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What a fascinating (and obvious in hindsight) idea! Potential game changer if they can make it work.
RoboEarth – a collaboration between universities and Philips – has developed an approach to this based on the ability to share knowledge over the internet.
The system has been likened to a social network or a Wikipedia for robots as it allows the knowledge created for one robot to be shared with another robot, anywhere else in the world, via a shared, web-accessible database. When one robot in Germany learns what a toaster is and how it works, it can upload that information into the network. A robot in Japan which has never used a toaster before can then log in and learn how to recognise one.
To enable robots with different bodies and sensors to learn from each other, RoboEarth has an abstraction layer which allows shared information to assume common capabilities across all platforms. This is much like how a desktop operating system like Windows allows the same software to run on many different types of computers.
To allow robots to easily find the knowledge they require, the contents of the RoboEarth database are structured via an ontology. This describes each entry using logic which can be queried automatically and relates connected entries. So an oven will be listed as a type of household appliance and a mars bar as a type of food.
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-robot-helper-friends.html
RoboEarth – a collaboration between universities and Philips – has developed an approach to this based on the ability to share knowledge over the internet.
The system has been likened to a social network or a Wikipedia for robots as it allows the knowledge created for one robot to be shared with another robot, anywhere else in the world, via a shared, web-accessible database. When one robot in Germany learns what a toaster is and how it works, it can upload that information into the network. A robot in Japan which has never used a toaster before can then log in and learn how to recognise one.
To enable robots with different bodies and sensors to learn from each other, RoboEarth has an abstraction layer which allows shared information to assume common capabilities across all platforms. This is much like how a desktop operating system like Windows allows the same software to run on many different types of computers.
To allow robots to easily find the knowledge they require, the contents of the RoboEarth database are structured via an ontology. This describes each entry using logic which can be queried automatically and relates connected entries. So an oven will be listed as a type of household appliance and a mars bar as a type of food.
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-robot-helper-friends.html
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