Robot Learning with a Biologically-Inspired Brain (BECCA)

Key Takeaways

[Music] directed robots run by themselves but can be trained like dogs they learn the meaning of commands by getting rewards in the directed robots Lab at Sandy National laborator stories a surveyor srv1 robots named Ral is learning to hide and seek hide means to find a picture that is either all light or all dark for him seek means to find a picture with lots of light and dark when he first starts up Ral doesn't know how moving will change what he sees [Music] he just tries different movements and remembers what happens each time eventually he learns that moving forward toward the wall is a good way to hide and that backing up is usually a good way to seek sometimes roal gets bored or curious and tries something different this helps him figure out the best way to do what he is trying to do most robots know a lot about themselves like the size of the room they're in and whether they have wheels or arms Ralph doesn't know any of that he doesn't even know that his eye is an eye and not a nose he doesn't know how far he'll turn when he spins he only remembers what his sensors tell him and what rewards he gets for hiding and seeking ral's brain is a computer program called s learning s learning doesn't care what kind of robot it is connected to it can be a brain for lots of different kinds of robots s learning learns whatever it gets rewarded for like a baby s learning uses all its past experiences whenever it has to learn to do something new it might even be able to help a robot do hard things like run on two legs or learn to talk but for now Ralph is still learning kind of fetch [Music]