Submission + - Collaborative Algorithm Lets Autonomous Robots Team Up And Learn From Each Other (popsci.com)
malachiorion writes: Autonomous robots are about to get a lot more autonomous, thanks to an algorithm from MIT that turns teams of bots into collaborative learners. This was covered in other places, but I'm not sure why no one's digging into the real implications of this (admittedly somewhat obscure) breakthrough. The algorithm, called AMPS, lets autonomous systems quickly compare notes about what they’ve observed in their respective travels, and come up with a combined worldview. The goal, according to the algorithm's creators, is to achieve "semantic symmetry," which would allow for "lifelong learning" for robots, making them more self-sufficient, and less reliant on constantly pestering humans to explain why the more surprising aspects of the unstructured world they're operating within don't line up with what programmers have prepped them for. Here's my story for Popular Science.