Page 105 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

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THOUGHTFUL ROBOTS

RODNEY BROOKS AND COG

t was like no robot anyone had ever seen. Most surprising were
Iits big, owl-like eyes that followed visitors’ movements. Like a
human baby, the robot, called Cog, tried to imitate and learn from
what it saw. Also like a baby, it made and responded to vocaliza-
tions, although it did not truly understand the words.
Robotics researcher Rodney Brooks is the creator of Cog and
other new types of robots. His ideas have found their way into
everything from vacuum cleaners to Martian rovers. Today, as
head of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), Brooks has extended his exploration
of robot behavior into profound realms of philosophy as well as
science, asking “What is different about being alive?”

A Passion for Computers

Rodney Brooks was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1954. As a
boy Brooks was fascinated when he read about computers, but he
could only stare through the plateglass window at the city’s only
visible computer, an IBM mainframe in a downtown office build-
ing. Brooks decided to build his own logic circuits from discarded
electronics modules from the defense laboratory where his father
worked. Eventually, he came up with a machine that could beat
anyone at tic-tac-toe—if they accepted the restricted rules necessary
to accommodate the machine’s limited number of switches.

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