In New York recently, three Nao robots passed the modified form of ‘‘wise-man puzzle” and by doing so, they had taken another step towards showing self awareness in robotics. At Rensselaer polytechnique institute in New york, USA, the above said feat was shown to the press people. Next month there would be presentation at RO-MAN conference in Japan, for which the robots are being prepared.
To showcase self awareness amongst robots, the wise- man puzzle is done like this: A king was on look out for a wise men for his council for which he called three wise men around to his place. The king then placed hat from behind on each of the three wise men head so that they would not be in a position to view that.
The king then told that each hat is either blue or white and the contest was performed fairly and as per the rules. King also further told the three wise men that whoever finds the color of the hat in their own head would be the winner. The only method that the contest could be conducted fairly would be for all the three to have same color hat and thus the first man to see the color of the hat on other two persons and declare his hat to be the same color would be the winner ultimately.
In case of these humanoid robots, instead of hats, the programming was done in such a way that the three robots were made to ”believe” that two out of three robots were given ”dumbing pill” that would make them mute, but did not know which of them. In reality, by pressing a button on the heads of two robots, they were made mute. Then the three robots were questioned that, which did not get the dumbing pill.
The three robots attempted to reply with answer ”I dont know”, but only one was able to do so thereby indicating that it was the one which was not muted. Then suddenly, the robot changed its reply stating that it was the one which did not receive dumbing pill. The above small test indicated that some degrees of self awareness can be achieved by robots, hence paving way for them to achieve many high goals in the future, The research team headed by Selmer Bringsjord was of the opinion that, increasing adding abilities that the team showed the people present would over develop robots with more useful features.
Selmer further added by saying that he and his team members were not concerned about the consciousness, but want to make robots which are capable of doing things which can be quoted as examples of conscience nature.
