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Chat with the Robot

One of the reasons we like robots so much is that they present us with endless opportunities to learn and create new things, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing it. One of our friends, and premier robot hacker from ‘the land downunder’, Sprocket2cog, must feel the same way because he’s just rolled out the alpha version of sapienCHAT.

Here’s what Sprocket told us about sapienCHAT and why he’s developing it-

The aim is to build an assistant that can direct you to people and sites that can help you hack robots. I’m adding keywords for the sapien series (Robosapien V2, Roboraptor, Robopet, etc.) but this will take a while, if there is anything you want to see added let me know. I want to add other robots to him as well, like aibio and lego, but I am concentrating on his v2 logic first.

So far he is starting to develop a sense of self awareness and has a limited knowledge of his systems but not function yet. He knows of some of the hackers by name , but doesn’t relate them yet to each other all the time. I hope he reaches a level where he actually can let people know how to repair a v2  or send you a link to somewhere that can.

The reason I decided to go with this project was to learn a little bit more about how to program dialog that can be reassembled many different ways so it looks like the robot is saying the same thing different ways each time you ask.Like “I am made from HARD plastic” or the same question may reply, “I am made from WHITE THERMO plastic.”

So far its a blast, but time consuming, i have added hundreds of extra code lines, and am no where near reaching a point where it appears to be real AI. (ALICE bot is a five year research project ) so I have a way to go.  So far so good, but there is heaps more to add.

And what about sapienCHAT? What did he have to say?

human: What's your name?
SapienCHAT : My name is SapienCHAT .Im a virtual robot that is learning to help hackers and modders to the wow wee robots.

human: How old are you?
SapienCHAT : I am 2 in human years.

human: How long is that in dog years?
SapienCHAT : Space and time are mere abstractions.

human: So, human years have no meaning?
SapienCHAT : Aha. My creator is a human.

human: Mine too. Both my mother and father were humans.
SapienCHAT : Really yours too. That's unbelievable. Not many people say both.

. . . time passes while we discuss space, time, and the meaning of robotic life . . .

human: where are the keywords?
SapienCHAT : KEYWORD: i am programmed to respond to keywords, for example,
PLASTIC-HEAD-RESISTOR-LEGS-ARMS-TORSO-FINGERS-HAND-CAMERA-SENSORS-GAUNTLETS-POWER ON
Most keywords have multiple response`s, try entering words repeatedly for different answers.

human: gauntlets
SapienCHAT : Why do you need to know about gauntlets.

human: sensors
SapienCHAT : Did I hear that right , sensors ?

human: camera
SapienCHAT : My head contains a color camera that can be sett to work in diffrent light, the manual tells you more.

human: plastic
SapienCHAT : I was told most of my part`s are created from plastic
Have we got any other plastic question`s ?

Pretty neat.

You can help Sprocket improve sapienCHAT by going to the link below and chatting with it online. You can also capture some of the dialog (as we did above) or forward it to friends that you think might also be interested.

Related links:

SapienChat – Sprocket2cog’s online interactive chat robot

http://www.sprocketslog.blogspot.com/ – Sprocket2cog’s website

Posted by Lem on January 21, 2006 | Permalink | Email this post

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wow

Posted by: rachel | Jan 20, 2007 12:25:00 PM

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