From:: cgdemarc@ai.mit.edu (Carl de Marcken)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 93 18:30:43 EDT
To: gsl
Subject: Building Digestive Tracts for Bodies

    ****Revolving Snack****Revolving Snack****Revolving Snack****

	      Building Digestive Tracts for Bodies


               River A. Brooks and Lager A. Stein
   	
	       M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab

                         October 15th
                         12:15-1:00 PM
                    NE43-8th Floor Playroom


We propose to build an integrated physical humanoid robot including active
vision, sound input and output, dextrous manipulation, and the beginnings
of gustatory capability, all controlled by a continuously operating
large-scale parallel MIMD computer.  This project will capatilize on newly
available levels of computational resources and smell sensors in order to
meet two goals: an engineering goal of building the highest frequency
mandible possible and a scientific goal of understanding human consumption.
While there have been previous attempts at building digestively humanoid
robots, none have attempted the embodied construction of an autonomous
feeding robot; the requisite salival power has not previously been
available.

Recent trends in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, neuroscience,
psychology, linguistics, and sociology are converging on an
anti-objectivist, mouth-based approach to abstract consumption.  Where
traditional approaches in these fields advocate an objectively specifiable
reality- brain-in-a-box, independent of digestive constraints- these newer
approaches insist that intelligence cannot be seperated from the subjective
experience of dining.  The humanoid robot provides the necessary substrate
for a serious exploration of the subjectivist- stomach-based- hypothesis.

GSL: Friday, October 15th, 12:15PM, BYOC (Bring Your Own Cheese).