Real robots

Researchers move ever closer to making mechanical versions of us
December 26, 2006
Jen Gerson

From the moment the robot walked on screen in Lost in Space one question has haunted the watchers of bad science-fiction television dramas: When do we get our robots, our mechanical soulless friends?

They're getting closer.

Japan leads Korea in producing the most realistic, human-like robots. A World Robotics Survey published in 2004 said that 600,000 household robots were in use by 2003 across the globe – most being simple robots like the automatic vacuum Roomba. Four million robots are expected to be in service around the world by the end of 2007.

But don't expect to be able to purchase one on sale today. When assistant androids will hit the mainstream market is still anybody's guess as robototics is in its pre-Atari stage. We can make a robot that moves and talks and walks. But it cannot yet function in the intuitive, unpredictable human world – except as a sideshow act.

Yet most researchers can envision functional robots within a decade, even if they're only available to the very rich. They'll be able to open our doors, prepare our meals, answer the phone. They'll be able to care for the sick, clean up toxic waste, fly military aircraft and search for mines. They'll work for us.

"We need a robot that can truly be useful in our world," says California's Stephen Keeney, one of the project leaders for Honda's cutting edge ASIMO project (more at the website world. honda.com/ASIMO).

ASIMO is a stout robot that looks like a bipedal midget astronaut. It can walk slowly, recognize and react to faces and postures, shake hands, climb stairs and even run – albeit at a leisurely 6 km per hour.

The idea behind ASIMO is to create a robot that can make life easier for those confined to a chair or a bed, says Keeney. The company is also working on a version that can fight fires or clean up toxic waste spills.

Though the robot has no facial features, it moves like a human. ASIMO has to be able to handle curbs, doorknobs and light switches. "It needs to be designed like we're designed," Keeney says.

ASIMO is still an imperfect being. At a recent public showing, the robot took a misstep on a flight of stairs and did a nosedive – much to the delight of YouTube video bugs.

"Now we're working on making it smarter."

The bot costs about $1 million U.S. right now. While it may someday be more affordable, the average family should not start pinching its pennies just yet.

Robots still face a few major technical obstacles.

"You can tell it to go to an X and Y co-ordinate on a map and it will understand. But ask it to `Go to my left' and it won't," says Maria Bualat, leader for the intelligent robotics group at the NASA Ames Research Centre California. Bualat is working on a robot-human interface, something that can help man and machine work together in hostile places like the surfaces of Mars or the moon.

Bualat is working on helping robots make that cognitive leap. She's trying to make robots function in our world, rather than force us to adapt to theirs.

"Getting the robots to gauge intent is still a bit of a leap," she says. "The robot has to be able to gauge where the human is, and to understand what we want it to do next."

Though the mechanics of a walking, talking robot have come a long way in the last two decades, their athletic prowess doesn't exactly compete with the Terminator just yet. And we haven't quite come up with a power source that will keep the robots functioning for more than 6 to 7 hours.

"I think they will revolutionize society. They already have," says Michael Jenkin, professor at York University. He was one of the lead researches on a team that created AQUA in 2004, a robot that looks similar to a six-legged turtle and can swim. But, he agrees the robot revolution is still at least 10 years away.

"They have to become much more self reliant than they are. Most of them have to be plugged in, so you have to wait 6-7 hours for the battery to run down. That would put an end to the robot revolution pretty quick. Also, most of them use wheels, so you could stop them with a flight of stairs."

Another step involves making the leap across what robot-makers have deemed the "Uncanny Valley." The valley theory states that the more a robot looks like a human, the more humans empathize with it – up until the robot looks almost human, at which point it becomes repulsive, eerie or uncanny.

For work that requires face to face time with humans, androids are better suited to the task. Rudimentary androids – or robots that look like humans – already exist as technological showpieces, museum guides and fancy puppets. Last spring the Korean Institute for Industrial Technology in Seoul introduced EveR-1, an android that resembles a pretty, polite Asian woman in her early twenties. The name is from the biblical Eve plus the letter R, for robot.

EveR-1 can't walk, but her silicone-skinned face can express basic emotions, anger, happiness and pleasure. She has a vocabulary of 400 words, can interpret faces and hold a basic conversation. Japanese company Kokoro has released the Actroid DER2, another young Asian female who can serve as a tour guide. Actroid, incidentally, is available for rent for about 400,000 yen (almost $4,000) for five days.

Then there's China's singing robot Dion – a creature of limited vocal range and lip movement who sings in Mandarin. It's odd that a company in China would release a robot that's blonde and sporting a midriff- bearing, curve-clinging tank-top decaled with a U.K. flag and very perky nipples. She's not alone: Many of the androids look like they were designed by a basement-dwelling barely post-adolescent robotics fanatic.

According to Chris Willis, president of Texas-based Android World, a company he says is building a robot for domestic duties, designers seem to prefer women because they're less threatening. "It's certainly not a sex doll kind of thing."

More roboticists are working on mechanical brains over silicon beauty. And as our understanding of our own intelligence develops, researchers are finding ways to make our robots smarter and more useful.

Roboticist David Hanson of Texas says that giving robots human features is necessary, for our sake and for the sake of the souls of our creations.

For baby boomers, who will soon be requiring quality nursing care and will also have the added income to purchase help around the house as they age, the picture of a human-friendly robot can't come soon enough.

"The computational and software capabilities (of robots) are going to be beyond human capability by 2025," Hanson predicts. Robots now may be idiot savants, but "20 years from now, they're going to be a very effective member of the human family."

His company, Hanson Robotics, re-created the head of Albert Einstein out of rubber and put it on the body of a walking robot. Einstein can walk, talk, guide and educate. Like the other robots, Einstein possesses tiny motors in his head that move the structures on his face, creating the illusion of emotion.

But one day, Hanson says, robots will be more than just an illusion of humanity. Mechanical or artificial intelligence, he argues, is an inevitability. Friends of Data, heed the call. But fans of the Terminator need to beware, Hanson argues.

"If we don't give them faces, if we don't teach them how to be a part of the human family in the future, then they will be cold and faceless and they will be scary. They'll jeopardize our existence on this planet," he says. "We need to start planting the seeds in the technology of compassion and wisdom.

"Otherwise they will just be ruthless."