European Research Team Strives to Make Robotic Systems More Decisive

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Press Release, 14 Jul 2006 We are sitting in a soccer stadium and discover our neighbor sitting in the 10th row. We recognize him with no difficulty at all, even though he is wearing sunglasses and a cap in his club colors. Complex recognition processes like this work because the brain, sensory organs and nerve pathways are able to pick up stimuli and process them. The ability to classify things appears to be a fundamental characteristic of human intelligence, and one that gives robots a real "headache." In situations in which a robot has no access to knowledge of a pre-defined environment, and pre-programmed control is therefore not possible, the robot will tend to fail miserably in its task. But it is precisely autonomous robots capable of acting in response to a given situation that could be of great use to humans. Read more