Top 6 Robotics

Trends for 2013

Robotics has already become a major part of our life whether we want to admit it or not. So what
trends are on the horizon? Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics and head of the Robotics
Masters Program at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, says it surrounds everything
from commerce to how we deal with each other, along with bringing about strong ethical
discussions. With his book Robot Futures coming out in March, Nourbakhsh examines the top
six trends he says to watch in 2013.

1. Robot prosthetics
Maybe as important as any contribution of robotics, Nourbakhsh says prosthetics does far more
than just allow someone to walk. "We are headed to where people will have robotic legs instead
of a wheelchair," he says. "It changes the relationship we have by being able to physically see

eye to eye with someone, how a whole conversation goes. There will be huge strides in muscle
intervention, all the way to robotic actuation devices."

Rover1 - the first robot produced by the Personal Rover Project at Carnegie Mellon. Image:
CMU.edu

2. Telepresence
This is the ability to use robots to be present when we're not present, Nourbakhsh says. "We'll do
things like Skype to giving a child a hug at our home when we're actually at a conferencethe
robot will do it. It shouldn't be surprising when you see what we do with robot rescue at nuclear
plants. The strange thing is we won't know when a robot interacts with us whether there's a
human behind it or a robot. We'll learn to be very social with machines because we just won't be
sure."

3. Confusion

It's easier for people to build robots to do what they wish. The side effects will be the kind of
requests and the confusion that will go with it. "Robots will play catch with dogs but there will
also be Tyrannosaurus Rexes 16 feet high that scare people, not realizing it's just its owner
playing with it," he says.

4. Caregiving
Forget about hugs, how about caregiving? "In some parts of Asia there's a whole question of
babysitting and robotics," Nourbakhsh says. "The idea of what age can a robot stay with your
kids so a couple can go off to dinner. The robot can tell you if they cry, you're only five minutes
away so no big deal? But it's a slippery slope."

5. Industrial robots
A large part of the debate on robots is the chronic underemployment it causes. "There's an article,
I think it was in the Atlantic, which talks about economists considering how automation starting
from the late 80s has supplanted more highly skilled peoplefaster than a need for
employment," Nourbakhsh, who co-authored Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots, says.
"Robots are so effective and the price point goes down so fast.

6. Marketing
"Robotics allows you to test how interactive advertisement displays make people react," he says.
"In Minority Report-style, the ad can look at you and characterize your gender, how old you are
and see if the ad gets you excited. If you go into a store it can behaviorally analyze what people
do in the physical world and optimize." Nourbakhsh recently shared on his blog that Netgear
CEO Patrick Lo's said that everything powered by electricity should be connected through the
Internet. To Nourbakhsh, it seems it allows a mining of information on how we even act in our
home. Now that's truly shopping 24/7.
Eric Butterman is an independent writer.

Robots in Fiction and Reality

Robots in fiction have sparked the imagination to create robots in reality. Isaac Asimovs I,
Robot, arguably the earliest source of the concept of a walking, thinking machine, has captivated
scientists and writers alike. The book, published in 1950, featured a collection of five stories
about robots as told by Doctor Susan Calvin, robopsychologist, to a reporter in the 21st century.
One of the stories featured the famous three laws of robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would
conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First
or Second Law.

Since then, books and movies have pretty much rendered these laws null and void. In Asimovs
stories, the robots were depicted in humanoid form. His robots were also precursors to
androids, that is, artificial humans.
Robots depicted in fiction have ranged in size from the spiders used in the movie Minority
Report to the hulking behemoths seen in the game, Mechwarrior Online (and the franchise
BattleTech). Japanese comics, animation and movies frequently use robots of all sizes, and some
as esoteric as a human consciousness downloaded into a robotic frame such as in the anime
Ghost in a Shell.
These robots range in levels of self-awareness as well, from full artificial intelligence as depicted
in Star Wars (R2D2 and C3P0 being two such examples), to requiring a human in the cockpit,
such as a BattleMech, which needs a pilot hooked up via a helmet to provide locomotion while
his hands are freed for torso movement and weapons control. Many, many examples of various
robot/AI mixes litter books, movies and video games.
HTML5 video is not supported!
How do robots in fiction compare to those in reality? That line between reality and fiction is
becoming thinner by the day.
A company called Boston Dynamics, recently acquired by Google, creates robots with eerily
accurate biological movements. YouTube videos depict such creations as BigDog, a German
Shepard sized four-legged robot, running and moving through treacherous terrain in startling
lifelike fashion. The incredible feats of locomotion and balancing is also depicted in one
particular video where a man pushes the robot from the side with his foot, hard enough to knock
it off-balance, and it recovers much like a real dog would.
Just how far is the field of robotics advancing beyond existing examples such as factory
automation and other machines that perform complex series of movements? The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is currently running a robotics challenge with the
primary goal of providing robots able to conduct complex tasks in dangerous environments to
facilitate search and rescue operations.
Google is snapping up robotics startups left and right, with Boston Dynamics being the latest,
though the information giant hasnt disclosed what it plans to do in the field of robotics.
Speculation is that it boils down to what Google has always been about: the data. Perhaps an
army of Google robots, driving Google cars and delivering Google packages might not be too far
off the mark. The line between robots in fiction and reality suddenly begins to look just a tad
blurry.
Editorial by Lee Birdine

The Worlds Leading Nations for Innovation

Richard Florida

@Richard_Florida

Oct 3, 2011

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Reuters
Seemingly everywhere you look, one or another pundit is predicting the imminent decline of the
United States and the end of the American Century. Thomas Friedman and Michael
Mandelbaums That Used to Be Us paints a picture of an economically emergent China that is
catching up to us on every front where it hasnt already surpassed us. For others, the competitive
threat comes from the collective rise of the BRIC emerging market powerhouses Brazil,
Russia, and India as well as China which are growing rapidly and together make up a
substantial share of the world economy. Fareed Zakarias view that the U.S. will likely remain
the worlds dominant power but in the context of what he calls the rise of the rest seems more
on point.
A new study released today [PDF] by myself and my colleagues Charlotta Mellander and Kevin
Stolarick of the Martin Prosperity Institute subjects propositions regarding American declinism
and the rise of the rest to an empirical test. It provides a wealth of data to measure the relative
standing of 82 nations on technology, innovation, human capital and other measures of economic
competitiveness. I'll be summarizing its main findings all week, and today we start with
technology and innovation.
From Karl Marx to Joseph Schumpeter, economists have long noted the role that technology
plays in economic progress. We measure technology and innovation according to three main
metrics research and development effort, scientific and research talent, and the level of
innovation and then combine them in a new, comprehensive Global Technology Index.

The first map (below) charts the percentages of economic output countries devote to R&D
investment. The U.S. ranks sixth. Israel is in first place, followed by Sweden, Finland, Japan, and
Switzerland, which make up the top five. South Korea, Germany, Denmark, and France round
out the top ten. Canada ranks 13th. The BRICs are much further down the list, with Russia 22nd,
China 26th, Brazil 31st and India 38th.

Science fiction may become reality with 'killer robots'

For more than a decade, serious concern has been raised about civilian victims of drone strikes,
yet there is still little transparency or accountability, and the attacks continue. A strike in
December on a wedding procession in Yemen killed 12 men and wounded at least 15 other
people, including the bride.
Drones are unmanned aircraft with human operators remotely controlling their targeting and
firing. But concerns are now mounting over developments that may produce fully autonomous
drones and other weapons systems that will be able to identify and fire at targets without any
human control.
Over the past year and a half, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a UN special rapporteur, and
an increasing number of governments have expressed concern at the prospect of fully
autonomous weapons those that would make targeting and kill decisions on their own.
These killer robots do not yet exist, but nations are working on precursors that reflect the move
toward ever greater autonomy.
During a debate at the United Nations in November, the Holy See predicted that questions over
the military applications of robotic technologies will grow in relevance and urgency.
The Vatican representative expressed concern at the present use of armed drones, but described
as most critical the inability of pre-programmed, automated technical systems to make moral
judgments over life and death, to respect human rights, and to comply with the principle of
humanity.
At least six countries are reported to be pursuing autonomous weapons: the United States, China,
Israel, Russia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
Autonomous aircraft developed by the US and UK have had test flights in recent months. South
Korea has fielded an armed ground-based sentry robot along the demilitarized zone with North
Korea.

As nations develop the technological capability, many may choose to go down the path toward
full autonomy, because of the benefits these weapons could provide: rapid response time,
reduced risk to their own soldiers, fewer costs, and insulation from the effects of human
emotions involved in decisions to use force.
Yet the consequences of the lack of human control far outweigh these advantages. Perhaps most
fundamental is the assertion that humans bring judgment and compassion into decisions about
the use of lethal force and that cannot be replaced by a machine.
Many doubt that fully autonomous weapons could comply with the complex and subjective rules
of international humanitarian law which require human understanding and judgment.
Theres no certainty these weapons would be able to distinguish between combatants and
civilians. It would be difficult if not impossible to program them to carry out the complex
proportionality test to assess whether the anticipated military advantage from any given attack
outweighed the likely harm to civilians.
If such weapons do target and kill unlawfully, there would be an accountability gap, with legal
and practical obstacles to holding anyone responsible for such an attack commander,
programmer or manufacturer alike.
Similar questions would arise if these weapons were used not on the battlefield but for law
enforcement operations. And finally, it is questionable whether allowing machines to decide who
to kill would ever comport with human dignity or the dictates of public conscience.
Shaking the Foundations, a new report to be released on May 12 by Human Rights Watch and
Harvard Law Schools International Human Rights Clinic, finds that the weapons threaten to
violate the most fundamental rights to life and to a remedy, as well as to undermine the
underlying principle of human dignity.
To provide a coordinated response to mounting concerns over the weapons and increase public
awareness and support for the principle of human control over targeting and attack decisions,
non-governmental organizations started the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots a year ago. The
coalition is seeking a pre-emptive ban on the development, production and use of fully
autonomous weapons.
The global response has been unprecedented in its swiftness. Nations first considered the matter
at the UN Human Rights Council in May last year when the UN special rapporteur Christof
Heyns delivered a report that called on all nations to enact an immediate moratorium.

Less than six months later, nations agreed to begin a diplomatic process in 2014 to start
considering technical, legal, ethical, operational and other questions relating to this emerging
technology.
The decision by the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) was taken by consensus, a
rare feat in todays disarmament diplomacy, as it requires that no nation object to the proposal.
Many of the 117 states that are part of the CCW are expected to attend the four-day experts
meeting, which opens at the United Nations in Geneva on May 13.
The meeting is open to all nations regardless of whether they have joined the convention.
States parties from Asia include China and South Korea, both known to be actively developing
autonomous weapons, as well as the robotics leader Japan.
Other Asian nations participating include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos and the
Philippines, plus Australia and New Zealand.
Representatives of international and UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross,
regional bodies, and registered nongovernmental groups are also participating.
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots delegation of 40 experts includes the Nobel Peace laureate
Jody Williams, former UN disarmament chief Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala from Sri Lanka
and Yukie Osa, the head of Japans largest humanitarian and disaster relief organization,
Association for Aid and Relief Japan.
Japan is one of 44 nations to have spoken on the subject, noting the challenges posed by fully
autonomous weapons in such areas as human rights, law, technology and arms control. Japanese
robotics experts are scheduled to provide technical presentations at the meeting.
Under an international ban it will still be possible for Japan, China and other nations to continue
to develop their expertise in robotics and autonomy. The campaign seeks to ban the
weaponization of that technology through an international treaty, drawing the line at systems
with no meaningful human control over targeting and attack decisions. Once the technology
exists its already too late.