University of Pennsylvania professor Daniel Lee is working to imbue robots with human-level thinking and behavioral ability.

Lee believes the key to this advancement is achieving a better understanding of how living things compute information and transferring that information to the robot realm. “Traditional computer algorithms which do fast search and brute computation will not make machines intelligent,” he says. “So we need to develop algorithms that approach these problems in different ways in order to build robots that can perform in complex environments.” Lee says robots’ artificial intelligence will be enhanced as their ability to sense their environment and execute motorized tasks steadily improves over time.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has given Lee and his team funding in recent years to teach robots to walk as well as to develop a class of machines that can navigate difficult terrain through the use of sensors. Lee’s team engineered a Toyota Prius to navigate city streets while obeying traffic laws and signs and avoiding collisions with the other unmanned vehicles participating in a DARPA-sponsored competition.

DARPA wants to make one-third of all U.S. military vehicles driverless by 2015. Meanwhile, the U.S. Pentagon is funding the development of machines that can assist or replace human soldiers. Lee and other members of a University of Pennsylvania team have received funding under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Future Combat Systems modernization initiative.

Source: Knowledge at Wharton

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