Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Top down, bottom up

Hello

I have been reading Michio Kaku's works and I have watched many of his videos. He makes very complex science understandable. He sees the near future as a time when man will master the new technologies he has developed and profoundly change the world and the way we live. One of the new revolutions is of course the intelligence one.

He realizes that soon we will be able to develop intelligent machines. These words have been food for thought. Know that before we can build anything it has to devised or formulated in the mind. Of course thinking about things and plans without a deadline are most certainly pipe dreams.

However we must be cautious when we are talking about robot building. the two main approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Also note that we cannot straight jacket ourselves because new ideas and cocepts will present themselves. The true test is if the approach works.

The top down one is to produce a program where the world is simulated in he robots memory and it deals with that unreal real world. Every step and movement has to be regulated. The bottom up is to replace the big central control program with smaller not so comprehensive ones. This means these creatures would react and achieve a small result.

The first one has the flaw of being one step at a time and not really understanding the world out there. The second reacts to the world but it is usually limited to one simple action for no room for expansion.

The future I believe is a combination of these two approaches mixed with a few more.

Take care

Pius