Automaton

Many of us here at Automaton have been skeptical of telepresence robots. We've seen companies like iRobot and Wowwee try to make their mark with consumers at home; Anybots and North End Technologies seem to want to corner the professional video conferencing (robo-conferencing?) market; and InTouch Health thinks a robot can enable a doctor to visit patients remotely. Though these companies continue to get investments, the technology hasn't taken off -- in fact, iRobot even shelved their telepresence robot project. It seems to be a technology still looking for the killer application.

I was sitting comfortably in Skeptic Zone when I had a chance to talk with John Merchant, an IEEE member and president of RPU Technologies. John has an interesting theory: he thinks telepresence robots are the key to enabling "blue-collar telecommuting" while simultaneously helping to lower our greenhouse gas emissions.

He described how telephones, laptops, and widely available internet access changed the white collar workers went to work each day. With Blackberries and home computers, professional life becomes flexible enough to work with the main office while travelling or even sitting at home. This has enabled people to take jobs in distant geographic locations where they don't have to commute each day, usually giving them more time to spend with their families, and creating less overhead for employers. I think most people will agree that this has been a great technological development.

But the manual labor workforce has lagged behind. Someone needs to be physically present to operate machinery, load pallets, and carry out other manual tasks. Even heavily automated assembly lines require an operator or supervisor. These workers haven't been able to take advantage of the many benefits telecommuting has provided for others. But, says Merchant, robots might make the difference.

Imagine your job is to perform quality inspection in a production line. Your task is a matter of taking workpieces out of a bin, fixing them to a test jig, and verifying some parameter. Instead of physically driving in to work, though, you wake up, have a nice breakfast, see your kids off to school, and then log into your computer, which connects to a robot at the factory. This robot lets you see and manipulate your part of the production line. For the next eight hours you effectively play a video game as you guide the robot through the quality inspection process, then sign off for the evening just in time for your kids to get home from soccer practice.

Besides the convenience factor, think of the other possible benefits. Second and third shifts become not new people showing up for work, but time-shifted people logging in to the same robot someone else has just signed off of. By not driving in, significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from cars are eliminated -- the average commuting American spends 100 minutes in the car each day; think of how that could be cut down with telepresence commuting. It could even remove workers from work environments that could damage health or be potentially dangerous... look at how NASA and the Air Force are using telepresence today, to explore planets and perform surveillance missions.

Of course, there are negative implications as well. If telepresence becomes commonplace, outsourcing control of the robots to developing countries with cheaper labor would be an extremely attractive proposition. And though such generalized autonomy technology is in its infancy today, the possibility that these telepresence robots could be made fully autonomous and not require human guidance will certainly make many people nervous.

And we haven't even mentioned the technical challenges. Take a look at some of today's telepresence robots -- with the exception of NASA's, none of them have manipulators; most of them are glorified LCDs on wheels. And the required bandwith, Merchant points out, will be the biggest obstacle.

But still, Mr. Merchant's concept really made me think. Of the telepresence applications I've heard suggested, this is the one that catches my interest. The benefits are obvious. So what do you think? Is this the killer app? Or is telepresence still looking for its niche?

This all reminds me of a quote from a professor of mine that really stuck with me. He was being interviewed about his work in robotics, and he was asked, "So are you going to build the robot that watches your kids while you go to work?" "No," he said. "I want to build a robot that can go to work for me so I can spend more time with my kids."

Previously:

Personal Robots Market Will Grow To Over $5 Billion by 2015, Telepresence Next Big Thing

Is telepresence the best application roboticists can come up with?

CES: Remote presence is the name of the game

The Google Lunar X Prize provides a $20-million purse for the first private team to land a robotic vehicle on the moon, drive it around, and send back pictures and video. (We've profiled one of the favorites, the team from Carnegie Mellon University). Unfortunately, the technology (and money) required for a prize-winning mission goes far beyond something you can build in the basement with your kids.

But now there's a new challenge, called MoonBots, that anyone can participate in. Announced this week, the contest asks six-member teams of children and adults to design a LEGO Mindstorms robot suitable for the moon.

From the MoonBots website:

Once registration for the contest opens, teams will be asked to submit designs illustrating how they will build, program and operate their robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS robotic kits. There will be no charge to enter the contest and registration will be open to teams across the globe.

The teams with the best designs will be provided with free LEGOs to actually build and program their robots. The completed bots will compete in challenges similar to the Lunar X Prize, but on a simulated "Moonscape."

If LEGOs aren't your thing, and you want to work on a real Lunar X robot, check out Team FREDnet, which I featured in a June article about participatory space exploration.

When it comes to "killer robots", my philosophy -- as most of you know by now -- comes down to, "We should think about it, but there's no need to panic." Fortunately, there's a group that's doing just that: the International Joint Conference for Artificial Intelligence. Their meeting last month generated some really interesting discussion, including calls for a wider debate on the use of AI in military and security applications, but also discussed the benefits that more advanced artificial intelligence could bring us. (You can read many of the papers online here)

Keep in mind that the definition of "artificial intelligence" reaches far outside of robotics, so these discussions also considered technology like computer viruses -- which some researchers claimed had reached "cockroach-like" levels of self-preservation and reproduction -- and software that tries to break CAPTCHAs. Spambots and the Conficker worm generally don't figure into my day-to-day robotics engineering but they might be closer relatives to Skynet than my Roomba is.

The gist of it is hesitancy to hand decision making over to an autonomous robot. This comes on the heels of a plan released by the US Air Force to move toward decison-making aerial drones by the year 2047 (pdf) -- an idea that would make almost anyone nervous, and an interesting change from the Army's Future Combat Systems' insistence that they want to keep a human in the loop. But the IJCAI's concerns about autonomous decision making have legs well outside of military robots; there is much discussion and nervousness lately of automated computer trading systems on the stock market. (As I'm writing this I'm also listening to NPR, who have just informed me that the SEC has already moved to ban this practice)

At the same time the proceedings of this conference came out, an interesting article (behind a pay login -- sorry, non-IEEE members) was published in the IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine that referenced the work of a couple of roboticists who are interested in rewriting Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics for modern application. The good news is, they got it right that Asimov's laws are plot devices and neither can nor should be taken as gospel for a robotic code of ethics. The bad news is... well, take a read for yourself, and then I'll tell you what I think.

Here are Asimov's original laws:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

And here are the proposed new three laws:

1. A human may not deploy a robot without the human-robot work system meeting the highest legal and professional standards of safety and ethics.
2. A robot must respond to humans as appropriate for their roles.
3. A robot must be endowed with sufficient situated autonomy to protect its own existence as long as such protection provides smooth transfer of control which does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.

While it's a cute PR move, copying the famous Three Laws infrastructure, these really appear to be some guidelines of which there happen to be three. They also are guidelines for the human creators of robots, not robots themselves -- and while the creators acknowledge this fact (you can read it in the abstract linked above), it defeats the purpose of the original Three Laws, which were hard-coded into the positronic brain of every robot and were supposedly failsafe. And let's face it... these laws, especially the first two, are pretty darn vague. You think Asimov's laws had loopholes to be exploited... boy, what happens the first time a robot gets around to reading some history books and finding what used to be some of humanity's highest legal and professional ethical standards?

It is all tongue-in-cheek, of course, but I think this Three Laws buiness just shows how uncertain we are of what we want our robots to do. We can't even make an absolute statement of "don't kill anyone." We can't tell if robots should be doing our bidding as mechanical slaves, or if there are roles in which it is "more appropriate" for a robot and a human to interact on a more equal level. We've got a long way to go until we understand where artificial intelligences actually fit in our world -- and the good news is, I think we've got a decent amount of time on our hands to do this.

So in summary: keep thinking, folks, but keep not panicking.

Sankai-san is back. Check out the latest demo of the HAL exoskeleton suit, invented by Yoshiyuki Sankai at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. Sankai is commercializing the suit through his company, Cyberdyne, which has recently demonstrated the system on the streets of Tokyo.

What the video doesn't show is that the suit uses bio-electrical sensors attached to the body to capture electromyogram signals on the skin and control the actuators. Cyberdyne claims that the suit can "multiply the original strength by a factor of 2 to 10."

Would that let people commute to work on foot without breaking a sweat?

For more on the technology behind the HAL suit, see this article on exoskeletons that my colleague Harry Goldstein and I wrote a while ago.

Video: NECN

AeroVironment has recently received a DARPA phase II grant of $2.1 million USD to continue work on their humming-bird like nano-AUV. I'm always amused at how the US military spends millions every year on projects like these, yet you can buy ornithopter toys at any Walmart starting at $30 . . .

Anyway, the video is impressive none-the-less.

ALSOK's new advertising robot An9-PR is going on sale today. The new robot is a step away from the Japanese company's core themes of "reducing the burden of security guards" and "responding to labor shortages due to the aging society with fewer children", however the new robot's features sound quite compelling.

A 360 degree electronic billboard and three LCD touch screens as well as a voice announcement system allow to advertise products. The robot is equipped with face recognition and wireless connectivity, which also allows it to communicate with mobile phones. It is aware of its location, which means it can send you suitable coupons and other information to your mobile phone when you meet it in the cereal aisle. The robot's hands are equipped with a FeliCa smart card reader, the de facto smart card standard in Japan, paving the way for many integrated online services including electronic money. Finally, the package also includes an easy information management system to quickly update all advertising features from a remote PC.

As we've pointed out in a previous post, telepresence robots may be the next big thing and ALSOK is not taking any chances: In addition to its advertising features, An9-PR also includes live remote video and voice communication, allowing it to double as a promoter for supermarket food sampling or as a security guard.

ALSOK's three year sales target for this new robot is 50 units. The standard price for your An9-PR is set at 10,436,000 yen ($110,000).

PS: An9-PR's brothers An9-RR and security robot D1 were released earlier this year (some video action here).

Spectrum editor and producer Josh Romero just posted this entertaining video, "The Invasion of Cute, Therapeutic Robots," on two robots that are, well, cute and therapeutic. They are Paro, a robotic seal used to treat elderly patients with dementia, and Keepon, a yellow, rubbery robot that researchers have used to interact with autistic children.

It's amazing to see how much technology goes into these little creatures.

I wrote a story about Paro early this year. The robot, invented by Takanori Shibata, a researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, uses two 32-bit RISC processors, custom actuators, and a host of sound, light, temperature, and touch sensors. It also has some AI capabilities -- it learns its name over time and changes its behavior to maximize its petting opportunities. Oh, and it's got a pacifier-shaped recharger.

Keepon, created by Marek Michalowski, a robotics Phd student at Carnegie Mellon, and Hideki Kozima, currently a professor at Miyagi University, in Japan, uses two video cameras (eyes) and a microphone (nose) as sensors, and four motors are embedded on its base. It can be tele-operated by a therapist in another room, but can also run in an autonomous mode, bouncing along to music or sounds. The idea is researchers can monitor, track, and record the children's improvement.

Still, there's room for improvement in at least one area: their price tags. Josh reports.

In May, we posted about a group of researchers from Georgia Tech who have been working on an “ethical governor” for military robots. Dr. Ronald Arkin, director of Georgia Tech’s Mobile Robot Laboratory, was interviewed by H+ magazine on the subject, and we’ve got some choice excerpts below:

In his recent book, Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, Dr. Arkin explores a number of complex real-world scenarios where robots with ethical governors would “do the right thing” — in consultation with humans on the battlefield. These scenarios include ROE and LOW adherence (Taliban and Iraq), discrimination (Korean DMZ), and proportionality and tactics (urban sniper).

Arkin’s “rules” end up altering Asimov’s rules to look more like these:

1. Engage and neutralize targets as combatants according to the ROE.
2. Return fire with fire proportionately.
3. Minimize collateral damage — intentionally minimize harm to noncombatants.
4. If uncertain, invoke tactical maneuvers to reassess combatant status.
5. Recognize surrender and hold POW until captured by human forces.

Dr. Arkin and his colleagues at Georgia Tech have developed a “proof-of-concept” prototype ethical governor. His software architecture is likely years away from use on the battlefield.

h+: Some researchers assert that no robots or AI systems will be able to discriminate between a combatant and an innocent, that this sensing ability currently just does not exist. Do you think this is just a short-term technology limitation? What such technological assumptions do you make in the design of your ethical governor?

RA: I agree this discrimination technology does not effectively exist today, nor is it intended that these systems should be fielded in current conflicts. These are for the so-called war after next, and the DoD would need to conduct extensive additional research in order to develop the accompanying technology to support the proof-of-concept work I have developed. But I don’t believe there is any fundamental scientific limitation to achieving the goal of these machines being able to discriminate better than humans can in the fog of war, again in tightly specified situations. This is the benchmark that I use, rather than perfection. But if that standard is achieved, it can succeed in reducing noncombatant casualties and thus is a goal worth pursuing in my estimation.

This is pretty much exactly what we were saying back in February when the media freak-out of the week was killer robots: in a nutshell, you can program a robot soldier just as well as, and in some cases more effectively than, a human soldier in specific combat situations. We can’t do it yet, but that’s why robots currently don’t have direct unsupervised control over their own weaponry.

h+: Do you envision robots ever disobeying military orders on the battlefield to “do the right thing?” If so, under what circumstances?

RA: Asimov originated the use of ethical restraint in robots many years ago and presented all the quandaries that it can generate. In our prototype ethical governor (and in the design itself) we do provide the robot with the right to refuse an order it deems unethical. It must provide some explanation as to why it has refused such an order. With some reluctance, we have engineered a human override capability into the system, but one which forces the operator to explicitly assume responsibility for any ethical infractions that might result as a consequence of such an override.

h+: Do you ever foresee a scenario where both sides in a conflict are strictly robotic?

RA: Not really. I view these unmanned systems as highly specialized assets that will be working alongside our troops, not directly replacing them. They will conduct specialized operations (for example, building clearing, counter sniper operations, and so forth) that will provide an asymmetric advantage to our war fighters. A human presence on the battlefield will be maintained, and some would argue that it must be so for a range of reasons.

See? There’s no reason to panic, some very smart people are working on this robot ethics issue, and it’s not even an issue yet. If you just take a step back and look at it logically, you realize that just like humans, robots can be taught to follow rules, obey regulations, and make ethical decisions… And they can probably do it more strictly, and reliably, than humans can.

You can read the rest of the interview at h+, and get Ronald Arkin’s book on the subject here.

[ h+ Magazine ] via [ Boing Boing ]

Those baseball playing robots we watched in action on Monday utilize 1000 FPS cameras and high speed motors to duplicate (and improve upon) what humans can do. But the system is capable of much more than just baseball… This video showcases just some of the talents of these robots, and it’s clearly way beyond what we’re capable of in both speed and precision.

[ Ishikawa Komuro Lab ]

Flossie, the motorcycle robo-rider developed by lubricant maker Castrol, has been the subject of much blogosphere buzz -- and way too many Terminator jokes.

Now, Flossie, meet your car counterpart, Tony.

Well, Tony is not its actual name. The robot, by Anthony Best Dynamics in Wiltshire, England, is an in-vehicle system that can steer, accelerate, brake, and change gears. I think they call it SR30. I like Tony more.

The robot driver can automatically follow a GPS-defined route stored in its memory (try that humans) or be remote controlled by operators, a feature that should be helpful during the "vehicle misuse testing." 

Check out the videos below.

And if you haven't seen Flossie in action, the video is here.

Photos: Castrol (Flossie); Anthony Best Dynamics (SR30).