Explaining It through robotics

We couldn’t find an answer to this question online, so we decided to propose our own—perhaps the first version of this idea ever suggested.

SpesLab became involved in robotics thanks to one of our devices — the VideoBlazer — which found applications as a neural-network-based tool for programming robots. Support for 3D cameras that measure distances and recognize objects using neural networks makes it possible to control robotic manipulators quite effectively.

As we dove deeper into robotics — especially self-learning systems based on neural networks — we began discovering more and more parallels with human nature. It almost feels as if God designed us using the same principles.

In many tasks involving two or more identical manipulators, electronic brains face a problem that modern science still struggles to solve: which “hand” should move first?

Imagine a humanoid robot that needs to pick up a bucket. Which hand should it use?

Or suppose it has to throw a ball. Which arm should make the throw?

There is an old philosophical story about a hungry donkey standing exactly between two identical piles of hay. Unable to decide which one to approach first, the donkey ultimately died of hunger. For robots, this kind of dilemma becomes a real deadlock.

Of course, engineers can introduce a random number generator. But perfect randomness does not truly exist — or, as Einstein famously said, “God does not play dice.” More importantly, manipulation tasks involving many joints and limbs become exponentially more complex if every movement must begin with a random choice of which manipulator acts first.

Everything becomes dramatically simpler if one “hand” or “leg” is predefined to initiate movement first, while all others follow in a fixed sequence. A surprisingly simple and trivial solution.

Without the concepts of “right” and “left,” the computational complexity of coordinating movements grows enormously — almost as if the number of possible actions were raised to the power of itself. Some may remember the medieval legend about placing grains of wheat on a chessboard until the amount forms a path to the Moon.

That is why, in robotics, identical devices often need a built-in priority system: which one acts first whenever multiple equivalent choices exist. Otherwise, the robot could waste its entire battery trying to decide between two identical options before even reaching the nearest power outlet.

Olesya Grishanina
=SpesLab=

Why do right-handed and left-handed people exist? Why did god create us with non-equivalent limbs?