The future of robotics?: Humanoid machines with the ability to express genuine emotions.
Credit: Blutgruppe/Zefa/Corbis
AT FIRST SIGHT, IT LOOKED LIKE a typical suburban road accident. A Land Rover approached a Chevy Tahoe estate car that had stopped at a kerb; the Land Rover pulled out and tried to pass the Tahoe just as it started off again. There was a crack of fenders and the sound of paintwork being scraped, the kind of minor mishap that occurs on roads thousands of times every day.
Normally drivers get out, gesticulate, exchange insurance details and then drive off. But not on this occasion. No one got out of the cars for the simple reason that they had no humans inside them: the Tahoe and Land Rover were being controlled by computers competing in last November's DARPA (the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) Urban Challenge. To take part, teams had to enter robot cars that could navigate through city streets and cope with numerous road hazards created for the competition in the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, California, United States.
The idea that machines could perform to such standards is startling. Driving is a complex task that takes humans a long time to perfect. Yet here were a bunch of jumped-up laptops controlling cars like veteran chauffeurs.
Even more striking was the fact that the collision between the robot Land Rover, built by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Tahoe, fitted out by Cornell University AI experts, was the only scrape in the entire competition. Yet only three years earlier, at DARPA's first driverless car race, every robot competitor – directed to navigate across a stretch of open desert – either crashed or seized up before getting near the finishing line. At the following year's race, six robot cars completed the course.
So DARPA, which is responsible for developing new technology for the U.S. military, moved the goalposts from the desert to the city for its next, far more exacting, competition in 2007: the urban challenge. A total of 83 robot cars, fitted with complex video- and radar-guidance systems, competed for the US$2 million (A$2.2 million) prize.
Each had its on-board computer loaded with a digital map and route plans, and was instructed to negotiate busy roads (some cars were driven by human volunteers, others by robots); differentiate between pedestrians and stationary objects; determine whether other vehicles were parked or moving off; and various parking manoeuvres (which robots turn out to be unexpectedly adept at).
Six of the 83 cars completed the 100 km course. So in three years, robot cars that could not even cross flat empty land progressed to being able to handle the horrors of city traffic.
It is a remarkable transition that has clear implications for the car of the future. More importantly, it demonstrates how robotics sciences and AI have progressed in the past few years – a point stressed by Bill Gates, the Microsoft boss who is almost a Messianic convert to these causes.
"The robotics industry is developing in much the same way the computer business did 30 years ago," he argues. As he points out, robotic arms help perform simple surgery today; domestic robots vacuum floors; while electronics companies make toys that mimic pets and children with increasing sophistication.
"I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives," says Gates. "We may be on the verge of a new era, when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present."
