Boo! Teaching robots to be scared —and to survive

Now, robots can learn to sense threats and respond to them instantly —by developing "reflexes" and an "instinct" of their own.

 

In the real world, robots may take time to react to dangers.  But STARTLE, software developed by biologists from United Kingdom-based Roke Manor Research, promises to give robots an instinct to respond to threats quickly.

 

Mike Hook, principal project consultant at Roke, and his colleagues developed STARTLE and patterned it after the workings of the human amygdala —an almond-shaped part of the brain whose main role is to process memory and emotional reactions, including rapid response to threats.

 

To reach this startling achievement, Hook and his colleagues employed an artificial neural network to look out for inconsistent or abnormal data. According to the Roke website, STARTLE “detects threatening condition by imitating mammal’s conditioned-fear response mechanism.” Once it was taught what is not ordinary, it can recognize dangers easily.

 

Hook said in an interview with NewScientist on Aug. 28, "If it sees something anomalous then investigative processing is cued; this allows us to use computationally expensive algorithms only when needed for assessing possible threats, rather than responding equally to everything.”

 

For example, if the robotic vehicle’s sensors are fed data, STARTLE could notice a pothole, on the road and pass a warning to the vehicle’s control system. The control system will then allocate more computing resources towards analyzing and avoiding the pothole.

 

STARTLE was tested in vehicle navigation and robot health monitoring. In the latter, it can also be trained to respond to sudden changes in battery power or temperature. It was also tested in computer networks, to detect security threats.

 

"STARTLE reduces operator workload and improves vehicle efficiency on the ground by helping remote operators to respond effectively in complex mission environments,” said Hook in a press statement on Roke’s website.

 

Some of the STARTLE’s benefits include detecting and characterization of threats, and power to free up the processor for other tasks. It can also reduce operator workload.

 

“Operators do not want to be distracted from their mission and the time it takes them to turn their attention to a possible threat could be too slow to save the vehicle,” Hook added. — TJD, GMA News