Scientists have created a self-aware robot that operates on its own and is able to repair itself, according to a study published in Science Robotics.
Engineers at Columbia University built a mechanical arm and programmed it without any knowledge of physics, geometry, or motor dynamics, but the robot worked out its purpose within 35 hours using deep learning, “a modern machine learning technique.”
The robotic arm was able to grasp objects at specific locations on the ground and move them into a receptacle with 100 percent success. It also wrote text using a marker and was able to say “hi.”
Researchers replaced the arm with one that was slightly longer and deformed, and the machine quickly updated its self-image to account for the issue and get back to work.
“This is perhaps what a newborn child does in its crib, as it learns what it is," Professor Hod Lipson, who leads the Creative Machines lab at Columbia, said in a press release.
"We conjecture that this advantage may have also been the evolutionary origin of self-awareness in humans.
“While our robot's ability to imagine itself is still crude compared to humans, we believe that this ability is on the path to machine self-awareness.”
The study is titled “Task-Agnostic Self-Modeling Machines.”
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