Justin Hart, lab graduate student and Ph.D. candidate, presented at ideacity, June 2013. ideacity, also known as ‘Canada’s Premier Meeting of the Minds’, is an eclectic gathering of artists, adventurers, authors, cosmologists, doctors, designers, entertainers, filmmakers, inventors, magicians, musicians, scientists and technologists.
Justin works on robot self-awareness, that is, “the construction of machines which learn about their hardware and sensors through data sampled during operation.” These would be self-calibrating machines that “retain their highly accurate calibration without human intervention.” In the presentation video below, Justin describes the technical steps entailed in arriving at the beginnings of robot self-awareness, wherein a robot looks at a mirror with its cameras, sees its reflection and accurately locates a point of reference on itself.