Free Web NovelChapter 184: Chapter 162: Test Success and Exposure
A large crowd gathered at the entrance of the supermarket.
The experiment robot was placed in the middle.
Even the Fat Boss walked around the robot for a few turns, staring closely at the robot’s arm, and touched it, "This is really high-class!"
Zhao Yi chuckled. freewebnoveℓ.com
The real value of a robot is not its hardware. To put it bluntly, a full set of equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars can’t be that advanced.
The others looked on curiously.
Zhao Yi then introduced, "We’re planning to test the robot shopping system in Brother Wang’s supermarket."
"When the robot officially starts, please help us by keeping a certain distance from the robot, or it may affect its operation. Also, please help maintain the silence."
Feeling honored to have his supermarket chosen for the experiment, the Fat Boss stepped forward, raising his voice to announce, "Quiet! Everyone be quiet! This is a high-tech experiment! Not a show for you to watch."
Many people laughed.
Zhao Hongjuan and Lin Xiaoqing were among them.
Xiaoqing and Zhao Yi stood very close, seemingly becoming part of the robot team.
Zhao Hongjuan helped by asking the crowd, "Everyone, please keep quiet and watch the robot from a distance. Don’t get too close."
Zhao Yi asked them to watch the robot and went inside the supermarket to check the environment.
The Fat Boss was well-prepared.
The distance between the shelves in the supermarket was increased, making the interior much tidier. There were no obstacles like boxes between the shelves, which would make the robot’s operation smoother.
After checking the environment inside and finding no issues, he went outside and gestured for everyone to quiet down.
Xu Chao went to stand on the steps at the entrance, leaving a barrier-free passage for the robot to turn and calculate the slope before climbing up.
The test officially began.
Zhao Yi turned on the robot.
After the robot finished system loading, it immediately spoke, "Robot Dongdong, ready for action!"
"Pfft!"
Zhao Hongjuan couldn’t help but laugh. She quickly covered her mouth and glanced left and right, then glared at Lin Xiaoqing. She knew the name had something to do with Xiaoqing.
Continuing.
Zhao Yi spoke to the robot, "Start shopping mode, go to the supermarket straight ahead, buy two cucumbers, a pack of tissues, and a box of milk."
"Done."
"Order received!"
The robot stopped for about two seconds and activated its cameras, heading straight forward.
Xu Chao stood dead ahead.
The robot stopped about half a meter away from Xu Chao, then moved sideways to the corner of the barrier-free passage, turned left and right to look around, walked a short distance forward, and finally stopped in front of the barrier-free passage before climbing up the ramp.
"Phew~~"
The people outside couldn’t help but cheer.
Even though they were ordinary people who didn’t fully understand the technology, they knew how difficult it was for a machine to bypass the main entrance with steps, find the barrier-free passage, and climb up, which was definitely an impressive feat.
The robot reached the entrance of the supermarket, stopped for a moment, turned, and entered the vegetable section at the front.
Fat Boss’s supermarket was not big, with only six rows of shelves in the middle, a whole row of shelves against the wall, and the vegetable section at the entrance, which had two rows of vegetables and fruits with an aisle in the middle.
The robot walked along the aisle, looking only in one direction, and quickly stopped in front of the cucumbers.
After a gap of about two seconds, the robot reached out its mechanical arm, grabbed a cucumber, and placed it in the shopping basket behind it, then twisted around to grab another cucumber and placed it in the shopping basket again.
"Whoosh~~"
"Clap, clap, clap~~"
"It did it! It did it!"
The crowd watching at the supermarket entrance was even more excited than Zhao Yi. Some shouted in excitement, and others simply clapped their hands.
Fat Boss was one of the few calm people present. He quickly raised his hand and shouted, "Quiet! Quiet!"
The crowd quieted down again.
Instead of leaving the vegetable section, the robot continued to walk along the aisle, constantly looking around, and only after walking through the entire vegetable section did it enter the second aisle and move into the shelf area.
The first part of the shelf area was all alcohol.
The robot quickly walked past, barely stopping at all, until it reached the second-row beverage area. It then began to stop constantly, and a buzzing sound came from its stomach.
That was the sound of the cooling fan.
When the computational load became large, the CPU usage increased, causing the cooling fan to spin faster.
There were many items in the beverage area, all sharing common features with ’boxed milk,’ making it impossible to eliminate them at first glance, resulting in a larger computational load. The robot stopped in the milk section but ultimately didn’t make a choice, continuing to move forward instead.
"Phew..." fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
Many people thought the robot had failed.
Lin Xiaoqing also asked Zhao Yi, "Did it fail?"
"Not yet," Zhao Yi didn’t care, "Because I didn’t set data 100% matching with the boxed milk."
"Why not?"
Zhao Yi hesitated to explain the complexity to Lin Xiaoqing and simply said, "You’ll see for yourself."
"Tell me!" Lin Xiaoqing was unsatisfied.
Sun Liang joined in and asked, "Zhao Yi, explain it, I don’t quite understand either!"
"Alright!"
Zhao Yi simply explained.
Robots judge objects based on their designed recognition. The most basic way is through color recognition. They use a ’fuzzy calculation’ method, where the largest coverage area is considered to be the color of the object.
For example, on a milk package, because of a cartoon character image, any color could appear. Using the ’fuzzy calculation’ method, if a certain color’s coverage area exceeds 50%, the color of the object would be directly categorized as the highest coverage color.
Milk is categorized as white.
But, there are many white ’block-shaped’ boxes, and in the case that the text is unrecognizable, other factors need to be determined, such as the size range of the box, weight, etc.
Even if all conditions are met, it is still not 100% certain that the object is milk, as there are many similar items.
Zhao Yi didn’t make a ’definitive judgment’.
He created dozens of possible related judgment categories and assigned a percentage to each one. Ultimately, items exceeding 95% confidence would be determined as a certain object.
This fuzzy method is also the way the human brain judges things.
In fact.
Of course, if judging objects only, better ways exist. However, what he wanted to create was a ’human-like’ method, not simply calling data for judgment.
At the same time, judgment had to be unified in one way to realize code commonality. It was not feasible to switch to another method for simple or complex items, which would be the same as rewriting a set of code for recognizing an object.
That would not be acceptable.
So, when it comes to judging objects, some items like cucumbers are very simple and can be judged directly. However, items like milk, which have packaging and many uncertain factors, are more complicated to judge.
While Zhao Yi was explaining, the robot successfully selected the tissues and continued to move around the supermarket.
After going around all the positions, it returned to the entrance and suddenly stopped, turned towards the milk section, walked over and directly picked up a carton of milk.
"It picked it up!"
"What’s going on? Wasn’t it unable to pick up the milk?"
"Impressive!"
The crowd at the entrance cheered again.
This time no one cared about the noise, because the robot had completed its commands and picked up the tissues, cucumber, and milk. Some people simply asked Zhao Yi, "Where did you buy it? It’s so advanced!"
"Is this kind of robot for sale? I want to buy one too!"
"How much does it cost?"
Zhao Yi went over to shut down the robot first, as it indicated low battery. Forcing shutdown without power might damage the system or files.
He came back and laughed, "I bought the robot for tens of thousands, but I designed the program inside it myself."
"That’s amazing!"
"By the way, Zhao Yi is a mathematician who solved some math problems. In fact, he is a computer expert!"
"Hacker!"
"Hackers are really amazing!"
Zhao Yi forced a smile on his face and muttered in his heart dozens of times, "What does this have to do with hackers?"
...
Test successful!
Although there were still many problems exposed during the test, at least the core functions worked."
Pathfinding, no problem.
Object recognition, no problem either.
In fact, Zhao Yi had only initially input ten kinds of objects, and the others hadn’t been input yet. But following that was just like a word-filling game. With the basic framework established, he could simply let Xu Chao put things in.
The celebration banquet had to take place.
At night.
Zhao Yi treated everyone to a big meal.
Xu Chao, Sun Liang, Zhao Hongjuan, and her daughter were all there, along with several neighbors, including Brother Wang, the supermarket owner. Zhao Yi generously paid the bill, knowing that sometimes neighbors would help out or look after each other. Inviting them to a banquet deepened their relationships.
As the group ate and drank, the photos of Zhao Yi’s robot test had already been posted on the internet.
They were taken with a mobile phone.
The pixels of the photos were terrible, but there were many of them, over forty in total. They were all uploaded to the internet, and someone exposed what happened, as well as the entire process of the robot choosing items.
Additionally, someone uploaded a short video clip of the robot entering the supermarket.
Videos and photos together had quite a persuasive effect.
Most people just watched for fun, marveling at the advanced intelligent technology that allows robots to shop in supermarkets like humans.
Professionals were different, though.
Zhou Kai, the manager of Haitian Technology, was one of those professionals. They had been researching an intelligent technology that could recognize objects and never thought they would see it online.
"Is this real?"
"It doesn’t look fake. How could an experimental robot appear in...?"
"This person is...?"
Zhou Kai was initially skeptical. High-tech intelligence usually only appears in labs. Moreover, the robot in the photos and videos was full of black technology. Pathfinding alone was not easy to achieve, and the object recognition seemed to rely on dynamic patterns, which involved very high technology.
Until he saw a photo.
With a face he seemed to have seen before, he was immediately surprised, "Isn’t that...the genius high school student who created the ’screening method’?"
