Designing Autonomous AI

Introduction: The Right Brain in the Right Place (Why We Need Autonomous AI)

Though the problems industry has asked me to solve with autonomous AI are many and varied, they can nonetheless be divided into three clear categories, which I will now explain in detail.

I consulted for a company that uses computer numerical control (CNC) machines to make cell phone cases. Spinning tools cut metal stock into the shape of the phone. After each case is cut, the CNC machine door opens. A robotic arm loads the finished part onto a conveyor, then grasps the next part from a fixture, and loads it into the CNC machine to be cut. If the part does not orient in the fixture at precisely the right angle, the robot arm will fail to grasp the part or will drop the part before it reaches the CNC machine. And if the arriving case is wider or thinner than expected, even just a little, the robot arm will again fail to grasp the part or drop it before it reaches the CNC machine.

The automated system is inflexible. An automated system is one that makes decisions by calculating, searching, or lookup. The robot arm controller was programmed by hand to travel from one fixed point to another and perform the task in a very specific way. It succeeds only if the phone case is the perfect width and sits in the fixture at the perfect angle, as depicted in Figure I-1.

This organization needs more flexible and adaptable automation that can control the robot arm to successfully grasp cases of a wide variety of widths ...