If your main interest is high level reasoning and cognition then at the moment there isn't very much going on in robotics which would fit well with that. When I started experimenting with PC controlled humanoids many years ago it soon became obvious that in order to stand any chance of doing high level reasoning using semantic networks and the like some pretty difficult perception problems needed to be tackled first. Six years later I'm still working on the perception problems, but there is an end in sight.
I used to be of the opinion that doing robotics in simulation was a waste of time. The simulations were too perfect. To simplistic compared to the nitty gritty of real world environments. Algorithms developed and optimised for simulated environments would not translate well (or at all) into real robotics applications operating in non trivial environments. Ten years ago that was true, but now I think it's possible to build simulations with graphics and physics which are substantially more realistic, to the point where it might be possible to take algorithms developed within simulation, dump them onto a real robot and expect to see similar performance. You'd need to be careful to simulate sensor uncertainties, but it should be possible.
Ironically, good quality simulations for robotics development will themselves assist in the cognitive process, becoming the robots inner theatre of the mind within which it may experiment with possible scenarios before committing to a course of action.
On 24/10/06, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I felt that way too once, and so (in 1996) I did directly try the real
thing. Building a mobile robot and experimenting with it was fun, but
I quickly learned that one spends all one's time dealing with sensor
and actuator issues and never really gets to deal with cognition in
any interesting way. Admittedly, robotic tech has advanced a lot
since then, but I think the basic point still holds. IMO, given the
current state of mobile robot tech, to do robotics-based AI
effectively requires at least one dedicated team member fully devoted
to the robotics side....
Much robotics-based AI involves first experimenting in robot
simulation software, anyway. AGISim right now is not a robot
simulation software package, but it could be tailored into one, which
would be interesting.... Maybe we'll start by making an AGISim
Roomba, using the Pyro interface to Roomba ;-)
-- Ben
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