robots

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Technology Robot Early Warning by Sten Grynir Industry here and especially in Japan has been using robots as production devices for several decades. These robots are usually fixed in place and perform a small number of well-defined tasks such as welding or parts assembly. When people think of robots, however, the image that comes to mind is usually that provided by science fiction stories and films in which the robots are sentient, mobile and often humanoid. The Emerging Robotics Technology conference held this month in Cambridge, MA, provided an opportunity to see how well the reality of mobile robots matches up with this image.

The Conference made clear that we are still in the very early stages of development of mobile, general purpose robots. Much progress has been made on critical issues such as navigation, manipulation, and the coordination of multiple independent robots. Harder problems, such as understanding speech, object recognition and free-form manipulation of objects have a long way to go for satisfactory solution. Nevertheless, mobile independent robots are currently in use in homes and in the military, and some are affordable by the average household. None of these have a humanoid appearance, and all are special purpose machines. Rosie, the Jetson's robot maid, is a long way off.

IRobot, Inc. is a good example of a company with a mobile robot product line. On the home front, they offer the Rhoomba, a small, flat, disc-shaped robotic vacuum cleaner that can find its way around cluttered rooms, vacuum under couches, and not fall down stairs when it encounters them. Priced at somewhere around $200, the Rhoomba is advertised on TV and is available at Brookstone's and many other stores. In addition to the consumer product, iRobot also has industrial, governmental and military robots that are considerably more expensive and not nearly as cute. All of these higher end robots do one thing well: they can navigate through complex terrain carrying some kind of tool, often a video/audio platform. This makes them especially good for cave reconnaissance in Iraq, or pyramid exploration in Egypt, or carrying sensor payloads down oil wells. Other exhibitors at the conference showed robots with similar capabilities, some of them looking like R2D2.

The most interesting robot was not present at the Conference, but put in a video appearance: Kismet, developed by the Sociable Machines project at MIT. In order to explore human/robot interactions, Kismet was developed to show emotion, pay attention, and respond to human emotions. A schematic mechanical face was developed that was primarily a head-shaped framework that could turn on robot shoulders. The head has large eyes that can move up or down, right or left, mobile eyebrows, and large ears at the side of the head that can be elevated, stand out to the side, or droop. It looks sort of like a benign, wire-frame Oscar the Grouch. Kismet is able to identify the most interesting object in its immediate environment and turn its head and/or eyes to look at it. It has been taught to identify what a human in its vicinity is looking at, and turn its head and eyes to look at the same thing. The impression in either case is uncannily like a robot paying attention. The robot has also been taught to react to human tone of voice by displaying an appropriate expression. A voice praising Kismet generates an expression of happiness; a scolding tone is responded to by so woebegone an expression that the experimenter (and the viewing audience as well) can't help but react with sympathy: "Aw, poor thing, it looks miserable."

Under the same heading of mobile robotics is research being done on intelligent prostheses. The gait of a person with an artificial leg is awkward and unnatural; an experimental robot leg is able to sense terrain and pace and position itself correctly for a natural gait. It is also able to negotiate stairs in a way impossible for a regular artificial leg.

It is much too early to expect interaction with mobile robots to become commonplace soon, but they are coming. With some of the basic problems already solved, and parts and programs available as off-the-shelf components, developers of robots are working on higher-level functionality. Robots will be available to do boring, or dangerous, or really dirty jobs for home, industry and the military. But would you want your sister to marry one?