AI Panic!

Actually I didn’t know that this record wasn’t already in the hands of a machine, but now it surely is: solving a Rubik’s cube as fast as possible. Mike Dobson and David Gilday built a robot called CubeStormer II, using sets of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and a Samsung GALAXY S II smartphone. Have a look at the video:

While definitely easier than understanding Go, the challenges here are different, and the solution is remarkable for a couple of reasons:

• Image Recognition: The state of the cube has to be recorded and recognized from an image. Everyone familiar with image recognition knows that this is a very error-prone task and there are hoards of PhD students and researchers working on recognizing faces and objects in pictures. That said, recognizing the colors of squares on a regular cube is not too bad, especially with good and even lighting.
• Finding an optimized solution, quickly: This is one of the easier challenges, as the state-space of a Rubik’s cube is not too big, and a path to a solution can be found reasonably quickly. While it might require something a bit faster than brute-force, there are plenty of fast algorithms out there. Still, it needs to run in milliseconds and convert the solution into a series of motor commands for the machine.
• Fast and accurate motor control: Solving a Rubik’s cube very quickly requires (apart from a well-lubricated cube) very fast and accurate control of the layers. Once the robotic grip of them slips or fails to align perfectly, it’s basically game over, and would probably also lead to destruction of the mechanics.
• Availability of parts: The robot was built using a mobile phone and Lego, both of which are readily available. While it might use some custom parts to optimise for speed, nothing would stop you to re-build a similar robot using your smartphone and your Lego-set. I’ve built a small, pointless robot using an Arduino and Lego myself, and it’s easy and good fun for a lazy weekend!

The computing power in modern smart-phones is incredible, and combined with cheap mechanical sets such as the Lego Mindstorm NXT, which can be found in many kids rooms these days, robots can be built that are better at their tasks than any human. This trend will continue and accelerate, and will be used for good and evil, I’m sure (Panic Level: +1%). While this might give reason to worry about the safety of kids playing with extremely computationally powerful toys, I believe it is crucial to grow up playing and experimenting with them, as an increase in automatisation and “robotification” seems inevitable at this point.

There are plenty of websites that keep on top of the hobbyist efforts, such as Hackaday.com.

(via SingularityHub)