The 2005 Fourth British Computer Society’s Annual Prize for Progress towards Machine Intelligence has been won by IFOMIND, a mobile robot system that demonstrates intelligence as it meets a new object in its world.

IFOMIND reacts initially in an “instinctive” way to its first perception of an unknown object that it encounters; at first it is generally fearful. But the robot observes the object from a distance and takes note of how it behaves and how it reacts to different approaches; the robot is then able to decide on the best approach or whether to avoid it. This knowledge can then be retained by the robot as it carries on and meets many more objects.

This is a leap forward in the domain of Machine Intelligence as IFOMIND is able to use logical thought processes in order to decide the best way to interact with the objects that it meets.