Robotics Technology Center

Absent-Minded Robot Replicates Human Forgetfulness

"I think I forgot something" is usually what we hear everyday from people of different ages, people who have "normal" memory mishaps. Yet, in the world of science, robots have memory losses also. Scientists created a robot that could recall important pieces of information from the large volume of data they collect everyday from their surroundings and simply forget all those data that don't seem to matter anymore just like humans do.

Actsimple, is an absent-minded, forgetful robot. He was designed with an an algorithm that replicates human "forgetfulness" by threshing out all the relevant information in the past. The "forgetfulness" algorithm increases the ability of robots to wade through the waves of data generated by robotic sensors. It filters the data available to existing algorithms instead of randomly selecting items from the memory which traditional robotic systems use.

VU PhD student Sanford Freedman presented the new software last week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the IASTED Robotics and Applications conference. A paper detailing how the algorithm, called ActSimple, works was also published at the meeting.

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