Robot demonstrates "Self Awareness" of a sort

This is an interesting little story about a little roomba-like robot that can reconize itself in a mirror. It's not True Self-Awareness per se but it is a breakthrough in robot optics.

dsc.discovery.com...
Takeno and his colleagues built the robot with blue, red or green LEDs connected to artificial neurons in the region that light up when different information is being processed, based on the robot's behavior.

"The innovative part is the independent nodes in the hierarchical levels that can be linked and activated," said Thomas Bock of the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

For example, two red diodes illuminate when the robot is performing behavior it considers its own, two green bulbs light up when the robot acknowledges behavior being performed by the other.

Soon Bots will be able to easily reconize and understand just about every object they see. They should implement this on the roomba asap lol. My Aunts bot keeps dinging the furniture.

[edit on 21-12-2005 by sardion2000]

Wow, robotics really seems to be booming lately. I've posted 3 threads on robotics this week. I can't wait to see what the future will bring.