Hey, iCub.
Hello.
Have a look at this mug.
Let me have a look at the mug.
iCub and I have just met, so I'm helping iCub figure out
what this object looks like.
iCub is actually tracking my body.
Those lines represent its interpretation of my skeleton.
What it wants to do is be able to distinguish me and my body
from the object.
It usually takes about 30 seconds for iCub to learn...
Excellent. Now I know the mug.
So I have taught iCub not just to recognise the object,
but to associate the name with the object.
Now let's see if we can get it to distinguish one object,
like the mug, from something else in the environment.
What is close to the mug?
The closest object is the sunflower.
So this shows you something pretty extraordinary.
You can teach iCub a new object, and within seconds it
has the ability to go into its memory and compare
it to some other object that it has learned
in the past, and this is really crucial for robots.
If they are going to function in a human environment,
they are going to be in your apartment,
taking things out of the refrigerator,
they need to be able to distinguish between one object and another
very much the way humans do it.
And this is the beginning of that process.
So the key thing about the iCub is that it learns.
We don't think we can programme all the features and functionalities
and intelligence that we need for an autonomous robot,
so the best way is actually to go through learning,
so have the robot collect enough data, like vision,
like touch, like a space for manipulating objects,
and learning to recognise them, and making a lot of mistakes
and eventually learning how to solve problems.
It is a bit like a child.
You learn through play, and the idea with the robot
was exactly the same.
This version of iCub has an improved vision system that allows
it to sense movement and, in a sense, to pay attention to them,
that may not be the proper scientific term,
but that's what it feels like.
have got this paddle, and once the iCub sees the image that I am
moving in front of it...
..it will track the paddle...
..and follow it wherever I move it.
iCub 's learning system isn't specific to any one task.
That means it can learn many different kinds of things.
Such as playing the piano.
And once iCub has learned something, like Tai Chi, that learning
can be shared with all other iCubs.
In the future, even a brand-new robot will come with a vast amount
of experience pre-installed, and that's how robots
will finally become commonplace.
So, you can imagine a future where every domestic robot has,
through its shared memory, already attended dozens
of emergencies, like fires or cardiac arrests,
that it has made millions of cups of coffee,
driven thousands of miles in every make of car
or walked every breed of dog on the planet.
There is a theory that it takes a human 10,000 hours to master
a new skill.
Well, robots could come with a million times that competence
the moment you switch them on.
think robots are going to be one of those technologies that seems
to be coming online kind of slowly, until all of a sudden
they are everywhere.
So, will robots take over the world?
Might they, like in so many movies, rise up against us?
Not everyone thinks this will happen.
Before we have super intelligent robots,
we would have quite intelligent robots, and before that,
we would have somewhat intelligent robots.
If those robots were going to be evil, well,
those somewhat intelligent robots would be certainly really annoying,
and really rude to us.
So there would be a lot of co-evolution of things,
and that gets missed by looking at Hollywood movies and leads people
astray in thinking about the future.