Taking the A out of AI means to think more about natural intelligence and what might be natural to a robot. Yes, Embodiment, comes screaming from the backrows. So what is embodiment and why is it important?
As is well known the symbolic approach to AI is interesting but incomplete with regard to real world intelligence. Traversing a doorstep or a flipped carpet edge, picking up a slippery piece of food or crumbs from the floor. Unsolved, all of it. So don’t tell me about autonomous cars and healthcare robots.
At Jetpack we are working to realize the transfer from research insights of our discipline, developmental robotics, into society with consumer products. Our robots. What needs to be addressed first for sustainable robotics in the 21st century is the sensorimotor gap that is present in all AI-branded products out there. It may look small and insignificant but do not let yourself be fooled. This is the layer that connects the silicon brain with outside world and contrary to the common belief, this layer is not trivial to navigate, sensation and perception is extremely noisy, incomplete and contradictory. But it can be done. This is called embodied intelligence and the adaptive sensorimotor layer provides a natural grounding for any embodied intelligence.
Jetpack – pet-like robots that react to touch. Because people are at the center of our approach, our mindset, and our world view. Cheers.