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    Although useful robots seem slow to appear, they are evolving at close to a billion times faster than biological life on earth (see Moores Law) Should the current rate of robotic and technological evolution continue  robots will surpass humans in the coming decades. Hopefully that will be a good thing.

   At this time (Early 2003), there really aren't a lot of useful autonomous robots running around doing our dreaded chores. In fact the only thing you will find (that you can buy) is more of a gadget or a toy than an intelligent entity. But that could change really quickly in the event of a serious design breakthrough.

  So don't hold your breath, but don't be surprised if machines make a quantum leap in intelligence.

 

     After seeing all the sci fi movies growing up, you know the ones with the robots that talked and did really cool stuff. I have thought about making a robot that would do some stuff for me. Around 1995 I finally started getting serious and spent months making a robot that did nothing but avoid hitting the wall (sometimes). It was becoming apparent that it was going to be difficult to accomplish. I got on the web and looked at all of the other robots that other people had come up with, then I didn't feel so bad. It turns out its a mammoth undertaking and hasn't been accomplished by any one any where (to my knowledge) . It took me 2 more years+ reading books on the human brain, neural nets, fuzzy logic, etc. etc. to realize the enormity of making a machine that has the properties needed to be human like. For the most part I quit making  robots because they would only really be expensive toys and not very useful at that. So now I mostly spend time on the computer testing algorithms and ideas on primitives (small sets of logic that interact with each other to become a more larger complex object). These are like little directors that enforce rule sets and direct traffic. Very similar to DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid).

  If you think about it at one point in time you were just 2 microscopic cells (sperm and and egg) those 2 cells along with a supply of nutrients became you. The DNA in those cells was the code that decided how big, how smart, what sex, you would be. They could make you into a rabbit, a squid, a monkey or a human. They determine just about every feature you will display and how you change throughout your life. That DNA was the most simplistic blueprint for life known. And the funny thing is out all of the billions of chunks of code in the DNA, only about 1% is what created you, the rest is junk DNA or other independent mystery sequences. In all of DNA there are only 4 operators A C G T Adenine (A) always pairs with thymine (T), and cytosine (C) always pairs with guanine (G). See the simplicity of the rule. Its the arrangement that's complicated, there in lies the problem.

  For robots to become more, they need some inherent properties in their design.