What's a robot? This deck shows the sheer variety of what we mean by robot and was used to introduce a couple of fantastic TED talks on robotics for a TED Salon at Newtown Public School (NSW, Australia) on 2nd April 2009. We followed a quick run through this deck with TED videos from: 1. Rodney Brooks 2. Hod Lipson 3. Caleb Chung And finally a very interesting and varied discussion. http://www.newtownkids.com/Home/ted-talks

1. TED talks at Newtown number one.
2 April 2009
Dr Michael Harries
ROBOTS – SUPERHUMAN KILLERS
OR WHAT?

2. Human like

7. Human-smart

11. threatening

15. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics:
1. a robot may not injure a human being or,
through inaction, allow a human being to come
to harm;
2. a robot must obey orders given to it by human
beings, except where such orders would conflict
with the First Law;
3. and a robot must protect its own existence as
long as such protection does not conflict with
the First or Second Law.

17. utilitarian

19. helpful

32. autonomous

35. emotional

39. bizzare

43. cute

47. Toy?

54. Today’s TED
 just smart enough
 capable
 learn and model the world
 believable, emotional, and appealing

55. Rodney Brooks
 MIT professor Rodney Brooks
 Australian
 Pioneer of bottom up robotics
 Studies and engineers robot intelligence
 Looking for the holy grail of robotics: the
AGI, or artificial general intelligence.

56. Hod Lipson
 Cornell University Associate Professor
 (a) Can we design machines that can design
other machines, and
 (b) Can we make machines that can make
other machines.

57. Caleb Chung
 Toy inventor
 Furby – rockstar status
 Pleo – “supercute baby dinosaur that begins
its emotional and intellectual development
when you pull it out of the box”
Slice of a talk