变形金刚再袭来 现实机器人有多远?

Transformers 3-"Dark of the Moon" is shot in 3-D and opened in US cinemas on June 29. The robots look very real in the movie, however, many people may wonder - could machines such as these soon be invading our homes?

Researchers at the University of Southampton claim they've created the world's first control system that will allow robots to think for themselves.

To test its system the team has designed a fleet of perfectly-balanced robot satellites that rotate around a pivot point, similar to real satellites.

They glide across the purpose-built glass table on roller bearings, to mimic the zero-gravity properties of space, powered by eight small propellers.

Using onboard cameras, the robots are able to observe other satellites as well as navigate using overhead markers that replicate the stars in our solar system.

Nick Lincoln has been working on the project as an engineer.

"The current setup is that we place requests to the robots and the robots may or may not know what the request means. If it knows initially what the request means it can go and do that particular task. If it doesn't know what the task means it can then go and research for itself, on the internet."

A special piece of software known as 'sysbrains' has been developed to control these intelligent machines. Sysbrains uniquely has the ability to read English language documents in 'system English' or 'S-English' as it's known.

When asked to perform a task, the robots can access the internet wirelessly and read the relevant S-English language documents. They may be requested to move themselves to a certain position, or in a circle.

If this is a task they are unfamiliar with the robots will access the S-English documents online and read the sections they need in order to perform the task.

But what's fascinating about this system, is that humans can also understand and use S-English. It appears to the naked eye very much like any other English language document, but it's written so that 'sysbrains' can also take information from it.

These papers, and the authoring tools to write them, are now being distributed online to the general public.

As well as spacecrafts and satellites, this innovative technology can be used on other types of autonomous vehicles, such as underwater and ground vehicles. It's hoped this technology will advance so the robots can perform more complex tasks.

However, professor Sandor Verres from the University of Southampton is not convinced robots will ever be able to match human intelligence.

"Lots of human intelligence and knowledge is occupied by human relations, in fact, and so the question is, you know, whether we have machines that do that? No, I don't think so. So here we are talking about a specific type of intelligence. I think that human beings are quite unique and I don't think very soon we're going to do anything like that and the big question is whether we ever want to do that."

Robotic technology is developing rapidly and Lincoln says, before long we may see robot servants become commonplace within our homes.

"Humanity seems to have an ability to develop the world to suit it self and we built infrastructures, we built roads, we built houses, schools to suit ourselves and make our lives easier. We started farming to make our lives easier and we got tractors and we got machines to help us with the farming, to make it easier. Eventually these systems become more and more intelligent, they will go into our houses and we will have robotic servants."

For CRI, I am Li Dong.