The power of head up displays

 Head up displays are common special effects in scifi movies. Since the 1980s lots of films have demonstrated these visual effects. Most of the audience thinks, that the head up display isn't artificial intelligence but its only the artist representation of possible future robotics.

Its a bit surprising to explain that a head up display is the fundamental building block for artifcial intelligence because they are showing grounded language. The typical head up display is formatted in a key/value syntax, similar to a json file. Example for a warehouse robot:

location: cell B, north
movement: east
speed: 4 km/h
gripper: empty
obstacle: no
target: cell A
battery: 81%

All the important information can be shown in this syntax. The key/value format converts the camera picture into a text adventure game. A parser can analyze the textual information and decide what the robot should do next. For example, if the battery is below 20% the robot needs to find the charging station, And if there is an obstacle ahead, the robot needs to stop.

So we can say, that advanced robots aren't controlled by a AI algorithm but by the head up display. The information are the input for the decision making system, the head up display consists of the state space of a robot. If the robot decides for the wrong action, sometihng is wrong with information in the head up display.