Rise of the machines
A metallic beetle the size of a hubcap that slowly grazes its way around a household carpet is the unlikely symbol for the rebirth of robotics.
By Chris Edwards
However, it is this kind of machine that is providing new opportunities for research and development in the merging of mechanics, electronics and computing.
“More and more people are using robots in their homes,” says Professor Carsten Maple, Head of Computing and Information Systems, University of Bedfordshire. He cites the Roomba as one of the first real robots to make it into the living room that is not a toy: the Frisbee-shaped machine vacuums carpets as it crawls across them.
“It will be interesting to see how robotics will become a big consumer market. It has gone from the day when we just used robots to build cars,” says Maple.
The university bought a series of robots, each costing between £2,000 and £5,000, to give robotics students a better idea of the many control systems that will have to go into even moderately complex automatons in the future.
“There are lots of servos in them. You need to be able to put together a fairly complex programme,” says Maple. “You need to manage all these motors but it is all based on the same control theory. The robots look like toys but they show how much control you can have over mechanical parts.”
Although costs will come down as home robots become more common, Maple says it’s important to be able to buy in the more advanced systems because they allow more precise control over their behaviour than the simpler robots on the market. For example, it is important to show how much power influences stability. “As you lose power, you lose some of the control,” he says.
The power aspect will be a big part of home robot research, as the products need to be much smaller than their industrial counterparts. The balance between weight and power has led some robot researchers to move away from servo motors to systems that borrow concepts from biology.
At the University of Essex, Professor Owen Holland has used the structure of the human skeleton to build a robot that moves more easily. It is work that makes researchers think much more about how animals are put together. “A consequence of this is that I now feel more mechanical,” says Holland.
Similarly, a lot of work is going into making robots deal with the real world more effectively. In the context of a car plant, robots can follow precisely defined programmes. Those in the home need to deal with rapidly changing circumstances. A robot that vacuums the cat is not going to be popular. It needs the artificial intelligence (AI) to avoid things that inadvertently get in the way. “AI is about taking lots of inputs and turning it into information,” says Maple.
The focus on AI means that this kind of research work can go further than robotics. AI has become a core part of the gaming industries. Game series such as Black & White are being built around increasingly sophisticated AI engines. Not only is it a possible destination for those on robotics and AI courses, but the growth of computer games is likely to spur further work.
“The games and entertainment industries are bringing in such revenues that they can bring things into industrial research,” claims Maple.
Different areas of the globe specialise in different types of robots. Although UK universities such as Cambridge are looking at self-driving vehicles, the Grand Challenge series of events organised by defence-research agency DARPA has spurred on a lot of ground vehicle research in the US. Japan and Korea have concentrated on home robots and on another area that has captured the imagination of researchers around the world: robot football.
“The aim of the robot football community is to have a team of robots that can beat a team of the best human players by 2050,” says Ken Young of the University of Warwick. “If the technology keeps developing I have no doubt it will get there. And with some of the things coming out of Japan, Korea and the United States, it is certainly going in the right direction.” He admits the university cannot compete with the funding going into the world champions, but already has a couple of teams which have competed around the world.
Over the next 50 years, robotics research could change the way we think about ourselves. As they get smarter, Maple points out that we will have to face the issue of civil rights for robots as their intelligence reaches or potentially surpasses ours.
Dr Ron Chrisley of the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex says the invention of an automaton that can think for itself raises philosophical issues. “There is something different about building conscious systems. They have to have purposes and desires that are different to your own. The point of AI is to develop things that have freedom. It is something of a paradox: the autonomous artefact. If it’s an autonomous thing it must be independent of me.”
There are not many branches of technology R&D that could have such profound implications for how we think about ourselves.
Robots everywhere
In the future, robots will be hard to avoid. They are already in some homes. But they are coming to cars, to offices and to hospitals – just about anywhere you can think of. Many of them will be unrecognisable as robots.
Many of the robots intended for use in the home are purposefully being designed to look cute. A lot of researchers reckon we won’t accept robots in the home until they look a lot friendlier. However, it is an area fraught with difficulty as the more lifelike robots get, the less we are likely to accept them – a phenomenon called the Uncanny Valley.
Yet we often apply human feelings to things that are not alive. Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass from Stanford University noticed this more than ten years ago. They found that people react to computers in much the same way as they do to people, even though they are aware they are dealing with a machine. If you’ve ever heard anyone shout at their computer, it is easy to see what they mean.
However, the robots in cars will be so undercover that we probably won’t think of them that way. The aim of the self-driving automobile is that it will become possible to reduce congestion by making cars follow each other much more closely.
In hospitals, robots are now being used for delicate surgery. Today, they are often guided by an experienced surgeon but they use a small amount of autonomy to make delicate cuts that human fingers cannot manage. Over time, the robot surgeons will take on more of the job, although they will likely stay focused on specific types of operations rather than turning into automatic surgeons that can replicate the skills of a trained human.