal.

Machine Learning for Kids

Machine Learning for Kids PDF Author: Dale Lane
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1718500572
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A hands-on, application-based introduction to machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) that guides young readers through creating compelling AI-powered games and applications using the Scratch programming language. Machine learning (also known as ML) is one of the building blocks of AI, or artificial intelligence. AI is based on the idea that computers can learn on their own, with your help. Machine Learning for Kids will introduce you to machine learning, painlessly. With this book and its free, Scratch-based, award-winning companion website, you'll see how easy it is to add machine learning to your own projects. You don't even need to know how to code! As you work through the book you'll discover how machine learning systems can be taught to recognize text, images, numbers, and sounds, and how to train your models to improve their accuracy. You'll turn your models into fun computer games and apps, and see what happens when they get confused by bad data. You'll build 13 projects step-by-step from the ground up, including: • Rock, Paper, Scissors game that recognizes your hand shapes • An app that recommends movies based on other movies that you like • A computer character that reacts to insults and compliments • An interactive virtual assistant (like Siri or Alexa) that obeys commands • An AI version of Pac-Man, with a smart character that knows how to avoid ghosts NOTE: This book includes a Scratch tutorial for beginners, and step-by-step instructions for every project. Ages 12+

The Fabulous Friend Machine

The Fabulous Friend Machine PDF Author: Nick Bland
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781443157483
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
A cautionary tale from the bestselling creator of the Cranky Bear books. Now in paperback! Popcorn is THE friendliest chicken at Fiddlesticks farm -- so friendly that she wins the annual prize for it . . . which she naturally gives away to someone who can use it more. She's just that nice of a bird. But when Popcorn finds a forgotten smartphone in the barn, she sets about making some brand new friends. Soon she is so busy sending messages to them that she begins to forget her old friends. When a meet-up with her new friends is about to end in disaster, the quick-thinking animals of Fiddlesticks Farm save the day . . . and one relieved chicken learns a lesson. The Fabulous Friend Machine is wry cautionary tale for these wired times, by the globally best-selling creator of the Cranky Bear books.