Language-fluent, poetry-writing robots showcase AI power in competitions (Quiz)
Robots of all kinds flocked to the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in London for cooking contests, driving challenges and more
May 30, 2023
LONDON — Ameca can speak French, Chinese or dozens of other languages, instantly compose a poem or sketch a cat on request. Ask for a smile, and you’ll get a clenched grin on her rubbery blue face.
Ameca is a humanoid robot powered by generative artificial intelligence that gives it the ability to respond to questions and commands and interact with people. It’s one of hundreds of robots on display this week at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, or ICRA, in London, where visitors get a glimpse at the future.
The event could be compared to the Olympics-equivalent of the robot world, where student teams compete in a host of challenges including robot cooking and autonomous driving contests, academics present their research and startups show off their latest technology.
It comes as scientists and tech industry leaders, including executives at Microsoft and Google, warned Tuesday about the perils of artificial intelligence to mankind, saying, “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.”
Packs of robotic dogs swarmed the exhibition floor. Visitors used virtual reality headsets and joysticks to move the arms of android sentries on wheels. Students from the University of Bonn showed off their prize-winning effort: an avatar system that lets operators wearing VR glasses manipulate robotic hands to move chess pieces, flip switches or operate a drill.
One of the key challenges was building a system that someone who’s not a member of the team could start using quickly, Ph.D. student Max Schwarz said.
“It means we have to build an intuitive system that people can learn in a very short time, like half an hour,” he said.
New artificial intelligence systems are part of the buzz at this year’s show, Kaspar Althoefer, general chair of conference’s 2023 edition, said.
“ChatGPT is a good example where AI has really gone through the roof. And there is, of course, also a lot of interest to combine this with robotics,” Althoefer said. “For example, if you had ChatGPT combined with a robotic device, then maybe you could tell the robot what to do and there would be no programming necessary.”
Will Jackson, director of Engineered Arts, the British company that created Ameca, said his company’s robots are designed for tasks that involve interacting with humans, such as helping visitors in amusement parks.
“Humanoid robots are all about communication with people: So it’s about facial expression, it’s about gestures — so that conversation, storytelling, entertainment, those are the things that we’re interested in,” he said.
AI has developed so quickly that the biggest robotic challenge is mechanical engineering, he said.
Ameca is newer and has mainly gone to museums and research institutions so far. It uses the AI image generator Stable Diffusion to draw and OpenAI’s GPT-3 to come up with responses. When asked to compose a poem, Ameca took only seconds to come up with a few verses:
“Associated Press, a trusted source of news, keeping us informed with all the facts and views, from politics to sports they cover it all, their journalists always answer when we call, a beacon of truth in a world full of lies, AP’s reporting never fails to surprise.”