Introduction
Peter Menzel
Robot: n (Czech, from robota, compulsory labor) 1. A machine that looks like a human being andperforms various complex acts (as walking and talking) of a human being. 2. A mechanism guidedby automatic controls. [Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 1999]
Robo sapiens: n (English, from robot, a mechanism guided by automatic controls; and Latin, fromHomo sapiens, mankind) 1. A hybrid species of human and robot with intelligence vastly superior tothat of purely biological mankind; began to emerge in the twenty-first century. 2. The dominantspecies in the solar system of Earth. [Microsoft Universal Dictionary, 2099]
Before Faith and I began this book I would have attributed the term Robo sapiens toa science-fiction writer. I would have been amused, but would have scoffed especiallyhard at those modifiers "vastly superior" and "dominant" in its (admittedly.hypothetical) definition. I have been skeptical about technology's undeliveredpromises ever since I began a career as a photojournalist, more than two decadesago. More specifically, I am skeptical not about technology per se but about theway societies misuse and misunderstand it. Nuclear power, for example, is a wonderful technologythat would have had a prominent place in any wise, far-seeing, and incorruptible society. In thefuture, I hope to encounter such a society.
Pessimism about society's potential to misuse technology is nothing new. Czech writer KarelCapek coined the term "robot" in a play he wrote in 1920 called R.U.R. [first performed in 1923].The play's dark plot revolves around a factory—Rossum's Universal Robots, the R.U.R. of the title—thatpopulates the world with artificial slaves, meant to relieve humans of the drudgery of work.Built in ever-increasing numbers and with expanding intelligence, they soon outnumber theirhuman masters, and then they are used as soldiers. Eventually, a robot revolt wipes out the humanrace. It's interesting that the person who invented the modern concept of robots predicted that theywould destroy us all.
A year ago, when our friend Thomas Borchert, technology and science editor at Stern magazinein Germany, asked me to document advances in robotics and artificial intelligence around theworld, I was eager to seek out the planet's most advanced machines and their makers (he didn'tmention any threat to the human race). My interest—and my skepticism—increased when Ilearned that roboticists were predicting that human intelligence would soon be surpassed bymachine intelligence—if not in the next decade, then in the decade after.
How much was hype? Was there really a revolution in robotics, as the roboticists claimed? Iknew that robotics had not lived up to the dreams of its pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s. Today,years after robots were supposed to be on the streets and in our homes, the machines are largelyunseen. The only robots widely in use are computer-driven slaves bolted to factory floors and laboratorybenches. Knowing this, I did not expect to be intellectually kidnapped by a robot. But then ithappened, in Japan.
We were shooting a private demo of the Honda [P3]—a robot that looks like an astronaut in awhite spacesuit—at the car company's top-secret development center outside Tokyo. (Yes, theJapanese automaker had quietly spent millions to build a bipedal robot.) Watched proudly by ahost of attendant technicians, the robot walked down a path on its own two feet, opened a door,stepped through it, closed the door behind itself, then gracefully climbed a flight of stairs. Wasthere a little man inside? No. Just electric motors and electronics. We knew that the Hondahumanoid was not autonomous—that every step was programmed—but we were still amazed thata machine could maneuver like a human.
At that time, we were nearly halfway through a month-long assignment. We had seen a numberof very advanced robots, but most worked haltingly, and some only after interminable delaysto load software or troubleshoot a fragile connection. No single machine had yet captured ourimagination enough to make us believe the glowing predictions of robotic evolution—in fact,many machines were quite primitive beasts. But when we saw the Honda humanoid's jauntydemo, we realized that with enough time and money, layers of complexity could be added to anyof the other nonhuman-looking robots as well—upgrading them from clumsy class into therealm of smooth operators.
The Honda robot is not alone. As we learned more and saw more, we realized that twenty yearsafter their initial predictions, the futurists might at last be proven right. Machine intelligence ishere, in infant form. And now it's learning to walk and talk.
After completing an additional ten-day robot shoot in Europe in the spring, we decided to continuethe grand tour of robotics labs around the world, visiting and revisiting labs and talking tothe people who want to build our mechanical future. We wanted to know where the robots weregoing. More than that, we wanted to know where we—that is, humankind—were going. We wereamazed by what we found.
We discovered that the dawn of our postbioiogical future may arrive sooner than we imagine.Consider technological progress to date. It took billions of years for primitive life forms to evolve intomammals, millions of years for the descendents of those first mammals to lumber into the StoneAge, thousands of years for humans to advance from stone to steel—and only sixty-six years for peopleto soar from Kitty Hawk to a stroll on themoon. We accelerated from the Wright stuff tothe right stuff so quickly that the questioninevitably arises: how long—or how short—atime will it be to the next step, Robo sapiens?
One part of the answer is that we are alreadypart way there—indeed, we began evolving inthat direction in the last century. With our artificialhips, prosthetic knees, false teeth, heatingaids, pacemakers, breast and penile implants,we are part cyborg today. (Well, not me personally,you understand.) That list of mechanicalparts doesn't include transplanted organs, skingrafts, and plastic surgery. Or the new mechanicalhearts that are under development today. Orthe cochlear and retinal implants that will behere tomorrow. There may be general resistanceto implanting chips in people's brains, but whena bio-chip is developed to easily enhance memory or linguistic skills or mathematical abilities—howlong will people just say no? Kevin Warwick (see page 29) plans to address this question byimplanting a chip in his own body next year. It could be true: the next step in human evolutioncould indeed be from man to machine.
Another part of this puzzle is provided by the silicon chip, which has rammed our technologicalfuture into overdrive. Computers, nearly ubiquitous now, soon will be. Every year, they get smaller,faster, cheaper, more powerful. According to what is known as Moore's Law, computer chips willbecome faster and more powerful by a factor of two every year or so. This exponential increaseshows no signs of abating, which means that chips will get faster and faster even as they getsmaller and smaller. Contrast this with the evolution of the human brain and many experts concludethat machine intelligence will inevitably surpass human intelligence—the only question, iswhat will happen when it does.
These are the unknowns in the equation that make the future exciting, and possibly a bit scary—theyblur the lines between science and philosophy. Since we don't understand the basis for human consciousnessyet, how can we create it in machines? Or will mechanical minds start up by themselveswhen they reach a certain level of complexity? (Is there critical thought, like critical mass?) And ifmachine intelligence does jump-start itself, will we be able to turn it off if we don't like the results? If anartificial intelligence is composed of human-compiled facts, does this mean it will be kindly disposed tohumans? Or will it be ethnocentric (or should I say mechanocentric)? Could it threaten us?
But this assumes that all the evolution will be on the mechanical side. What if we could startfrom early childhood with the complete storehouse of knowledge from our predecessors ratherthan having to reinstall it each time in our organic-hard-drive brains? Herein lies the lure ofrobotic silicon intelligence—bio-chips (brain chips, one might call them). Electronic memory canbe accessed a million times faster than human synapses—it does not have to sleep, and can bedownloaded to others (similar machines, or people with compatible chips). It can be stored, compressed,sorted—even spindled and mutilated. (No need to get angry, greedy, or jealous.) Of coursethis downloaded information would only be data, and data is not knowledge, let alone wisdom.But in a postbioiogical world, how long would it be before we learned how to take the next stepand download wisdom? (Could it be a program?)
Now factor in the realm of the very small, where nanotech and bio-chips promise things unheardof (in fact, undreamed of). Micro Air Vehicles, on page 156, are already here—robotic flies are on theway. Kris Pister's smart dust (see page 26) may seem like science fiction, but for how long? Sir ArthurC. Clarke wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Today, thetechnological magic is more than accepted, it isexpected. We believe that our dreams are notjust dreams, they are sneak previews.
In one such preview of primordialmechano-motion, we watched Ariel, aneight-legged crab robot, sidle along the shoreof a wooded pond in Massachusetts (seepage 100). Probably the most complex self-containedmachine capable of underwaterambling, Ariel is still very limited in what itcan do. When I mentioned this to EdWilliams, the robot wrangler technician whowas demonstrating the machine, he Wrightlycountered, "What could an airplane do in1920? Get you killed in it, that's about all."
The most exciting part of our journey wasbearing witness to the first halting steps—spasmodicevolutionary spurts—of robotics at the beginning of the new millennium. To be sure.there were glitches along the way, and there will be more. At the MIT Leg Lab, we saw a roboticTroodon dinosaur (see page 114) twitch its way up to a standing position, ready to walk forth, only tobe crippled by a software glitch before it took a single step. Mimicking the incredibly complex biologicalsystems that took millions of years to evolve—and to survive and function in a narrowniche—is a daunting challenge. Shortcutting this process with high-tech tools to analyze animallocomotion, Robert J. Full's biology lab at UC Berkeley (see page 90) provides data that roboticists atStanford, Michigan, and McGill use to build robots that translate these movements into mechanicalsystems guided by the genius of biological evolution.
The ultimate quest, the Grail of many roboticists today, is to build a humanoid robot. TheHonda P3 that so astounded me is but one of many attempts to reach this goal. The quest ismoving along at a steady pace that will accelerate with advances in materials, computing power,and electromechanical interfaces. But why build humanoids? Walking upright on two legs is asdifficult as flying. Is there any other living creature more unstable than a human in an ambulatoryposition? Many roboticists say the reason to build such an unwieldy being is psychological—theybelieve that robots will be more easily accepted by humans if they are built in thehumans' own image. Others think it folly; they admit the motive for making a machine in one'sown image may be psychological, but see it more as a fascination with playing God. The well-knownMIT roboticist Rod Brooks (see page 58 frankly explained that he jumped from buildinginsect robots to Cog, a humanoid, because he didn't want to spend a lifetime crawling alongthe robotic evolutionary path when he sensed he might be able to have a run at somethingapproaching an android.
Shigeo Hirose, one of Japan's most respected roboticists, thinks the humanoid shape may notbe the best idea, in engineering terms, but he argues that any robot engineered to be intelligentcould be engineered to be moral. Robots could be saints, he told us. We could build them to beunselfish, because they don't have to fight for their biological existence (see page 89). They candownload their artificial intelligence to another machine, thereby continuing their "life." They don'thave to be like the rampaging machines in R.U.R. Nice robot, smart robot, saintly robot.
In spirit, it seems we are more ready for robots than they are for us. Despite our fears ofFrankenstein's monster or Hollywood's Terminator, if something robotic can make our life better, weembrace it. We already accept and expect robotic systems to help us: power steering, cruise control,and GPS systems in our cars; autopilot and IFR landing systems in airplanes. We trust thesemachines with our lives—we have built them with multiple levels of checks and safety features. Ourcomfort level with robots is rising, too. Many swimming-pool owners have them cleaning the bottomof the pool every day, and several companiesare developing robot vacuum cleaners forthe home. Robots already work in many factories—thereis no resistance, really. In theGeneral Motors plant that we visited (see page190), robots do all the dirty work, and workerswelcome the relief. They say they don't fear jobloss from robots—if a robot takes over theirposition on the factory floor, they get to betransferred to less physically demanding workwithin a more productive factory.
Robotic progress today is poised to take offlike the personal computer did a decade ago.The shortcomings that have kept robot researchaway from millions of small inventors andresearchers—no universally accepted operatingcontrol system and a lack of standardizedparts—should soon be complaints of the past.A standard operating control system and new lightweight, compliant materials (see page 98) onshape-deposition manufacturing), coupled with more powerful, energy-efficient actuators, couldbring robot design into the wide, swift mainstream of everyday science.
Today's robots are more than factory workers; they are explorers, space laborers, surgeons,maids, actors, pets—the list gets longer every day. We should expect to be surprised, because ourimagination will create many, many more roles. Our mechanical destiny is not to be denied, andthe questions arising from the creation of these creatures are ones that will shape the future ofhumanity, in whatever form it eventually assumes.
This book is not meant to be Genesis-like, detailing each mechanical iteration. Instead, I hopethat my camera and Faith's tape recorder have produced a field guide to our mechanical future thatwill make the passage less frightening. Should we assume the worst: that Robo sapiens will eventuallyrun amok like the machines in R.U.R.? In Act III, during the robots' siege of the factory, the optimisticallynaïve Helena, one of the last surviving humans, tragically laments to Radius, a robotleader, that his intelligence should engender understanding, not conflict. In the 1920s play, it didn't.In tomorrow's real world, we hope it will. Radius can be a saint—if we understand the process thatcreated him and the things in ourselves that drove us to do it.
HELENA. Doctor Gall gave you a larger brain than the rest, larger than ours, the largest in the world. You are notlike the other Robots, Radius. You understand me perfectly.
RADIUS. I don't want any master. I know everything for myself.
— R.U.R. by Karel Capek, 1920
Chapter One
Electric Dreams: What the future may hold
There are great and wondrous robots in our future, say Those Who Know. Robots will assist theelderly and infirm into and out of wheelchairs and beds, be conversant in several languages,intuit despair, watch over babies, and provide a sympathetic ear to the lonely. Smartlyappointed robotic vacuum cleaners, robotic cars, robotic maids, robotic cleanup squads, androbotic personal assistants will lead to greater efficiency and safety in the world, workingwhere humans can't or won't and providing more free time for their masters. All but human,ubiquitous, they will be woven invisibly into the fabric of our lives.
There are terrible times in store for the human race, say Those Who Know. Robots will begin as elder-careassistants and vacuum cleaners, but they won't stay there. They will take what we teach them and learn towant more. They will make themselves ever smarter and stronger, until finally, discovering that they are betterthan we are at everything we do, they will refuse to take our orders. Far from becoming indispensablecomponents of our lives, they will find our lives ever more unnecessary to them. If they don't end up ignoringus, they'll eliminate us.
Who are Those Who Know? The robot pundits. The prognosticators of our mechanical future. The digitalsoothsayers. Academic and corporate researchers, for the most part, they study such exotic domains as artificialintelligence, cyberneurology, and biomimetics. Often at odds with one another but never unsure of theirauguries, they claim to know the future of the human race, and toknow that it will involve robots. Robots, they all agree, will transformthe future. The problem is: they differ on the details. Like whetherrobots will serve us—or we will serve them.
For more than a year, Peter Menzel and I explored robotics laboratoriesin Europe, Asia, and America, looking at projects in developmentand speaking with researchers. Over time, we concluded thatthese pundits are at least partly right. Clearly, the robots are coming.Although the machines we saw were often barely functional, they weregaining in capacity. The discipline of robotics—a quirky union involvingthe fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, mechanicalengineering, psychology, anatomy, and half a dozen others—is perhapsmoving faster than even the researchers know.
The discipline is advancing so rapidly, in fact, that some roboticistshave begun questioning the direction in which their work is heading.Not every roboticist we encountered felt inclined to speculate on thefuture, of course. Like all branches of science and engineering, roboticsis full of researchers who try to focus entirely on their work in the present. For the most part, these peopletake pains to distinguish themselves from the robot pundits. But, there is something so magical about thecreation of artificial living creatures—mechanical entities with lifelike behavior—that even the soberest ofthe researchers find themselves wondering what lies ahead for their creations, and for humankind. The robotrevolution will happen, whether we like it or not. From now on, we and the robots are in this together. Allthe more reason, thought Peter and I to try to figure out what's coming down the pike.
Even before 1920, when the Czech writer Karel Capek invented the word "robot" in his play R.U.R., theworld had begun to embrace the concept of artificial workers with humanlike capacities. Japanese inventorsand artisans had created tea-serving automata, or karakuri, as early as the seventeenth century.Automata—mechanical contrivances designed to act as if they were under their own power—were familiar diversions ineighteenth-century European courts. And by the nineteenth century, automatons were creeping into science-basedfiction and folklore in the form of golems, clockwork men, and Frankenstein's monster.
One of the first attempts to match reality to fantasy occurred after the Second World War, when aerospaceengineer Joseph Engelberger (see page 186) conceived of machines that could perform repetitive taskstirelessly and more accurately than their human counterparts, and brought robots to the factory floor. Whatbegan primarily as a field for mechanical engineers grew to include engineers of all stripes. Their machineswere in essence puppets—expensive, beautifully designed devices that were controlled completely by thestrings of their instructions. They couldn't think, create, or react; they simply performed their tasks, movingwith the reflexive precision of a pendulum.
Robotics did not acquire its present scope until the arrival of modern computers, which inevitably broughtwith it the idea of stuffing some sort of brain into the robot. In the 1940s, English mathematician Alan Turinglaid the groundwork for artificial intelligence, famously theorizing that a machine is intelligent when there isno discernible difference between its conversation and that of an intelligent person. At the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, trail-blazing computer scientists John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky founded what inthe late 1950s became the world's first laboratory devoted to artificial intelligence. One goal was to use artificialintelligence to advance the study of human intelligence. Another was, of course, to build robots.
In those optimistic days, computer power was growing so fast that true artificial intelligence seemed to bejust around the corner. It wasn't. Some AI researchers were able to program computers to behave intelligentlyin certain narrow functions, but they were never able to create a machine that could speak or read or solveunexpected puzzles. Dumping a dictionary into a computer—their approach, roughly speaking—didn't producea book. Minsky tried to build an "intelligent" arm that could stack blocks atop one another. It neverworked. Beset by difficulty, artificial intelligence as an active field of research declined in the 1980s.
Partly to blame is the inherent difficulty in creating a simulacrum of a phenomenon that nobody understands.If the nature of intelligence and consciousness remains a subject for speculation to this day, how canscientists manufacture it in artificial form? If we needed to know how our brain works—where thoughts comefrom and how memory works—in order to use it, all of us would be in a heap of trouble. Even the scientistswho have charged themselves with the task of discovering the secrets of the brain, and are shrinking the pile ofunanswered questions and conundrums at a faster and faster pace, are still working at the level of the educatedguess. And if they get to the bottom of the pile of riddles, will they have the answers they seek? If the magic ofa single thought is made not of illusion but allusion, will its genesis beany more possible to discern?
Many roboticists today avoid the quagmires of AI by building whatare in essence dumb machines, without a hint of consciousness but programmedcleverly enough to perform complex tasks—searching forbreaks in a municipal sewer system or pumping gas at a service station(see page 195). Using cheap, scavenged electronic equipment, MarkTilden, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (see page 117),can make small, insectlike machines that walk over irregular terrain withas much aplomb as if they had eyes to see where they were going andminds to adjust their step.
Does a robot need to have much of a brain? It depends on what youwant it to do. Usually, machines we saw in the laboratories were boltedto a bench; some could maneuver around a finite pristine space underclose supervision. But if robots are to inhabit the world's kitchens, asTilden puts it, "You probably want the robot to know that it shouldn'tsuck up the cat kibble." (Let alone the cat.) When a robot operates in ahuman environment, the programming becomes more difficult. Safety concerns, mobility issues, and spacerequirements suddenly emerge. If more than one task is involved, the difficulty increases exponentially. Even aharmless, just-for-fun device like the Sony AIBO robot dog (see page 224) is subject to these constraints—that'swhy it moves slowly, is soft-edged, and costs twenty-five hundred dollars.
Sophisticated programming alone is not enough to make a machine seem lifelike. Curiously, what isrequired often is not great intelligence or startling skills, but randomness. Predictable behavior is computer-like;randomness is human. To accommodate this perception, Sony has added touches of spontaneity to theAIBO: in no particular or repeating order, at any given time, it might "play" with its ball or lie down and waveits legs in the air. But the notion of randomness in a machine dismays Engelberger, the robotics pioneer."Maybe it is more fun and interesting if it screws up now and then and it does something a little different," hetold me. "But I don't want that. I want the thing to be utterly reliable." ("Robots like the AIBO have a differentpurpose." I observe. "Yeah," he says. "To horse around.") It's understandable that Engelberger would feel thatway—he designs industrial and health-service-oriented robots, which must be undeviatingly dependable. Buteven in the more relaxed atmosphere of the home, unexpected robotic behavior could be less than charming.A vacuum-cleaning robot that spontaneously broke out into a little dance might be funny the first few times,but a householder's patience might wear thin if that expensive robot vacuum cleaner were dancing insteadof working, and wearing out its custom wheels and the Carpet in the process. Thus even the most well-programmed,occasionally random automata will not be fit companions for people. If robots are to fulfill theircreators' dreams, they will have to be given truly intelligent brains, which means that even if they want to,researchers will no longer be able to avoid wrestling with the riddles of AI.
Today, there are two main approaches to creating a clever machine: weak and strong artificial intelligence.Weak AI is the argument that a machine can simulate the behavior of human cognition, but it can't actuallyexperience mental states itself. Even though such machines would be able to pass Turing's test of intelligence,they would still be little more than extra-complex clock radios. Proponents of strong AI argue, by contrast,that machines are capable of cognitive mental states—that it is possible to build a self-aware machine withreal emotions and consciousness.
Strong AI greatly distresses some philosophers, including John Searle of the University of California atBerkeley. If a computer can have cognitive mental states, he points out, then a human mind would have to be simplya computer program implemented in the brain. To Searle, this contention is absurd; consciousness is a first-person,subjective phenomenon that no mechanical computation, no matter how sophisticated, can produce.
Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts University, takes the opposite view. Consciousness, he says, isat its core algorithmic—that is, the brain has a series of rules for dealing with incoming sensory data, andthe summed execution of these rules in the lower strata of the mind generates consciousness in the mind'supper strata. If Searle is right, robotics faces inherent limitations—we will never be able to build a trulyintelligent machine. Dennett offers a more hopeful picture, at least for roboticists. But there is a chance thatboth might be wrong. Robots may need a brain to do everything their advocates imagine, but they may notneed a brain that is humanlike. It is possible that circuitry utterly unlike the human brain could make robotsbehave in ways that seem indistinguishable from the workings of intelligent consciousness.
The construction of such machines—a race of intelligent aliens made right here on Earth—would be anironic triumph for AI advocates. Proof that artificial intelligence is possible, these robots would still beincomprehensible; they would provide little or no insight into the human mind. Worse, they would plungehumankind into an immediate ethical quandary. If a robot has a brain equal to that of a human being,should it also have the legal and political rights of a human being?
The question of robotic rights could be less of a concern for the robots Kris Pister envisions. An electricalengineer at the University of California at Berkeley, Pister has the courage to think small. He and his colleaguesare working toward a robotic future that is dominated by what he calls "Smart Dust"—autonomousrobots no more than the size of a gnat (one cubic millimeter). Although equipped with sensors and ways tomove around, each tiny machine will be relatively simple. But when thousands of them are combined intoa network that permeates the environment, the totality will be capable of extraordinary things. Sprinkled ona child's clothing, the minute devices could monitor his or her location and state, sounding the alarm if thechild climbed out of the crib or onto the back of a chair, or seemed to be choking. Instead of using a keyboard,people could stick Smart Dust on their fingers and run their computers by making finger motions. Byscattering Smart Dust equipped with moisture and acidity sensors on food, homeowners could monitor thefreshness of the items in their refrigerators. Mechanical motes on workers' clothing could signal office heatingand cooling systems to raise or lower the temperature. In effect, the dust would turn the entire environmentinto an invisible robot, constantly on the alert to do the human's bidding.
The first exemplars of Pister's version of a microelectrical and mechanical system are expected in 2001, butthey will only be able to perform simple tasks like monitoring the temperature around them. Pister's studentsare developing minuscule legs and wings that will make the dust more mobile. Greater communication powerand more complex sensors will come later. But the goal is always the same: individual components that canwork together in clouds, literal clouds. Pister believes that in the future millions of these tiny robots will beconstantly floating through the air. "When you fly across the country," he told me, "pilots are always saving,`The last guy who passed through here 20 minutes ago told us that we are going to hit some turbulence.' Ifthese guys were passing out Smart Dust from the back of the plane, they could query it as they went throughto see exactly where the turbulence was."
Because inventions that don't yet exist can't be photographed, Peter set up a photo illustration to conceptualizePister's ideas. The researcher stood before a projection of a pop-up micro Fresnel lens—the kind of lensused in lighthouses—and blew glitter into the light. I asked what he saw when he looked at the finished picture(above). "When I see the Fresnel lens," he said, "mentally I see a beam of light come out that's modulatedon and off and transmitting information. Or maybe it's drawing a picture on a screen or on the back of myretina. Then, the sparkling glitter coming out of my hands—when Isee that, I think it's the little lasers that the Smart Dust particles useto communicate with each other. On our time scale, we see thesethings rushing out like a mad jumble. On their time scale, it's a veryslow, beautiful, underwater dance. They're talking to one another asthey're flying through the air, telling each other what they are seeing—`Who'swhere?' and, `Let's set up our network.'"
Smart Dust has obvious military, applications and in fact theresearch is backed by the US military's Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency (DARPA). Pister admits that his ideas could have adownside: permeating the world with invisibly small robots will makeit possible to watch anyone, anywhere, at any time, but thinks thebenefits of this technology will far outweigh the negative.
Without the Pentagon, US robotics in its present stage of evolutioncould very well collapse; in our research for this book, it was rareto find a top American researcher who was not sponsored at least inpart by DARPA or the US Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR),though other entities such as the National Institute of Health alsoprovide some funding. Even foreign nationals like German researcherFrank Kirchner of the prestigious German National Research Center(see page 113) has US military funding for a robot project withNortheastern University's Joe Ayers (see page 110).
Is military backing for robotics a touchy subject with researchers?Not particularly. As aerospace pioneer Paul MacCready (see page 156)dryly observes, "It's been my experience that whatever we've done forthe military has done more good for the nonmilitary." Generally,researchers go where the money is. DARPA's program managers solicit,vet, and fund proposals submitted by universities, private research laboratories,and corporations; they run conferences and meetings forprospective and current awardees just as professional organizations dofor their members—an especially valuable resource in robotics, sayresearchers, because of the field's multidisciplinary nature. And themilitary supports nonsecret projects with humanitarian uses, includingrobots that search for and disarm land mines (see pages 101 and111). "We'll play in anyone's back-yard," says Georgia Institute ofTechnology's Ron Arkin of his lab's Pentagon support (see page 152)."But we'll only do open, unclassified research. That's where I draw theline, personally. Everything we do we can publish."
There is an unavoidable bottom line. "You have to have somebodywho's a receiver for the technology," says Arkin, lamenting the lack ofsupport in long-term robotics research by US corporations, whichgenerally want a more immediate return on investment. "The question is," he says, "what industries aregoing to be ready to nurture that technology for the five or ten years it might take to build that product?"
Because its US-designed constitution is intended to forestall military adventurism, Japan does littledefense research. Instead, its private corporations and the government are heavily involved in roboticsresearch for commercial applications. Japan's equivalent of DARPA's robot program is its nationwide initiativeto create a humanoid robot industry. The country's historic legacy in robotics has centered on mekatoronikusu,or mechatronics, a fusion of mechanical and electronic engineering, and it expects that its futurewill be chock full of autonomous walking robots of the humanoid persuasion. The country is in the midstof a ten-year national project to build just such a robot, which, says the University of Tokyo's HirochikaInoue, "will walk in an unstructured environment and perform complex tasks." Japan's hope is that, amongother applications, such a robot will fill the need for elder care in their aging population and situate thecountry at the forefront of a new humanoid robotics industry.
Inoue, a respected roboticist and a principal member of the project's governing committee, calls thehumanoid project Japan's grand challenge. Though some researchers, such as Shigeo Hirose of the TokyoInstitute of Technology (see page 89), question such a robot's viability, Inoue is fiercely supportive of the project,which he sees as a technological lifeline for a country left behind when the software industry took off.
(Continues...)
Copyright © 2000 Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. All rights reserved.
