(Video Link)
If you were hoping that, after the Robopocalypse, you could earn your soylent green by flipping pancakes for our robot overlords, you're out of luck. Human researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology have taught a robot how to do it. No, they didn't refine it's programming; the robot learned how to complete the task:
The video shows a Barrett WAM 7 DOFs manipulator learning to flip pancakes by reinforcement learning. The motion is encoded in a mixture of basis force fields through an extension of Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMP) that represents the synergies across the different variables through stiffness matrices. An Inverse Dynamics controller with variable stiffness is used for reproduction.
The skill is first demonstrated via kinesthetic teaching, and then refined by Policy learning by Weighting Exploration with the Returns (PoWER) algorithm. Compared to policy-gradient approaches, the reward is treated as a pseudo-probability, which allows Reinforcement Learning to use probabilistic estimation methods such as Expectation-Maximization (EM).
After fifty attempts, the robot became a competent pancake-flipper.
via Popular Science | Previously: Rapid Pancake Sorting Robot
Comments (9)
http://www.robot-learning.de
and on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtqubguikMk
It's cool to see that the method used to learn Ball-in-a-cup can also be
used for flipping pancakes!
Its impossible to be electrocuted by a computer, unless you're going for a Darwing Award :) ... in that case you deserved it.
First, the wirings are always insulated, and touching them is not a risk. I've done it.
Second, no personal computer I've heard of uses 380 VOLTS. It might have been 380 WATTS, which is quite different from 380V. Actually 380W is a quite common value for PSUs, specially for older computers.
The currents in the Power supply Unit (aka PSU) are rather high, but the voltages are low (12V max). A working PSU can give you a shocking experience (pun intended!), but not enough to kill. You either have low voltage and high current or high voltage and low current.
Touching the electronic circuits in the computer (like motherboard) will not kill you, and the motherboard will be damaged before you even feel the shock (I've been there!!). Voltages in the motherboard vary from -12V to +12V, so, if he was extremely unlucky, the most voltage he could get from the motherboard would be 24V.
In a 110V shock, studies show that you need at least 4 mA to even starting feeling the "tingling". A real shock starts at 300mA. An average size adult man needs at least 5A to die from a 110V shock. anything below that might not kill you, but might give you varying consequences, from brain and heart damage to severe burns.