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Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Paper Review: The Seven Ages of Information Retrieval (1)
In these paper review series, I will summarize interesting papers I read in a non-technical way (as best as I can) and write my own opinions too. Since my research interest is in AI robotics, the papers I review will mostly relate to interesting topics. So this is a good way of reading about research ideas but not worry too much about the math involved. I will also provide links to the actual paper, so if you want, you can read the actual paper after reading my review.
The paper I review today talks about the history of Information Retrieval. How would this relate to robots? I will review the answer in my future posts, so stay tuned.
Here's the PDF link for the paper "The Seven Ages of Information Retrieval" by Michael Lesk. And here below is the first part of my review:
This paper uses Shakespeare’s concept of seven ages of man to describe/predict the evolution of Information Retrieval from 1945 to 2010. Throughout the paper, the author tried to compare two “competing” approaches to IR: simple statistical methods – statistics (Warren Weaver’s approach) and sophisticated information analysis – artificial intelligence (Vannevar Bush’s approach). Keep in mind that the paper was written in 1996, just at the beginning of the Internet/dot com boom. That gives us this unfair advantage of being able to criticize some of the predictions the author made (just as the author had the advantage in criticizing Bush’s predictions).
In the childhood stage of IR (1945-1955), people still worked with very old technology. Having no idea how technology completely changed people’s lives starting from the end of the century, Bush predicted about the evolution of IR. He believed that photographic inventions (such as ultramicrofiche) would have great impact on libraries and IR, which the author didn’t agree. Bush also predicted automatic typing from dictation and OCR, which was not quite achieved at 1996. However, his prediction about the capabilities of computer systems became reality in the 1960s. The 7.5TB/user storage he predicted was far from 1996’s reality. Bush predicted individual interfaces personalized to the user and people would search from notes before search in scientific papers, but not until after the 1970s, it was difficult to get information into computers. The first IR system was built in the 1950s, which used indexes and concordances.
In the schoolboy stage (1960s), the first large scale information systems were built. Computers can search indexes must better than human, which demanded more detailed indexing. However, indexing could also become too expensive, hence arose the idea of free-text searching, which eliminates the need for manual indexing. Objections pointed out that selecting the right words might not be the correct label for a given subject. One solution is official vocabularies. The idea of recall and precision also came out as methods for evaluating IR systems, and they showed that free-text indexing was as effective as manual indexing and much cheaper. New IR techniques such as relevance feedback, multi-lingual retrieval were invented. The 1960s also was the start of research into natural language question-answering, and AI researchers began building systems to retrieval actual answers instead of documents, which turned out to be fragile.
In the adulthood stage (1970s), development of computer typesetting, word processing and the availability of time-sharing systems allowed IR to mature into real systems. Some of the early large-scale systems include Dialog, Orbit, BRS, OCLC, and Lexis. The most important research progress was the rise of probabilistic information retrieval with techniques such as term frequency. On the AI side, the key subjects in the 1970s were speech recognition and the beginning of expert systems. AI researchers felt they were attacking more fundamental and complex problems and that there would be inherent limits in the IR string-searching approach. They built programs that mapped information into standard patterns, but these tend to operate off databases rather than text files. The IR camp felt the AI researchers did not do evaluated experiments, and in fact built only prototypes which were at grave risk of not generalizing.
In the maturity stage (1980s), more information was available in machine-readable form and kept that way. There was also an enormous increase in the number of databases available on the online systems. Online Public Access Catalog (OPACS) developed during this period and many current magazines and newspapers were now online. There was increasing interest in new kinds of retrieval methods such as sense disambiguation using machine-readable dictionaries and computational linguistics. These would all fall under the statistical kind of retrieval. Because of the size of large commercial systems, evaluation of IR became very difficult. The widespread use of CD-ROM was a key technology change, which fit well with traditional information publishing economics and developed into a real threat to the online systems. Meanwhile, the AI community continued expert systems and knowledge representation languages. However, later in the decade, the failure of expert systems to deliver on their initial promises caused a movement away from this area, which marked the “AI winter”.
In the mid-life crisis stage (1990s), another technology revolution came out, the Internet. What’s remarkable is not that everyone is accessing information, but that everyone is providing information on a free basis. This matches the model Bush forecasted where each user is organizing information of personal interest and trading this with others. Classification type search engines (such as Yahoo) also came out. Internet also became a standard medium for publishing. Another important technology was scanning, which lowered the cost or digitizing publications. The Federal government also started a Digital Library research initiative. However, there is still very large scatter in the performance of retrieval systems, not only by question but even over individual relevant documents within answer lists. The author didn’t mention how the AI side was during this period.
In the fulfillment stage (2000s), the author predicted how IR might evolve. He believed that more ordinary questions can be answered by reference to online materials rather than paper materials, new books are offered online and there are guidance companies on the web so that the lack of any fundamental advances in knowledge organization will not matter. He thought the area required more research was in the handling of images, sounds and video. It was noted that online publish won’t pose a problem for academic publishing, but will do for commercial publishing. He further discussed the dramatic storage requirements for video contents.
In the retirement stage (2010), the author forecasted that the basic job of conversion to machine-readable form is done and great deal of multimedia information will be available, which are as easy to deal with as text. Internationalism will become a major issue. As to research, work will focus on improving the systems and learn new ways to use the new IR systems. There might even be PhDs in probabilistic retrieval.
The author further pointed out some potential problems such as illegal copying (pirating in today’s terms), copyright law itself, abundance of junk and cluttering on the Internet, difficulty for people to upload, legal liability and public policy debates restricting technological development and availability. At the end, the author also expressed positive views that Bush’s dream will be achieved in one lifetime and the job of organizing information could have higher status in the very near future.
[To be continued....]
Bill Gates does the Robot!
(See hi res video at http://www.microsoft.com)
(Rumor says no more Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates duo!)
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Robot of the Day: Atom (Astroy Boy)
This is the first ever "Robot of the Day" blog post, and I just feel obligated to designate this "honor" to Atom (aka 阿童木, Astro Boy), a fictional robot character created in Japanese manga (动画) and television animation series in the 1950-60s, because the lovable, brave, and peace-loving Atom inspired a whole generation of kids, some of whom went on to become robotics researchers (me included). Some people even claim that Atom was the big reason why Japan is at the forefront of android development today! In a WIRED magazine article, "The 50 Best Robots Ever", Atom was ranked at #2 dispite being only a fictional character. Impressive!!
I still remember when I was just a little kid, the entire neighborhood of over 100 families shared one television set - a 14-inch color TV (this might give you some clues about how old I am), which was locked in an iron cabinet in a spacious openning by the neighbourhood. Every evening at around 6:30pm, people (mostly kids and some adults) would start taking spots in front of the TV cabinet with their small wooden stools. Of course, a good spot (close to the TV) might have required even earlier arrival. At exactly 7:00pm, the uncle in charge of the TV cabinet would unlock the cabinet and turn on the TV. As soon as the theme song started to play, the chaotic crowd would immediately quiet down and soon everyone was immersed in the adventures of a cute little robot named Atom. Ask anyone who was born in the 70s in China, he/she could probably still sing a few lines from the famous Atom theme song (see video below)....
- Jet engines under his feet for flying;
- Ability to speak 60 different languages;
- Ability to distinguish good and evil;
- 1,000 times more powerful hearing than human;
- Strong searchlights as his eyes;
- Ass cannon (later changed to finger machine gun in the new TV series)
- 100,000 horse power (later improved to 1 million horse power)
Interesting facts:
- In real life April 7, 2003, a Japanese city officially registered Atom as an honor citizen and issued certification of citizenship.
- In 2009, a feature film version of Astro Boy is scheduled to hit the theater screens.
When you have good thoughts or ideas, write it down before you forget.
Monday, June 30, 2008
AI and Robots: What is AI (2)
Traditionally, AI researchers believed that perception (sensor data) about the world feeds into cognition (the brain of the agent), and then cognition would issue commands for action (actuator) that will affect the world. This seemed to be the right model that mimic human behaviors. However, in mid-1980s, a then a junior faculty member at Stanford, Rodney Brooks, proposed a different model in which perception directly interacted with action, and cognition simply observes perception and action. He further followed this idea and started a new branch of AI called Behavior-based Robotics.
Rodney believes the path to creating intelligent creatures is only by building actual physical creatures that respond to the complexity of the environment in which they must navigate, and all the power of intelligence arose from the coupling of perception and actuation systems (even just the simple "muscle reflexes" ). The robot shown on the left is an example. It was able to balance, walk and prowl with simple reactive controls (in another word, it doesn't have a brain). It seemed that intelligent, complex behaviors emerged out of simple reactions. Later biology research was able to confirm that the balancing skills of cats come directly from the spinal cord, instead of the brain. As Rodney describes it, intelligence is "in the eye of the beholder".
For example, we all know that a sunflower always turns its "head" toward the sun (Heliotropism ). This appeared to be somewhat of an "intelligent" behavior. However, such behavior is simply the result of chemical reaction. With the increase of potassium ions the osmotic potential in the pulvinus cells becomes more negative and the cells absorb more water and elongate, turning the face of the flower to the sun.
If you are still not convinced, here's another exmaple (try at your own risk). Gently touch a burning stove top with your finger and then observer. If you ponder it carefully, you might realize that your hand moved away from the burning stove top before you actually felt the burning sensation. The seemingly "intelligent" behavior of moving your hand away happened before your brain could even sense the pain, so how could it issue a command to retract your hand? The answer is that the command didn't come from your brain at all.
That's why I tend to lean toward the last definition of artificial intelligence: systems that act rationally. It doesn't matter much how intelligence was achieved; what matters the most is that I made myself believe the agent displayed intelligent behaviors.
So where did the name "artificial intelligence" come from? In 1956 (probably the most important year in the history of AI), John McCarthy (shown in the picture on the right), a researcher at Dartmouth College then, convinced Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon and Nathaniel Rochester to help him organize a two-month workshop at Dartmouth in the summer of 1956. There were 10 attendees in all, including Tranchard More, Arthur Samuel, Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon. The workshop didn't lead to any new breakthorughts, but it did introduce all the major figures to each other and for the next 20 years, the field would be dominated by these people and their students and colleagues. The most important thing that came out of the workshop was an agreement to adopt McCarthy's new name for the field: "artificial intelligence".
The term "Artificial Intelligence" is an oxymoron. How could something "artificial" be "intelligent"? That's why for most people, there's always a mythical component to it. An artifact appears "intelligent" because it seems to do intelligent things with magical power. However, once the secret of how the artifact was able to perform is revealed, all of a sudden, the sense of "intelligence" is diminished. It's almost like magician tricks. Once you know he hid the rabbit in the hat beforehand, it's not so impressive anymore.
For example, if you present a music box to a person from 1000 years ago, he would believe the box is magical (in a sense, "intelligent"), but if you let him take it apart and investigate further, he will for sure change his mind. The same applies to modern day artifacts. A car that parallel parks itself might make you go "wow" and appreciate the power of "artificial intelligence". However once I explain to you that the computer only issued simply driving commands following simple if-then rules based on sensor data, all of a sudden, the car doesn't seem so "intelligent" to you anymore.
This is a very interesting phenomenon, and is also a great challenge/motivation for AI researchers. It seems that all AI problems solved are no longer AI problems, because we already know the secrets/algorithms behind, and they are simply procedures to follow and conditions to check. Only AI problems unsolved still have the mysterious "intelligence" we have to identify and create.
This explains why AI is an evolving concepts. A purely mechanical device would have been considered "AI" in ancient days, but definitely not in present time. Maybe one day all the electronic computer related products "cease" to be "AI" and only biotechnology with cells acting as computers will be.
It's also worth noting that "AI" is almost everywhere in our everyday lives in almost every field you can think of. When you sit in your office, your PDA "intelligently" remind you of your appointments; your computer "intelligently" auto-fills text for you as you type, and the word processor "intelligently" point out the typos and syntax errors you made. When you pick up the phone to call for some kind of service, the computer telephone agent "intelligently" routes you to different departments based on your needs (or even handle it for you). When you drive on the street, the street lights "intelligently" change based on the traffic flow, the security cameras "intelligently" track down unusual behaviors (and "intelligently" take a picture of your license plate if you run the red light). When you sit comfortably in front of your home computer, whether browsing the Internet or do online shopping, the web site will "intelligently" recommend stories or products tailored specifically to you. Even your air conditioning system "intelligently" adjust the temperature for you while your sprinkler system "intelligently" kicks on to performs its routine task. I guess one great part about this is the amplitude of job prospects! ;)
Despite so many confusion and ambiguity, AI remains the "field I would most like to be in" by scientists in many disciplines. As Russell and Norvig described it: "A student in physics might reasonable feel that all the good ideas have already been taken by Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and the rest. AI, on the other hand, still has openings for several full-time Einsteins.
Now have I convinced you to become an AI researcher just like me? :)
Additional Information:
- John McCarthy - Cognitive Scientist. 1971 Turing Award winner. Inventor of the Lisp programming language.
- Marvin Minsky - Cognitive Scientist. Co-founder of MIT's AI lab.
- Claude Shannon - Electronic Engineer and Mathematician. "Father of Information Theory."
- Nathaniel Rochester - Computer Scientist. Invented IBM 701 and wrote first assembler.
- Arthur Samuel - Pioneer in computer gaming. The Samuel Checkers-playing Program appears to be the world's first self-learning program.
- Ray Solomonoff - Invented the concept of algorithmic probability around 1960.
- Oliver Selfridge - "Father of Machine Perception."
- Allen Newell - Researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology. 1975 Turing Award winner. He contributed to the Information Processing Language (1956) and two of the earliest AI programs, the Logic Theory Machine (1956) and the General Problem Solver (1957) (with Herbert Simon).
- Herbert Simon - Political Scientist. One of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century. 1975 Turing Award winner. 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics winner.
Intelligence is "in the eye of the beholder" -- Rodney Brooks
Friday, June 27, 2008
AI and Robots: What is AI (1)
The image you see here is from the famous chess match between Garry Kasparov, a world champion, and Deep Blue, a super computer built by IBM, that took place in 1997. The computer was able to "beat" the world champion. Despite the argument that this match was not "fair" to Kasparov, at least there's one thing we could all agree: Deep Blue certainly showed signs of Artificial Intelligence. But, what really is Artificial Intelligence? Is it simply intelligence created artificially?
In order to understand what is Artificial Intelligence, we might have to first define intelligence. But what is intelligence? Do the bacterias on the keyboard I am typing on have intelligence? Are the rose bushes in my garden (which adds more to my yard work load) intelligent? How about the butterfly sitting on the rose pedal? How about the planet called earth we all live on? Different people might have different answers. I don't want to get too philosophical here, so I'll simply define intelligence as the ability to reason and learn. I know this is still rather vague. Under my definition, all those things I mentioned above could still be categorized as intelligent beings. If you are still not satisfied, you are also welcome to read and modify the wikipedia page on intelligence.
So how should we define Artificial Intelligence then? Again, many people would give you very different definitions. Russel and Norvig summarized all the different definitions into four categories in the book "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach":
Systems that think like humans | Systems that think rationally |
Systems that act like humans | Systems that act rationally |
The top ones focus on the ability to reason while the bottom ones emphasize on behavior. The left ones relate AI to human performance while the right ones only measure rationality. All these categories have their merits, but I personally lean toward the last one: Systems that act rationally.
When we try to create Artificial Intelligence, it is easy to try to model after human beings. Why? Because first of all, human beings are intelligent beings (arguably, there are stupid people too). Furthermore, we certainly understand ourselves easier than say, the white mice used in scientific experiments. We try to understand our reasoning and logic behind our thinking and behaviors, and then try to apply the same kind of ideas to an AI agent and have the agent mimic us. There are certainly still many things we don't know about ourselves, and the research in AI is actually a great way to try to understand ourselves better (individually or socially).
It is necessary here to mention the famous "Turing Test". Alan Turing (shown in the picture on the right) is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. The "Turing Award" named after him is considered the Nobel Prize in computing. In a 1950 paper he proposed an operational definition of measuring artificial intelligence: The computer passes the test if a human interrogator, after posing some written questions, cannot tell whether the written responses come from a person or not (Russell & Norvig). You can think of this in terms of a chat window. If you think who you are chatting with is human, but the other entity chatting with you is in fact a computer program, then this program would have passed the "Turing Test". (You can check out this chatbot if you know a little bit of Chinese.) Interestingly, some "flirting chatbots" are reported fooling lonely Russians into giving out their financial information. Can we say these AI agents passed the "Turing Test"?
There are other intelligent species on earth too, and many times we learn from them because they might do better in certain areas. Many AI researchers also get inspired by biological beings and develop AI algorithms accordingly to solve problems related to human. In my opinion, AI is really the study and expansion of human intelligence.
However, human also do stupid things. We pollute the world we live in, we destroy forests, and people get killed in wars or genocides. Sometimes we are also irrational; we let emotion take over and let that affect our judgment. Therefore, the rationality approach to the definition of AI has good reasons. So what is thinking and behaving rationally? Let me give you two examples and then you can decide yourself.
The first example comes from Russell and Norvig's book. If you see someone you know across the street, you look to the left and look to the right and made sure there is no traffic nearby before proceeding to cross the street. Meanwhile, at 33,000 feet, a cargo door falls off a passing airliner and flattens you before you make it to the other side. Have you acted rationally?
The second example comes from the novel "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov (made into film in 2004 starring Will Smith). In this story, the robots came to the conclusion that in order to protect human from self-destruction, it is necessary for robots to take over. Have these robots acted rationally?
[To be continued...]
[Quote from the I, Robot movie (2004)]
Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny: Can *you*?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Smiling Proud Wanderer: Chapter 21 (1)
If you can dream it, you can do it. I dreamed that I won the lottery in my nap...
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Happy Heroes: Chapter 1 (2)
It was spring at that time. As the old sayings say, “The whole year’s work depends on a good start in spring.” Spring is a season good for many things and is also the best season for the escorting business.
The best season for the escorting business is also the best season for robbers and bandits.
Luo Zhenyi, the Chief Escort of the “Central Region Escort House”, an experienced escort despite his young age, naturally understood this very well. Therefore, he was extra careful on his escort trip. Besides, it was in the spring season and the goods he was escorting were especially valuable.
Yet, being careful alone is not enough to guarantee a successful escort trip. Also needed are fine Kung Fu skills and good luck.
Luo Zhenyi’s Kung Fu skills were not bad; nevertheless, his luck this time was no good. Of all the bandits he could have run into, he had to run into the most notorious and vicious gangster of the entire region, Brotherhood of Ouyang.
Brotherhood of Ouyang was not a gang with two, three, or more members. Brotherhood of Ouyang is the name of a single person.
Although he was only a single person, he was more difficult to fend off than a gang of forty. Wielding a short dagger in his left hand, a long knife in his right, he could still launch seven or eight types of projectiles at the same time. No one could tell where those missiles and darts were launched from.
Luo Zhenyi couldn’t, either. He had barely dodged away from three “Brocade-Back Crossbow Arrows” and a batch of “Shooting-Star Throwing Arrows”, when Brotherhood of Ouyang turned the back of his knife and shot out a pair of “Icy needles.”
These deadly needles came out from places where no one could have guessed and landed on Luo Zhenyi’s right shoulder squarely. Although these needles didn’t kill him right away, all he could do was to wait for Brotherhood of Ouyang to finish him off.
Even if Brotherhood of Ouyang didn’t kill him, once he lost the escorted goods, he would have no choice but to finish himself off, whether to hang himself or drown in the river or slit his own throat.
Right at that moment, all of a sudden, there came a galloping horse from afar. The horse was a fast horse, but the rider was even faster. Before the horse had approached, the rider had already arrived. Brotherhood of Ouyang only saw a figure falling out of the sky. He didn’t even have a chance to shoot out any one of his eight kinds of projectiles, when both of his wrists had been slashed by a sword.
The savior falling out of the sky was, of course, none other than Guo Dalu.
Luo Zhenyi not only was grateful to this savior, but also felt great admiration for him, so much that he almost groveled before him. After escorting the goods to the final destination, he firmly insisted on inviting the savior to visit the Escort House.
Naturally, Guo Dalu went. He didn’t have anything else to do anyway.
Even if he had other things, he would have gone anyway.
This was the first time he ever fought someone for real. He suddenly realized that he had not only fine Kung Fu skills, but also fine personalities.
That made Luo Zhenyi wonder, so he asked, “Brother Guo has such excellent Kung Fu skills! Why aren’t you an escort?”
Guo Dalu didn’t even ask, “Why people with good Kung Fu skills must become escorts?” He simply thought that being an escort would make him look quite awe-inspiring and sounded like a fun idea.
For a man who just barely left home to become the Deputy Chief Escort, it was awe-inspiring and impressive, indeed!
Guo Dalu had only one regret: The ‘Central Region Escort House’ was not the largest escort house in the Central Region. It couldn’t even be considered a first-class escort house.
The first business only came after he had waited for several days, and it wasn’t even a significant one. All they were asked to do was to escort a few thousand taels from
The trip is short and the goods are unimportant. Besides, the Deputy Chief Escort would be going. Naturally, the Chief Escort had no worries, and felt very comfortable to stay at his comfortable home for a recovery.
It was still in the season of spring. In the morning, the escort wagons left right on time.
One cannot reason with a pregnant woman!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Random Thoughts: Lanny-5, Your Personal Robot
Old Ben sat at the breakfast table, feeling grumpy. It had started raining since last night and his joints were hurting badly again. It was a quiet morning just as it had always been, with no one he could talk to, except Lanny-5, an assistive robot his son had insisted on giving him on his 70th birthday last month because he had insisted on keeping the house and living in it alone. Out of boredom, he cast a side glance at the robot. It just stood there stupidly as though it was deep in thought.
[Meanwhile, inside Lanny-5’s head:] Initialize neural network … retrieve date, time, weather, temperature, humidity, past action history … evaluate training set, test set, validation set … train … probability of arthritis pain at 87% … determine action …
“Would you like me to get you some painkillers?” Lanny-5 turned his head toward Old Ben and asked, an artificial smile blooming on his metal face.
That’s interesting! This is the first time it offered that without me asking, Old Ben thought. “Will you?” he confirmed.
“My pleasure!” Lanny-5 replied joyfully and proceeded to retrieve the medicine.
Old Ben watched as the robot swiftly navigated toward the medicine cabinet, pulled the drawer open, and retrieved some Tylenol. As forgetful as he was, he could still clearly remember the day when it first arrived. The technician showed it around the house, and among many things, also taught it hand-by-hand how to get the right medicines from the cabinet. It was called something like “learning by demonstration” as explained by the technician, a term he vaguely remembered and could care less for.
Swallowing the pills down improved Old Ben’s feelings somewhat, but he didn’t show that on his face, just as usual.
[Meanwhile, inside Lanny-5’s head:] Initialize facial expression recognition … train … identify expression using Bayes Net … probability of grumpiness at 95% … determine action …
“Would you like to hear a joke?” Lanny-5 said, an artificial tone of excitement present.
“Why not!” Old Ben gave up.
[Meanwhile, inside Lanny-5’s head:] Initialize wireless connection to Internet … download jokes … initialize Decision Tree to select … train on training set accumulated … when the word Bush is present, remove joke from collection due to bad past experience) … alert: all jokes removed … repeat from downloading step … appropriate joke identified …
“John walked into a bar. ‘Ouch!’”, Lanny-5 said, using a random funny tone selected from his database.
“Why don’t you give me the news headlines?” Old Ben suggested, clearly not appreciating the sense of humor from the robot.
“Certainly!” replied the robot.
[Meanwhile, inside Lanny-5’s head:] Skip news headlines from Slashdot.org from reinforcement learning penalties (flying beer cans) … download headlines from CNN.com … filter out all headlines with the word “
“CNN.com headline news: Biggest single jackpot winner remains mysterious. Woman run over trying to rescue dog,” Lanny-5 went on reading.
Hearing nothing interesting, Old Ben had had enough with the robot. “I am going to read a book now. Get me an apple and then leave me alone,” he commanded.
“Of course!” Lanny-5 replied, and then proceeded to retrieve the apple.
[Meanwhile, inside Lanny-5’s head:] Retrieve apple images from Google Image … extract features of an apple … learn possible locations for apple retrieval … calculate probability of possible locations user really meant … delete grocery store, apple tree, Circuit City, etc. from list … most probably locations identified: refrigerator with 34% probability and kitchen counter with 62% probability … construct a probability distribution map of apple locations … extract features of the map … train using past map dataset … classify most efficient algorithm for path planning … plan path … turn gimbaled camera following plan … navigate following plan … apple identified with probability at 92% … initialize retrieve routine …
=============
Three hours later, Old Ben threw the book onto the couch and yawned.
“Did anyone call me while I was reading?” he asked.
“You had one legit incoming call from your son, Steve, and three sales calls, which I’ve taken the liberty to remove. Would you like me to play the message for you?” Lanny-5 said delightedly.
“Play.”
Immediately, the excited voice of his son echoed in the room.
“Hi Dad, remember the book you haven’t been able to find? Turned out Emma took it and hid it under the mattress of her toddler bed. Guess what I found in the book??!! Oh my god! You wouldn’t believe this! The lottery ticket you used as a bookmark is the winning ticket for the Jackpot! You’ve won 400 million dollars!! Dad!! You are the mysterious winner everyone has been talking about! This is crazy…”
Old Ben felt a sudden difficulty to breath and sharp pain shot out of his heart. Slowly, his body leaned backward until it rested on the back of the couch. He tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth. He wanted to raise his arms so he could grab onto something, anything, but they only became heavier and heavier. Three minutes later, all become still and his body turned rigid with a blank stare in his still-open eyes.
[Meanwhile, inside Lanny-5’s head:] Initialize facial expression recognition … train … identify expression using Bayes Net … probability of grumpiness at 81% … determine action …
“Would you like to hear a joke?” Lanny-5 said in the same artificial tone of excitement as before, a big artificial smile blooming on his metal face…
Never be afraid to ask stupid questions!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Happy Heroes: Chapter 1 (1)
"With great power comes great responsibility -- Spiderman"
"With a big yard comes lots of yardwork -- Lanny"
Picture of the Day:
European Cup (Started on 6/7/08) P(e)=0.6 Wife Out of Town (leaving Lanny home alone with the kid) P(w)=0.65 Lazy P(l)=0.25 Sick P(s)=0.45 Busy E W | P(b|E, W) =================== T T | 0.999 T F | 0.61 F T | 0.95 F F | 0.5 Ugly Lawn L B S | P(u|L,B,S) ======+============ T T T | 0.999 T T F | 0.5 T F T | 0.88 T F F | 0.3 F T T | 0.92 F T F | 0.45 F F T | 0.85 F F F | 0.05 MCMC Lab Late L B S | P(m|L,B,S) ======+============ T T T | 0.9 T T F | 0.71 T F T | 0.76 T F F | 0.01 F T T | 0.89 F T F | 0.7 F F T | 0.75 F F F | 0.02 Wife Happy U | P(w|U) ==+================ T | 0.01 F | 0.4 Prof. Happy M | P(p|M) ==+================ T | 0.75 F | 0.90
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Finally, The Beginning
As described in the title above, Lannyland is a land of imagination. I strongly believe that one cannot live without imagination. Children are always blessed with the gift of imagination. As we grow older, we tend to get bogged down by choirs, daily routines and fixed schedules, and forget that we still are capable of imagination. I sure hope reading my blog provides inspiration for you to use your imagination again, which leads to creativity and passion. In this blog, I will share with you things I am VERY passionate about, things that always inspire my imagination and creativity. Maybe after reading my posts, you will become passionate about them too! Then maybe I've contributed to making the world a better place!
So what kind of things am I passionate about? I have to admit that I have many hobbies and am passionate about many things. However, in this blog, I will focus on two subjects: AI Robotics, and Wuxia (武侠) novels.
Ever since I was little, I've always being a great fan of science fiction novels. Specifically, I have always been fascinated by the many varieties of robots. That passion grew throughout the years as technology advances rapidly. Eventually the passion grew so strong that I quited my job and went back to school. I am currently a PhD candidate student at BYU (under Dr. Goodrich) researching Artificial Intelligence in Robotics. In this blog you can read about many cool robots that have been developed, great ideas people are working on, and ideas I have relating to my research. I'd love to read about your opinions and bright ideas, so don't be shy in commenting! One thing I can promise is that it won't be boring. Come on, how could robots be boring? :)
I have read many books in the past. However, one book clearly stands out as my all-time favorite book, ever. In fact, I enjoyed this book so much that after reading it over 20 times, I simply had to own it. It is called "Smiling Proud Wanderer" (aka "State of Divinity", and "笑傲江湖" in Chinese) and is a Martial Arts fiction novel written by the great Hong Kong author, Mr. Louis Cha (aka "Jin Yong", and "金庸" in Chinese). This is one famous book in China (also Southeast Asia). Many movies (including one featuring Jet Li) and TV series have been made based on the story. If you have any Chinese friends, ask them about this book. Chances are that they have read it and watched it on TV or in a theater, and immensely enjoyed it. The book falls under the genre called "武侠" (meaning Martial Heroes). Books in this genre are like fairy tales for adults and normally tell stories about Martial Heroes who are great martial artists who uphold justice with their amazing Kung Fu skills.
I guess one main reason why I liked the book so much is because I see myself reflected in the main character of the story. Of course the great story and the great writing skills of the author also had great impacts. I liked the book so much that I wanted to share it with all the non-Chinese speaking people in the world. That's how the translation project started. During the project, I met many friends from all over the world (Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, to name a few) who also enjoyed the story immensely and had a great time reading it. I got as far as half way through (20 chapters and over 1000 pages). However, life got busier, and the project was put on hold. Ever since then, I have received hundreds of emails from fans inquiring about the status of the translation project, but I have kept many of the waiting. Sorry! One reader suggested that I translate just a little bit everyday to keep the momentum going. I think it is a good idea. That is also the reason why I am doing this blog. I hope that by posting smaller chunks of the translation, I will continue on with the project and eventually finish it. For all those people out there who got hung up with the story, I sincerely apologize. The good news is: I am back working on the project again! For all those of you who have not heard about this book, trust me, you will enjoy reading it! So here is how it works: I will post small sections in this blog once in a few days. By the time I have a good chunk translated, I'll still post it at the translation web site where you can find all finished chapters.
I also would like to post translations of two other "武侠" novels by great Mr. Gu Long. They are: "Happy Heroes" (欢乐英雄) and "Full Moon Crescent Saber" (圆月弯刀). I hope you'd enjoy them too.
Occasionally, I will share my random thoughts on things too. Once I took an online IQ test out of boredom, and the result indicated that I should really be a "Visionary Philosopher". So if I sometimes get too philosophical, don't be surprised.
It is 3:45 am right now, but I would still consider it Monday! Good night! (And shout out for Boyce!)
The hardest part to make dream come true is to gather enough courage and actually start doing it. I quit my job and went to Grad School; I finally started this blog. What do you want to do?
Picture of the Day:
Have not had the time or energy to mow my lawn. (Compare mine to neighbor's lawn in the background!) They are actually seeding now. And what's shown here is only 1/20 of the workload.... This picture was actually taken on June 4. It is even worse by now.