Ten Things the Future will hold!

Over the next few days I'm going to list off 10 interesting things I think technology and science will have developed in the near (and far) future. To start with:

1. AI (or Artificial Intelligence):

  

"Learning never exhausts the mind" 

- Leonardo Da Vinci

In the future AI will be more readily available and far more accurate as robotics, neuroscience and other studies of a humans (and other animals) learning process. Although at the moment some of our AI technology is fascinating.

iCub

Meet iCub, the study into artificial intelligence of a toddlers abilities to learn and adapt. Psychologists and researchers studied the process in which a toddler learns and adapts to it's environment and this information helped to design iCub - the robot with toddler-like capabilities.

Many of these robots are in different departments round the world in order to see how the robot can learn a specific task - i.e identifying and picking up an object, for example a ball. Learning environments that the robot is tested in are similar to that of a toddlers and since this technology is capable of learning and retaining information it can remember these changes and adapt to them.

This can be used to teach iCub things such as learning different objects, and after responding to a command (e.g 'pick up the red ball') being able to pick it up.

Other things being learnt by these robots are more behavioural aspects such as getting scared when a loud noise occurs or even more simple tasks (well, simple to a toddler) such as crawling and avoiding objects.

This video shows some of the many features of iCub - recognizing objects 'pour the cereal in the cup' and knowing what to do with these objects.

This has only been a short post but I will do the second in this series on future inventions tomorrow, Thanks - Chris.