Path forward

That's it! I will build my own Ghenghis. At the end of Rodney Brooks' book, there is a pretty detailed explanation of the functioning of this first insect-like robot. It comes pretty close to my ideas of a set of sensors and actors and some network-like data processing in between. It is evolutionary in that sense that you can start by implementing simple functions like standing up and moving forward, and then later implementing obstacle avoidance and searching.
Of course, the next step would be to invent a Software that would figure out by itself what it can do with these actors... Probably need to add some more sensors then to give more feedback from the environment.
But that is for the Future, first I need to get the basics up and running.
While checking for Ghenghis construction kits without success, found the following interesting Website on Ghenghis and other similar robots (in German): http://www.u-he.com/ki/13-embodiement.html
He believes that robotics will become a similarly important domain over the next years like the PCs did twenty years ago:

Auf mich wirkt diese Entwicklung genauso wie der erste Computer, den ich mir vor beinahe zwanzig Jahren gekauft hatte. – Das Wissen um Methoden und Strategien einer technologischen Schlüssel-domäne – dafür halte ich die Robotik – wird schon in jugendlichen Generationen Verbreitung finden. Dies begründet vielleicht meine Auffassung, daß die Robotik in wenigen Jahren ein wichtigerer Markt und gesellschaftlicher Faktor werden wird als die PC-Technik.

Cambrian intelligence

Here is a citation from http://www.cs.umd.edu/~anderson/papers/AI_Review.pdf
about Rodney Brooks role in changing the focus of AI research:

2. Cambrian intelligence
Although Hubert Dreyfus must be given a great deal of credit for first drawing attention to the limitations of GOFAI [30], I think it can be argued that the single figure most responsible for the new AI is Rodney Brooks. A collection of his seminal papers has recently appeared [15] which together comprise not just a sustained critique of the central hypothesis of GOFAI, but the outlines of a philosophically astute and scientifically principled alternative. The book is split into two sections, Technology and Philosophy, with the former containing such papers as “A Robust Layered Control System for a Mobile Robot”, and the latter “Intelligence without Representation” and “Intelligence without Reason”, among others. “Intelligence without Reason”, by far the longest paper in the collection (pp. 133–186), is also the most complete statement of Brooks’ guiding philosophy, and today stands as the overall best introduction to the principles and motivations of the new AI.
As we have seen, traditional AI is characterized by an understanding of intelligence which foregrounds the notions of thought and reason, and adopts certain conventions for approaching these which centrally involve the creation of representations, and the deployment of high-level cognitive skills such as planning and problem solving. For Brooks, however, such an approach “cannot account for large aspects of what goes into intelligence” (p. 134). In contrast to this high-level or top-down approach to intelligence, Brooks advocates studying intelligence from the bottom up, and specifically urges us to recall our evolutionary lineage. As evolved creatures, human beings are largely continuous with our forebears, and we have inherited from them a substrate of capacities and systems for meeting our needs in, and generally coping with a given environment."

It continues with the discussion about what is wrong about the "classical" approch to AI. I dont care. I simply ignore it.

The Juice

Have read the 2002 book "Flesh and Machines" by Rodney Brooks. Wow, if a guy with this experience and standing is so close to my thoughts, i cannot be too wrong. He is the famous director of Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, and spent his life with building robots.

Very inspirational chapter on how to achieve commercial success with robots in every day applications. But the most important chapter are his considerations about what is still missing between present-state Artificial Intelligence and true biological living intelligence. Like Steve Grand, he also votes against Penrose, Chalmers and Searle, believing that there is no principal reason why we could not construct a man-like machine. But on the other hand, he admits that there is still something essential missing. He does not know what it is, but he calls it "The Juice". He does not believe that it is something mystical or revolutionary new, but a simple thing visible right in front of our nose which we simply have not discovered yet.

Now take this together with "A new kind of science" by Stephen Wolfram. All these thoughts are converging with my ideas about unleashing the machine, leaving freedom to the machine to make its own experiences. To alter the sequence of input-processing-output, and designing it from the machine's point of view: output-input-processing, that is, making experiences and learning from it.
There are already very simple principles and examples of systems that build an internal representation of their input = experiences = outside world. The simplest one are the classificator algorithms known as Kohonen networks. I have always been impressed by the fact that those neural nets seem to generate order from chaos by themselves, without guidance, as if it were there desire to make a model of the world.

Second, the neural net needs to have the elements of indetermination and internal state, both easy to implement by recurrent neural nets instead of the boring feed forward networks that are so beloved by scientists since they can be controlled and described. What is intelligence if you can explain it? The true nature of intelligence must be that the outside cannot control or describe it anymore. Today, this happens only in a quantitative way, like a chess computer is admired for its pure computational power, but in principle it is well known how it works.
Here is my first hypothesis for how to build a "true" AI:

A machine that exhibits true intelligence must generate its behavior with an algorithm that cannot be explained or understood.

But I also understood Rodney Brooks' requirement for a theoretical, i.e. mathematical formulation of "The Juice". But i think this will only be possible after the fact, after a real world system has been proven to provide the desired results. So I should go this path: try to implement an algorithm that cannot be understood, but still exhibits more than stochastic behavior.

Post scriptum: found this (German) article from 2002 on the search of Rodney Brooks for the juice of life.

http://www.zeit.de/archiv/2002/31/200231_p-brooks.xml?page=all
Some excerpts:

Wenn der Ingenieur in den vergangenen beiden Jahren seine Geschöpfe ansah, fiel ihm immer mehr auf, dass sie trotz aller Erfolge, am richtigen Leben gemessen, stümperhaft wirkten. Selbst ein Pantoffeltierchen ist stabiler und vielseitiger als die ausgeklügeltste High-Tech-Kreatur. Der Einzeller bewegt sich geschmeidig durch die Welt, versorgt sich mit Energie und vermehrt sich rege. Brooks versteht nicht, welche Barriere ihn hartnäckig daran hindert, genauso flexible Wesen zu schaffen: "Ich bin sicher, dass Menschen Maschinen sind. Es gibt deshalb keinen Grund für die Annahme, wir könnten keine Wesen aus Silizium und Stahl bauen, die über Gefühle und Bewusstsein verfügen."

In ihm sei eine Überzeugung gereift. Weder mehr Rechnerkapazität noch komplexere Vernetzung künstlicher Neuronen würden den Funken des Geistes in den Blechköpfen je erwecken. "Was uns fehlt", fasst der Professor zusammen, "ist der ,Juice' - der Saft des Lebens." Um dieses ominöse Elixier zu finden, hat Brooks das Programm Lebendige Maschinen aus der Taufe gehoben. Doch wie findet man etwas, von dem niemand weiß, wie es aussieht?

Den "Saft" will Brooks beim Versuch entdecken, das Leben mit Robotik nachzubauen. Das war lange Zeit die Domäne der Artificial-Life-Forschung, die virtuelle Wesen im Computer kämpfen, sich vermehren und evolutionär entwickeln ließ. Doch nach anfänglicher Aufregung zeitigte diese Forschung kaum Ergebnisse. Besser als reine Datenwesen könnten Roboter, ganz und gar Materie wie lebende Organismen, es schaffen, den Schleier zu lüften.

Seine Studenten brüten über möglichen Wegen zum heiligen Gral. Sie forschen an flexiblen Materialien wie Plastikfolien, die als Zellhülle fungieren könnten, an einem künstlichen Nervensystem, das sie einfachen Organismen nachbilden, an neuartigen Gitterstrukturen, die einst als Gerüst für Roboter dienen mögen. Doch an Stoffwechsel oder Fortpflanzung, essenzielle Elemente des Lebens, wagen auch diese Pioniere sich noch nicht heran.

Vielleicht steuere er heillos in die Irre, sagt Brooks. Seiner kindlichen Neugier tut das keinen Abbruch. "Uns fehlt nur eine mathematische Beschreibung, um zu verstehen, was biologische Systeme im Kern ausmacht." Indem der Robotermechaniker sich und seine Eleven antreibt, lebensähnliche Maschinen zu bauen, hofft er, dass sie dabei eines Tages über irgendetwas Auffälliges stolpern, das ihnen die gesuchte Antwort gibt.

What is really strange is that there dont seem to be any newer publications from the last years on this topic. Maybe he dropped it again. But he is much younger than I thought - only 51 this year. So there is more to come, I am sure.

And here is another, rather critical review of his book. In particular, the critic is right with regards to his at least naive if not politically incorrect visions about poorer countries telepresence as robots.
http://www.mindjack.com/books/fleshmachines.html

Just a few nuggets

Here are the few golden URLs I found during these last hours:

NASA - Extension of the Human Senses they are at least doing something similar to what i have in mind, using electrodes on the neck or on the wrist to control machines. General information on attempts to develop no-touch electrodes in the clothing, but have not found specific information yet.

Wolfram Burgard - this guy is the inventor of Rhino, the famous robot from the museum in Bonn, and has recently written 2 books on algorithms etc for autonomous robots. has moved from Bonn to Freiburg in 99, what a pity!

Steve Grand as last resort

Did some internet research today on robotics and Man-Machine interfaces. Results were rather frustrating, no one seems to be on the same track like me.
So finally i came back to the old sources of inspiration, and voila: Steve Grand had posted some new reports in the meantime! Well, new is relative, it is already half a year old, but there i can see how long i have not checked out things due to my consultant job.

Business has picked up a lot recently, so if I dont watch out, I will never start to do what I really want to do. But now I have my resolutions, becoming forty this year, it is the now or never feeling that drives me forward.

So here is the link to Steve Grands latest stories and thoughts on how to simulate biological muscles with technology, to gain insight on how the brain works. Just off track a very useful hint on how to fight migraine, read it!

http://www.cyberlife-research.com/ , click on "Weblog" and scroll down to 28 April (must be 2005)

Welcome

This is my first blog. I start it in English, to reach a broader audience. Not that I think that many people will pay attention, but anyway.
My interest in Artificial Intelligence has been there since more than twenty years. I got Douglas Hofstadter book "Gödel, Escher, Bach" for Abitur, when I left school. All German/Dutch thinkers, as i find out now that i write english.
Recently, i read a couple of books that helped me to build my ideas what to do about it once i had the time for it: will tell you about this later.
steve grand, "life and how to make it"
stephen wolfram, "a new kind of science"
some standard literature about cell biology
...

until now, i tried to give priority to my interest without success. when you have a family and just bought a house, the economical pressure is just to high before you let go a well-paid freelance assignment for a rather speculative hobby that might change the world one day.
I am also a great fan of SF literature, especially when it is envisioning future technologies and their possibilities and consequences. my favorite author is neal stephenson, with "diamond age" and "cryptonomicon". last holidays, i discovered alastair reynolds "century rain". lets see how the other books are that i just ordered with amazon.

let me go to bed now that i finally managed the heroic task to open a blog. lets see where this leads to. if there is anyone out there listening. bye