The future of robotics?: Humanoid machines with the ability to express genuine emotions.
Credit: Blutgruppe/Zefa/Corbis
This approach is exemplified by vacuuming robots such as the Electrolux Trilobite. The Trilobite scuttles around homes pinging out ultrasound signals to create maps of rooms, which are remembered for future cleaning. Technology like this is now changing the face of robotics, says philosopher Ron Chrisley, director of the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex in England. "Sensors allow us to take the bottom-up approach to making robots.
Artificial intelligence experts spent a long time trying to build machines like a robot butler that would understand its owner's needs or a robot that had a complex visual cortex. Now we have found that a more fruitful path is to build simple domestic machines, like robo-vacuum cleaners. Then we can work up from there.
"Robots first learn basic competence – how to move around a house without bumping into things. Then we can think about teaching them how to interact with humans," he said.
Last year, a new Hong Kong restaurant, Robot Kitchen, opened with a couple of sensor-laden humanoid machines directing customers to their seats. Each possesses a touch-screen on which orders can be keyed in. The robot then returns with the correct dishes. In Japan, University of Tokyo researchers recently unveiled a kitchen 'android' that could wash dishes, pour tea and make a few limited meals.
The ultimate aim is to provide robot home helpers for the sick and the elderly, a key concern in a country like Japan where 22 per cent of the population is 65 or older. Over US$1 billion year is spent on research into robots that will be able to care for the elderly.
One of the first fruits of endeavours such as these is the My Spoon robot created by Secom, a small and innovative Japanese security company. My Spoon can feed disabled or incapacitated people by breaking up food and spooning it into their mouths. Then there's Paro, a Japanese autonomous robot that looks like a baby harp seal, expresses feelings, moves its head and legs and responds to elderly patients who give it a cuddle, while surreptitiously monitoring their heart rate and other parameters for symptoms of stroke and heart attack.
Machines such as these take researchers into the field of socialised robotics: how to make robots act in a way that does not scare or offend individuals. "We need to study how robots should approach people, how they should appear. That is going to be a key area for future research," adds Chrisley.
The development of carer robots also suggests intelligent machines will soon have other advanced roles in hospitals and surgeries. Some will simply aid doctors by pinpointing tumours or lesions during operations, for example. Others will function in far subtler, more sophisticated ways. Dmitry Oleynikov, at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre in Omaha, USA, is developing miniature robots that will be inserted inside abdominal cavities to assist in surgery. At the same time, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, are working on the HeartLander, a 'caterpillar' robot that enters the chest through an incision and then moves about to administer treatments.
Others envisage a future in which 'snake-arm robots' will weave their way around the human body, equipped with lights, high-frequency cutters and sealers to administer treatment when required. "These are long, slender robot arms that don't have elbows and can therefore 'nose-follow', like a snake, into confined spaces – for example, in the human body," says Rob Buckingham, managing director of OC Robotics in Bristol, England, a company that is developing this technology.
Then there is the issue of computing power. A megahertz of computing power cost US$7,000 in 1970. Today it can be purchased for a few cents. Similarly, the price of data storage has plummeted, providing AI researchers with the processing power they need to tackle other problem areas – a key example being mobility.
