Rating: 
Summary: a gentle chat
Review: Its a decent book about Robots and AI written in a friendly and honest manner. The first 2 sections of the book are interesting but the third section dealing with the future seems very uncertain.
Rodney Brooks seems to have lost his faith in Robots slightly and instead of getting Ray Kurzweils' ranting hyper future we get crappy robot lawnmowers and robots that can open the fridge and maybe get you a beer if you install a speciak fridge. Hmmmm runs out of steam a bit.
Still though he has been at it for 20 years and anybody thats been at anything for 20 years is worth having a listen to. And thats what its like, a gentle chat!
Rating: 
Summary: Critical, central .. the wait is over
Review: Rodney Brooks is, possibly, the most important person living today.Quite possibly, anytime after say 50 years from now, he'll be seen as a major macrohistorical figure in the Moses, Copernicus, Adam Smith league. Schoolkids will know "Rodney Brooks invented robots," just as we link Bell and Edison with phones and electric through the 20th century. Anyone who works in robotics has already read this book, and indeed has read every scrap of anything ever written by Mr. Brooks. Mr. Brooks basic discovery which he made back in the 90s is subtle and difficult to explain (it doesn't deal in the physical world, like inventing "an engine," it deals in the world of thought and computation, so it's not easy or intuitive for a non-mathematician or programmer to grasp), but it's as straightforward, real and massively significant as the invention of the wheel; all future life forms, robots and superintelligences created on this planet will be Brooksian devices. For general readers: You can read all the junk by general "futurists" and "thinkers" on robots and the future (eg, subscribe to Wired), or, you can now, thankfully, read a book actually by Rod Brooks -- enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Something for Everyone and Something to Skip for Everyone
Review: Some people may recognize Rodney Brooks as the insect obsessed robot maker featured in the documentary film "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control." He seems decidedly in control as he lays out his version of the past, present, and future relationship of people and their technology in "Flesh and Machines". This control is one of the greatest virtues of the book. While other authors practically froth at the mouth as they prophesy the coming technorapture when they predict we will become immortal by downloading our minds into robots, Brooks comes to similar conclusions, but in a calm, only occasionally boring, manner. This makes me take him more seriously. As a reader only casually versed in the science and history of robotics, I found the book informative and approachable. The first third of the book held my interest best. In this part, he recounts the early history of robotics with particular focus on a simple robot built in the 1940s nicknamed the tortoise, which combined simple electronics and sensors to create a machine with complex behavior. Brooks then goes on to use the ideas embodied in the tortoise to turn the modern world of robotics on its head. From 1950's though the eighties, robot developers tried to build robots that developed detailed world models, and thus could navigate through them with ease. That was the theory, but it did not work. Robots spent so much time building up these models that they moved slowly and gracelessly. After years of working on robot vision, Brooks wondered what would happen if a robot did not even try to create a mental model of it's environment. What if sensors linked to simple actions, a la tortoise? And what if the actions were guided by simple instructions, layered on top of each other, much the way evolution probably layered behaviors on top of each other? The results were surprisingly agile, frisky, insect shaped robots. I got a little lost with his technical description of how these robots worked, but I got most of it, and best of all I got a good understanding of his creative process. I found this first third of the book the most engaging. .After that he bounces around between various topics, from his studies of visual perception, to Kismet (a humanoid robot designed to respond to physical and vocal cues), to his adventures in the toy industry. By the time I got to his description of household robots of the future, I was snoozing. Gadget freaks may have a different reaction. In the final third of the book, he weighs in on the possibility of truly intelligent human made machines. While he offers little hope for people who want to cling to our specialness as human beings, he is cautious about the prognostications of futurists who think we will download our midns into machines in the near future. Brooks says there are a lot of hurdles to jump before we create emotional, conscious machines, or before we are able to port our selves into robots. and we might not have it in us to jump those hurdles ever. But in the meantime, he asserts that we will, through machine implantation and augmentation, and through bioengineering, merge with our technology to the point that we will become robot-people, so that if the machines ever catch up with us, they will find we are already them. All this is put forth in a calm, thoughtful, carefully weighed manner, which made me trust him more than the more entertaining, but frothier, Raymond Kurzweil. I would recommend the book to a wide audience as long as they are prepared to skip around. There is something for most intelligent, curious people here: a portrait of a brilliant scientist, the basics of robotics, and a vision of the future. And for people who care about vacuum cleaner robots, that is there too. I just skimmed that part.
Rating:
Summary: Something for Everyone and Something to Skip for Everyone
Review: Some people may recognize Rodney Brooks as the insect obsessed robot maker featured in the documentary film "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control." He seems decidedly in control as he lays out his version of the past, present, and future relationship of people and their technology in "Flesh and Machines". This control is one of the greatest virtues of the book. While other authors practically froth at the mouth as they prophesy the coming technorapture when they predict we will become immortal by downloading our minds into robots, Brooks comes to similar conclusions, but in a calm, only occasionally boring, manner. This makes me take him more seriously. As a reader only casually versed in the science and history of robotics, I found the book informative and approachable. The first third of the book held my interest best. In this part, he recounts the early history of robotics with particular focus on a simple robot built in the 1940s nicknamed the tortoise, which combined simple electronics and sensors to create a machine with complex behavior. Brooks then goes on to use the ideas embodied in the tortoise to turn the modern world of robotics on its head. From 1950's though the eighties, robot developers tried to build robots that developed detailed world models, and thus could navigate through them with ease. That was the theory, but it did not work. Robots spent so much time building up these models that they moved slowly and gracelessly. After years of working on robot vision, Brooks wondered what would happen if a robot did not even try to create a mental model of it's environment. What if sensors linked to simple actions, a la tortoise? And what if the actions were guided by simple instructions, layered on top of each other, much the way evolution probably layered behaviors on top of each other? The results were surprisingly agile, frisky, insect shaped robots. I got a little lost with his technical description of how these robots worked, but I got most of it, and best of all I got a good understanding of his creative process. I found this first third of the book the most engaging. .After that he bounces around between various topics, from his studies of visual perception, to Kismet (a humanoid robot designed to respond to physical and vocal cues), to his adventures in the toy industry. By the time I got to his description of household robots of the future, I was snoozing. Gadget freaks may have a different reaction. In the final third of the book, he weighs in on the possibility of truly intelligent human made machines. While he offers little hope for people who want to cling to our specialness as human beings, he is cautious about the prognostications of futurists who think we will download our midns into machines in the near future. Brooks says there are a lot of hurdles to jump before we create emotional, conscious machines, or before we are able to port our selves into robots. and we might not have it in us to jump those hurdles ever. But in the meantime, he asserts that we will, through machine implantation and augmentation, and through bioengineering, merge with our technology to the point that we will become robot-people, so that if the machines ever catch up with us, they will find we are already them. All this is put forth in a calm, thoughtful, carefully weighed manner, which made me trust him more than the more entertaining, but frothier, Raymond Kurzweil. I would recommend the book to a wide audience as long as they are prepared to skip around. There is something for most intelligent, curious people here: a portrait of a brilliant scientist, the basics of robotics, and a vision of the future. And for people who care about vacuum cleaner robots, that is there too. I just skimmed that part.
Rating: 
Summary: good stories, shallow arguments
Review: The book is full of interesting tales of the robotics revolution and Brooks raises all the good questions concerning the future of robots and their integration into our lives and persons. Unfortunately, Brooks also offers "arguments" about everything from the (in)significance of consciousness to the nature of humanity. The arguments aren't worthy of a bright undergraduate philosophy major, much less a distinguished scientist, and in fact his positions could have been supported with references of many other authors whose arguments are less facile. With a bit more effort this could have been a very good book.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings but an entertaining read
Review: This is a rather strangely constructed book. The beginning describes the evolution of thinking in robotics. His primary argument is that complex behavior comes from the interaction of sensors and simple rules, both in animals and machines. I thought the discussion of this was fascinating, and the examples eye-opening (literally). Then he goes off in another direction and spends 2 chapters plus arguing that humans are no different from machines, and that anyone who believes in God is fooling themselves. I have no idea why this is necessary for his argument, and found it rather offensive personally, as well as a waste of time. But he brought me back at the end with a too-brief discussion of how robotics will increasingly be used to suplement or replace our human capabilities such as sight, hearing, and walking. The discussions of using mouse muscles in robots, and programming e. coli were quite engaging. I can't say this book hangs together as a piece, but overall I was certainly entertained and gathered a lot of good cocktail chatter.
Rating:
Summary: Mind over Matter
Review: What a fascinating read. I couldn't put it down and highly recommend this.
Rating:
Summary: An eye, a hand, a leg, and . . .
Review: What are the parts that comprise a human? What is the definition of "consciousness"? Brooks examines these questions in some detail in this book that challenges many assumptions about "what makes us human" and where that might lead. He examines many facets of tool-making, that feature that supposedly set us off from the other animals. From simple tools he moves to the beginnings of computing and how that mathematical science has been transformed into a mechanical one. Computers are now used to control various devices in many ways. As machine complexity developed, the computers granted machines new levels of independence. Control of machines, once reliant on human intervention, has become autonomous. Autonomous machines, he reminds us, are referred to as "robots".
Robots have a long history in literature. Although Brooks strangely omits the origin of the term in Karel Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots" of 1920, he pays understandable homage to Asimov's robotic series. From "I, Robot" onward, robots have been deemed harmless due to Asmiov's Three Laws of Robotics. While designed to allay the fears of the public over human-like mechanical devices, Brooks points out the Laws have little likelihood of implementation. He cites HAL's murderous antics in "2001" as a counter-example.
These literary allusions are but background to what Brooks considers truly important. Robots are already among us performing significant tasks in factories and other facilities, including medical roles. The boundary between fantasy and reality will be sundered, he claims. Robotics and "artificial intelligence" have made substantial gains in recent years. He traces the development of "Ghengis", "Cog" and other robots, some "complete" body plans, others comprising combinations of visual and tactile. All of these are experiments in sensitivity, reaction and control under various environments. Some seem to communicate well, or respond to human attention as if "conscious". Brooks makes no extravagant claims for the "consciousness" of these robots. They are, he stresses, but steps in a forward direction.
The question then becomes, where will these steps lead? Brooks shows how robot experiments can lead from lab to home. There are already "pet" robots - artificial "dogs" and dolls. Even lawns may now be mown by unattended robots randomly wandering about the yard. House cleaning robots will follow, with different types dealing with various tasks. With every improvement in capability and independent programming, will robots "replace" humans? Brooks contends this scenario is impossible. The image of "self-creative" robots is a fantasy. More significantly, he endorses the notion of robotic replacement body parts. These are already in place as pacemakers and prosthetics. As they improve, the boundary between "flesh and machines" will blur. The integration will not reduce our humanity, he contends, but will give us greater acceptance of the "machine" as a bestower of a better life. To Brooks, this is a logical evolutionary step for humans to take. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: While parts of this book are interesting (the early discussions of individual robotics projects are interesting) the latter half devolves into what are largely stream of consciousness-type musings that veer between the quasi-interesting and somewhat muddled. This is a book that is not likely to satisfy those who are already savvy in the area, and intelligent lay people may feel (like I did) that they plopped down good money for a relatively undisciplined piece of work.
|
