At the Hasegawa Lab of the Tokyo Institute of Technology Japanese scientists have created a robot that can learn based on past experiences. The robot can think, learn and react to situations and teach itself new behaviours in an unsupervised manner.
Robot learns, thinks and acts by itself #DigInfo
The learning mechanism called Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network or ‘SOINN’ allows the robot to take in dynamic information and enabling the robot to estimate future patterns and networks. This is ground-breaking technology as so far robots have only ever been able to perform tasks that they have been specifically programmed for.
A researcher with the Hasegawa Lab said that to date, industrial robots, have been able to do specific tasks quickly and accurately but if their environment changes slightly, they cannot respond. This robot however remembers basic knowledge and it can apply that knowledge to its immediate situation.
The SOINN technology has been implemented in a HIRO robot that now remembers basic knowledge, and it can then apply that knowledge to its immediate situation. Once it recognizes it doesn't know how to do something, it can log onto the internet or a neural network of other robots. Then it will learn how to perform the actions required and retain the information it might need to complete similar tasks in the future.