Toyota recently unveiled their latest musical robot; a violinist. This latest type joins the band of trumpet and drum players, the violinist being the most graceful in my honest opinion. In its public debut, the robot showed its ability to play Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance which, although it’s not human quality, is a delight to watch. Video after the jump.
Today’s robots are too slow. Here’s a hypothetical recap of what’s going on in my mind when I’m watching some humanoid robots: “Yes, yes … you’re moving the leg… still moving the leg… wow! Totally awesome maneuver over that threshold!”. Given some time, that tends to get boring quite quickly. Well, thankfully technology advances and robots get faster: Runbot is a small robot that walks only slightly slower than humans.
In my post on what makes a robot look feminine, a friend of mine posed an interesting observation in the comments. He felt too much time was being spent on humanoid development. He’d rather have development focus on non-humanoids that are useful now, at his home, than watching prototype humanoid robots through a glass window at the lab (not his words, I’m adding a bit of color). While this is a very understandable opinion, it’s based on a false assumption: Time spent on humanoids is miniscule in comparison to the entire range of robotics.
The Female Type (FT) is a humanoid robot designed in female proportions, and whose movements resemble a model’s. Tomotaka Takahashi, creator of FT even consulted a few real models during FT’s year of development. Personally, I think they’ve done a magnificent job. Both when it comes to shapes, color and general movement. But she’s made out of plastic and lacks facial features: What exactly makes her look feminine?
It doesn’t seem too long until humanoid robots for the home become as advanced as Sony’s late QRIO, judging by the humanoid robot RoGun from the Korean company KornTech. This impressive robot is one of the latest models from Korea, and needless to say, sports some of the latest of technological innovations in the fields of robotics and A.I. I talked with the company’s marketing director, Lee Jea-Hyun, to provide you with an in-depth article on this new and very impressive humanoid.
Just when you think Hiroshi Ishiguro is busy amplifying the uncanny valley effect of one of his previous androids, he rolls out a new model. This time, it’s a gigantic bionic baby. Boasting about 200 sensors (optical, auditory and tactile) and 51 air actuators — the 1.3 meter tall robot is designed to mimic the physical motions of a two year old.
All this Transformers talk reminded me of this video of a robot called WR-07, that morphs from humanoid form to car. It was created by Nakamura san at Himeji Soft Works in Japan. See video below.
An excellent debate has been raging in comment threads the past few days, on the potential dangers and fear of artificial intelligence. In the last round, the following point was raised:
An AI destroying all of humanity might solve our currently existing problems, but I’m not sure if I’d like that to happen. I’d much rather take the Friendly ones - but those won’t be developed if nobody fears the possible consequences of AIs. Therefore, I can only hope for more fear.
Read more…
I decided this deserved a blog entry and here we are. My answer is this:
Over six thousand people have voted in the Who’s Afraid of Robots? poll (which will remain open indefinitely). Many people supported this effort (see below), propelling the entry to the frontpage of Digg, as I had hoped, which increased the number of voters and brought a heap of varying opinions on the matter. The survey’s results are quite intriguing.
On january 21st 2006 I read an article on the robot HRP-2, nicknamed Promet, a humanoid robot project created by Kawada Industries and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan. The robot is being specifically developed for home chores and assisting humans in various situations, and at the time the robot could could fetch a bottle of juice from a fridge on the command of its owner, amongst some other useful tasks. The video below is HRP-2 in a home demonstration.
In latest news, the University of Tokyo has been using the same robot platform for further development. They’re calling it HRP-2W, and I’d guess that the W stands for Wheels — as they’ve changed the legs to a wheelchair-like lower body. The robot has been given the ability to pour tea now, amongst several other awesome features.
Yahoo news report the following in the HRP story:
Already, monitoring technologies, such as sensors that automatically turn on lights when people enter a room, are becoming widespread in Japan. The walking, child-size Asimo from Honda Motor Co. greets people at showrooms. NEC Corp. has developed a smaller companion robot-on-wheels called Papero. A seal robot available since 2004 can entertain the elderly and others in need of fuzzy companionship.
Robotics and artificial intelligence are steadily advancing and most experts agree that they’ll be moving into our homes sooner than later. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that a team of South-Korean experts are drafting ethical rules to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa. From BBC news:
The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer.
[…]
The new guidelines could reflect the three laws of robotics put forward by author Isaac Asimov in his short story Runaround in 1942, [Park Hye-Young of the ministry’s robot team] said.Key considerations would include ensuring human control over robots, protecting data acquired by robots and preventing illegal use.
Other bodies are also thinking about the robotic future. Last year a UK government study predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as human beings.
The Robots are making their way from the labs and into our homes, accompanied by a Rulescroll of ethics. Some welcome the change but others are less enthused. I came across a blog article a few weeks back that was really hostile towards robotics and the proponents of artificial intelligence. It was creepy, this guy sounded dangerous. I wonder if there will be an onrush of Hollywood-influenced robot protesters in the near future? Terrorists? We don’t need to fear robots, humans are a lot scarier.
Watch some videos of Promet (HRP2, I couldn’t find any of the tea-pouring action HRP2W can do). They’re also available on YouTube, standing up, assembling a panel and dancing.
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