Monkeys to Operate Robots

September 24th, 2016

Via: IEEE:

As if quantum computing wasn’t mind-bending enough, one of D-Wave Systems’ founders is now pursuing another futuristic idea: using artificial intelligence and high-tech exoskeleton suits to allow humans—and, at least according to one description of the technology, monkeys, too—to control and train an army of intelligent robots.

Geordie Rose is a co-founder and chief technology officer of D-Wave, the Canadian company selling machines that it claims exploit quantum mechanical effects to solve certain problems hundreds of millions times faster than traditional computers.

Now an IEEE Spectrum investigation has discovered that Rose is also CEO of Kindred Systems (aka Kindred AI), a stealthy startup he founded with others in 2014 dedicated to delivering advanced teleoperated and autonomous robots. The goal is making programming robots faster and less costly–and possibly revolutionize the world of work.

Kindred has so far received well over $10 million in funding, according to Data Collective, the venture capital firm that led one of the rounds. Another Silicon Valley VC firm, Eleven Two Capital, also has a stake in the company. In a blog post, Data Collective described Kindred as using “AI-driven robotics so that one human worker can do the work of four.”

Kindred, based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, recently filed a U.S. patent application revealing the extent of its ambitions. The document describes a system where an operator wearing a head-mounted display and an exo-suit of sensors and actuators carries out everyday tasks. Data from the suit and from other external sensors is then analyzed by computers in the cloud and used to control distant robots. The data could also be used to train machine learning algorithms that would allow the robots to imitate the operator’s actions autonomously.

“An operator may include a non-human animal such as a monkey,” says the patent, “and the operator interface may be … re-sized to account for the differences between a human operator and a monkey operator.”

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