Cheat Sheet: Artificial intelligence - Page 2 - TechRepublic

When will all these smart AI advances mean I can have a robot in my house to do the washing up, vacuum my bedroom, pick up my dirty socks - that sort of thing? Robotics is another sub-field of AI where there have been some exciting developments lately: there are already robot vacuum cleaners for instance, although they can't do your washing up at the moment. A bit more exciting than robot vacuum cleaners are driverless cars - the most recent Darpa Grand Challenge, for example, saw five automated driving systems complete a 150-mile race across the Mojave Desert with nary a human at the wheel. A real world application of such a system will be operational in the UK next year when business travellers using Heathrow's Terminal 5 will be able to use one of these driverless pod cars to shuttle them between a car park and the terminal building. Noel Sharkey, a professor of AI and robotics at the University of Sheffield, told silicon.com that he foresees even more applications for driverless cars in future: "I think that one of the big areas in AI will be the independent car - which'll be wonderful for say disabled people or blind people; you don't have to worry about a taxi you just get out and flag down a car," he said.