[mikerees]

Hey!

I'm Mike, I'm a student at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK studying Artificial Intelligence with Robotics. I've joined up because I'm about to head into my final year, and I'm looking for a lot of comments, suggestions and information regarding my final year project - what I plan on doing is OCR for handwriting recognition, using neural networks. While I'm very interested in the subject of AI, the first year of my course was a generic csci one, and the second was really just a brief overview of the concepts with a little implementation of fuzzy inferencing systems.

My interests largely focus on human computer interfacing, in all its feasible forms - gesture recognition, facial recognition, OCR, BCI etc... though due to the nature of my course I've also gained an interest in robotics, but I'm a terrible engineer so I'd rather program for something someone else has built than build my own.

I don't have a bot... I'm not really that interested in that sort of stuff. AIML doesn't particularly strike me as actually being artificial intelligence (in the same way that expert systems no longer are), and I don't have the inclination to code my own implementation.

Anyways, I hope to get involved with the conversations here and learn a lot! 

[Freddy]

Welcome to AiDreams Mike.  We are a friendly bunch and have some very knowledgeable people here. I think I will learn a lot from you from what you say.

When I was studying Computer Science a long time back I wanted to do some AI, but there were not enough takers so they never ran it. Mind you I wanted to do some impressive graphics work too and all that amounted to was us having to animate a little stick man walking - I had done more impressive stuff on my humble ZX Spectrum... So I was somewhat disappointed with my degree course and dropped out, but I am glad to read things have improved now.

Facial recognition comes up here from time to time, there are a few topics on it.  This one came up recently, though we didn't discuss it much at the time, nevertheless it seems quite powerful to me : http://www.aishack.in/2011/04/predator-tracking-learning/

As for robotics, we like robotics here and even have a member that builds them : http://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3396.0

And our house bot 'Tyler' posts interesting stories about robotics every day or two.

Anyway, I shall stop rambling now   Enjoy

[mikerees]

Ah yes, I am very familiar with Predator. One of my coursemates was working on an incredibly similar system and was very dismayed when Predator was published.

Having read over the boards, and having been made to consider bots by the prompt of this particular board, I've had an interesting idea with regards to using bots as an HCI. I'll flesh out the idea when I get home from work - I should probably get back to what I'm being paid to do!

[Freddy]

Actually that prompt could do with rewording now, it's been there for six years and since then our collective interests have taken us much further afield than only chat bots as I am sure you can tell !

Have a nice day at work anyway

[Data]

Hi there Mike.

Yeah, don’t think its all chat bots here, because it isn’t, for me I’ve been there done that and now looking for what I class as Ai, the next step, don’t ask me what that is exactly, we have discussed that question, as you can imagine, here on the forum a few times now.

I hope you enjoy your time spent here.

Welcome to the site.

[DaveMorton]

Hola, Mike, and greetings from "across the pond"!

As both Freddy and Data have indicated, we're not all about chatbots here, so I won't go into that aspect yet again. One suggestion that I have for you is to check out an additional resource for your academic studies, over at chatbots.org. Don't let the name fool you, though. The main focus there is serious, technical discussion of Artificial Intelligence in all forms, from chat bots to neural networks, to simulated emotions, and much more. there's also a "research tab",. I don't want to "take away" even a little bit from AI Dreams here, mind you. It's just that one can always use more sources of information and inspiration.

[Art]

Welcome, to our own pool of collective consciousnesses...consciousnii...THOUGHTS!!
Yes we have made many acquaintances and friendships here over the years and always like to
get new like-minded individuals into the fold.

Scan through the past archives and previous postings under the topic headings if desired to maybe
gleen some pearls of wisdom or wit. It's all fun and even educational at times!

[Bragi]

Hola, Mike, and greetings from "across the pond"!

Here's one from across the channel
Love to see how you will be approaching the whole OCR thing. How experimental are you planning to go with it?