Sensitive skin!

The news today is covering a great deal about the US developments at both Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley on artificial skin experiments, as published in the journal "Nature Materials". Such a skin could in future form the coving for robot limbs, whether for stand-alone robots or for prosthetics for humans that need replacement body parts. Robots with sensitive skin like this could literally feel the objects they manipulate, allowing them to work with more fragile items, for example.

Both approaches demonstrate yet another area which could be impacted by nano-scale technology in a few years time. Engineering pressure sensors into special conductive rubber materials at such a microscopic level is just one of a huge potential number of ways that nano-technology could enable. The two approaches use Thin Film Transistors (TFTs) which previously have been utilised in computer display technology.

At the moment this is lab-based experimentation but the teams working on it have also identified a fairly low cost method for industrialising the manufacture of such materials. In the future, artificial skin will not only look like real human skin, but also allow machines to sense the feel of the materials they come into contact with. Once such developments are brought together with other robotic advances, the total capability of robots as we understand them today will be revolutionised.

Compensation for machines...

When designing robots, or machines in general that try to emulate the tasks of humans, it is most often the tasks we find easiest that are most challenging to implement in the machine. Much of this is down to us not understanding the way that the human body works. But just as in the past when it was instead the problem of insufficient computing power, we are catching up fast. Often in the past, it was looking at how some aspect of the human body didn't work correctly that enabled deduction of how it normally does work. Now, in addition, scientists are increasingly able to look directly at how the body (and in particular the brain) is working and are able to analyse its normal working state.

Going a stage further, it is now not uncommon for studies to be done which look at how the body adapts to circumstances when the normal body gets damaged and has to compensate. Robots have been built for some time now which can walk, run and climb stairs. The latter was often a joke levelled at the Daleks who have been ever-popular in the Sci-Fi series Doctor Who. Robots that are agile in movement are most useful, firstly in robot warfare but later more commonly in other applications as the technology passes from military to civil applications in the usual way. Scientists are now already studying, with the help of amputee animals, how the body can compensate for the loss of a limb which is central to movement and thus how the animal can remain an effective mover. One such example is described in an article on BBC News.

In the future, machines will not only be more capable than the human brain in terms of computational ability, but also harness an understanding of strategies which can be employed when their control of a robot device is affected by damage or malfunction. This will put them in an excellent position to cope with situations which are not originally envisaged in their design. Robotic machines are still very much in their infancy, but are likely to grow up quickly.

Future transport - 1936 style innovation

After a quiet early summer period here on my blog when I have been busy with other things, I couldn't resist a posting on the subject of transport futures, having spotted this Pink Tentacle article; and so it heralds a period of more regular blogging from me again.

I'm sure James Dyson would feel vindicated about the most recent ball innovation he has brought to his range of vacuum cleaners should he see the Pink Tentacle article which highlights spherical wheels for future transportation. [Although I have to say, as good as Dyson cleaners are, it seems a little strange to see the trademark symbol ™ against a plastic ball!] If Dyson were to combine their excellent vacuum technology with some robotics, I would be sorely tempted to upgrade to another Dyson that does the cleaning itself, as is the case with some other brands.

Getting back to transport though, it is interesting how the Pink Tentacle article content from 1936 concentrates on different wheels as defining the future. The reasons given for the spherical wheel innovation (smoother ride & cushioning in an accident) are also different to Dyson's reasoning of better manoeuvrability! A majority of current forecasts for future cars focus not on different wheels but different engine technology and navigation systems. It demonstrates how innovation needs to address the issues of the moment. The problem in 1936 with cars wasn't the number of internal combustion engines polluting the planet but the discomfort of the ride, quality of road surfaces and poor suspension.

It was the same with the innovation of the original iPod. The issues of the moment then were not that playing music couldn't be done on the move (as it was when Sony brought us the original cassette Walkman). Some commentators at the time saw iPod as just the next form of portable media after CD players. Actually the issues of the moment were more about being able to not only take any amount of music with you, but to select any track from thousands simply and easily as well as embracing the moment of broadband internet facilitating the download of music.

And this idea of addressing the right issues of the moment holds true for successful innovation, whatever the product or service. To think about future transport requires though about about what the future issues of the moment might be!

3D Printing ...

It was June 2008 when I first blogged about personal fabrication, and effectively three dimensional printing. Now I note that a US based company is offering a 3D plastic making printer. And it seems to be at a price that could stimulate the market. It needs to look nice and pretty in your room and be more user friendly. Some folk have problems changing ink tanks in today's printers so there is a challenge to be met still and it's early days. However a number of initiatives in this space now are bringing the idea more into focus. And it brings another application for robotics in the home or office to mind.

Human-Computer Interaction

I think it is time that Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) leaves the realms of the computer science educational syllabus and the job titles of psychology-trained IT-literate professionals, and hits the streets in high tech devices that people want to use. This means expanding the current expectation of how people interact with machines.

As I mentioned in my previous tablet related post, gesture-based interaction is about much more than touch screens on phones. Gestures may mean those made by fingers and hands, but also those made by moving the head or the face. I have met robots that can assess and act on human facial expressions. I have used gestures in free space, rather than on a capacitive glass surface, to direct what a machine should do. That was years ago, and so products could soon launch which use such techniques. Some gaming consoles such as Wii have already shown how human movement can be interpreted. Eye tracking is already used by systems such as flight simulators and also in laboratory test situations when studying human cognition and behaviours. The movement of the eye can convey a great deal of intent.

Voice recognition and synthesis have both advanced to a very usable stage and are also ready to augment humans' interactions with computer devices. I already have a pretty natural dialogue with my car and with my phone/music player. Finally, some wireless systems being developed can not only convey information but also detect movement and presence in a similar fashion to radar.

Some lab demonstrations have also shown how people can control devices simply by thinking about what they want to achieve.
Interacting with devices of the future may never be the same again!

Robot cars sounding fishy?

Nature has often inspired scientists in the way they look at solutions to problems. The communication and co-operation of ants and the flight and navigation of the bumble bee are two examples of this. Now we learn that Nissan is looking at how shoals of fish manage to move at speed in large numbers together in close proximity without collisions, to inspire how to make robotic cars of the future avoid collisions as well. The car in question is called the EPORO ... which is being shown at the CEATEC technology show in Japan, one which I was able to attend some years ago. They are able to demonstrate 6 EPORO cars travelling as one shoal or group! While fish use sight and lateral line sense, the EPORO interestingly uses ultra wide band radio to "see" and a laser range finder as a lateral sensor. I have blogged before about robot self-driving cars ... these developments by Nissan are steps along the road towards this (sorry for the pun!).

The future of warfare

It's nice to hope that new technologies will be used for good positive and desirable aims and that wars, famines and other undesirable situations won't occur ... but of course the real world is somewhat different. Future significant wars will as likely be about resources such as water rather than oil and take place as much online as in a traditional theatre. The development of cyber-warfare is rather exemplified by a recent article by BBC News about the US DoD's preparation.

Most people's view of and worry about internet crime is something to do with attempts to attack personal privacy through online purchasing or banking and spoof emails attempting to phish information in order to exploit ID theft. But the bigger criminal threats online are the organised mafia crime gangs who use the as a weapon to extaught money and threaten to bring down websites and systems that large organisations and national security depend on. The use of networks of hundreds of thousands of auto (ro)bots which can be remote controlled in a non-centralised fashion to execute such attacks means that the security authorities are constantly busy in combating these threats.

Some physical robotic technology is already employed in the middle-east conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan but more of this will be obvious in future. Robots will be sent into battle to take strategic targets without endangering humans, especially if mass destruction weapons are used. Networks of robots will form armies that fight the physical battles while computers fight other computers in cyber warfare. Let's hope the goodies win!

Japanese robot model

So robots hit the news again today.  The BBC have featured the latest Japanese fashion model robot, HRP-4C.  While I don't think human supermodels have anything to worry about for now, clearly steps continue to be made (literally) with huge numbers of different capabilities of robots, as they seem to feature in the news more and more often.   This latest example is clearly an advance in the movement and human look-alike areas.  Other examples of research results have shown progress in machine understanding, empathy and facial expression, mood detection, vision and dexterity.  

The pace of development of all these features and more bodes well for the further acceptance and application of robots.  However anyone expecting the super bot to be domestically available even in a decade may be disappointed ... rather it will take as long for domestic robots to begin to be used but with subsets of capability.  This is a natural extension of the vacuum cleaning and grass cutting robots already commercially available which address one particular application each.  Their capabilities will gradually be added to and the applications expanded.  As the Japanese robot HRP-4C demonstrated today, it will be one step at a time!

Talking to a machine?

I am well used to using speech control handsfree of the phone along with control of the air conditioner, radio and sat-nav system in my car.  But good as these systems are, it is still only voice commands in lieu of pressing buttons.  This weekend however I have been fortunate enough to have a robot pet stay at home with us, one of the original Aibo dogs from Sony, purchased  before they were discontinued a few years ago.  The experience has been more interesting than I expected.   Certainly Aibo is a good example of a high technology product too ahead of its time.

Although one knows that it is just a collection of plastic and electronic parts, because it resembles a dog, and behaves like a dog, one tends to be drawn into treating it like a dog!  In fact the way it responds to attention, and specifically that of someone it learns to regard as its owner, reinforces human behaviours towards it.  It learns the owners face, voice and picture.  The sensors on its back and head cause typical dog like reactions when stroked.  And in autonomous mode, it decides what to do, where to wander and explore and how to behave.  All of these features mean that one can soon feel like you are living with a real dog!  In addition it does tricks like dancing which animate dogs would struggle to compete with.  What is interesting is that many people who at first laugh at others talking to the robot dog, gradually get drawn in to trying their own luck at human-robot communication, once they see the reactions that Aibo can generate. 

I shall miss Aibo being around when the time comes to hand him back!  Meantime, he has certainly influenced my thinking about how people may respond to robots in the future. 

Care for a robot, anyone?

As I have mentioned many times in this blog, the demographic forecasts of the future tell us that we won't have enough people to look after all the people who need looking after in the decades to come.  This suggests that more machine support will be employed, and I suspect specifically robotic machines.  Clearly there are potential advantages for health professionals including addressing the increasing risk that they injure themselves when physically moving heavy patients, as obesity levels rise.  But would you ever relate to a robot as you would to a human nurse for example?  How much supervision of robots looking after people would be needed?  What is the potential cost of malfunction?  If your human nurse gets a bug, it may spread a disease (possibly life threatening) around a ward.  If your robot nurse has a bug it may kill you too.  

Robots I have met, are increasingly able to empathise with the humans around them.  They can detect emotional states of people and be programmed to act accordingly.  Some of the tactile movements now possible with robots can make them a very sensitive and gentle assistant compared to the images most people carry of large industrial automobile welding robots.  What type of robot would be best in a caring application?  Would you prefer a machine that looks like a human or that doesn't caring for you?   And it's not just about healthcare, maybe you would be comfortable with a robot that looks after your children when you are not around?  It would have a better idea of what they are doing on the Internet than you, and would be able to answer any questions they have from an educational viewpoint.   As the technology becomes available in future, we will all need to make more decisions about what we can accept.  

Robots & music... danger?

The human brain is thought to process different aspects of music in many different parts of the brain, some of which are specific to music and some which are not.  One consequence of this is that the brain can relate sequences of music to pieces it has heard before.  A professor at Plymouth University has build some robots that can similarly recognise music sequences, as well as imitate sounds.  The robots effectively learn their own rules for what is musical.  However this is not simply useful in the context of music.  It should help autonomous robots to agree collaborative strategy in order to perform a task together.  This task could itself be learning! Future machines will not need programming in the traditional sense.  They will learn what should be done themselves.  As such they will need no humans to program them.  That could be very convenient when the robots are doing 'good' things.  It might be very difficult to stop them when they learn to do more undesirable things.  Let's hope that they learn some ethics too!

IET Annual Healthcare Lecture

It was a pleasure to deliver the keynote presentation at this year's IET Healthcare lecture at the organisation's headquarters in Savoy Place, London this evening.  It was also my pleasure to give out some prizes to the leading students recognised by the organisation before starting to speak.  

So what if your ageing relatives are cared for by robots?  And what if the only way to control a pandemic outbreak was to chip and track humans?  And what if your surgeon told you he wasn't going to be in the room with you when he carries out your operation?   These are all topics which I mentioned as part of glimpsing the future on this particular occasion.  

The questions afterwards were very good, understandably given the calibre of the audience present!   But the most interesting part for me as always, was the discussion over dinner where I could hear from some of the audience about their views and their work.  

Robots with feeling...

One of the more memorable aspects of visiting the incredible innovative environment which is the MIT Media Lab is always the robots they have on show.  This has been true of all my previous visits and was no different today this time.  

Robots which just do mechanical tasks that humans and then simple machines used to do previously, such as welding pieces of cars together, are already relatively accepted and therefore unimpressive to many people.  Robots that take movement further and are mobile and appear to solve more general problems tend to seem more impressive to more people.  

But robots that can appear to empathise with humans and even exhibit aspects of emotional understanding and expression themselves are more impressive still to almost everyone.  This often has an emotional effect on visitors and people who meet such robots for the first time.  It is most impressive of all when the inventor and constructor who has built the robot feels emotionally affected by the result of his/her work, ... by the appearance, actions and behaviour of the robot.  This is beginning to happen.  It will be very important in the future.

Human, robot & hybrid employees?

The last blog entry mentioned the employment of robots within more organisations.  We should not expect robots to necessarily resemble human forms with arms and legs for example.  Many successful implementations especially when viewed from the viewpoint of human cultural acceptance of their new machine colleagues, will take alternative forms.  

Advances in bio-tech though will offer other opportunities.  This includes the 'enhancement' of humans through neurally-linked machine components.  Initially we will see this for those who require some help due to disability but later the option will be there for others, and in the corporate environment, it may be that for performance reasons there is some motivation to use the technology too.  We will eventually be more comfortable with humans being 'chipped' in the same way that animals already are.  The nature and capabilities of this chip will develop and evolve over time.  The initial impetus might be security, but it could also evolve into a platform for future human enhancement.  

Work is an activity, not a place!

While as I remarked in a previous blog entry education has remained much the same over a very long period of time, the way business is conducted today is quite different from how it was in the past.  Businesses have evolved in the way they operate.  But still the future of business will be considerably different again. 

Structurally I expect a polarisation from the global corporate to virtual community-based enterprises.  While using the word virtual, businesses will build upon their fledgling use so far of virtual worlds for some activities and operations.  And employees will assume more power individually than they do today.  In response, businesses will have to be more individual about how they facilitate flexible working patterns and how they measure and reward performance through benefits.  The talent market for businesses to select from will be more diverse and more demanding.  Instead of assuming talent will come to them, companies will have to make flexible arrangements for employing the best people wherever they want to locate.  And the preoccupation with work-life balance will be superseded by work-life integration.   The latter will be supported by personal consumer-driven devices that integrate personal and business information filtering it as appropriate.  

More businesses will employ robots as well as humans.  Human employees will be valued much more for their abilities to be creatively innovative and to manage others from an emotional perspective, rather than simply valued because of their knowledge and skills.  Those who can manage relationships and networks of people will also be in demand, especially when they can effectively lead and manage people over distance.  

Dogs or robots?

I read recently how a biotech firm in Korea (RNL Bio) and the Seoul National University had trained a pit bull terrier to perform certain domestic tasks such as removing laundry from a washing machine, fetching things from the fridge, amongst others.  Then they cloned five other dogs from this well trained parent.  Articles were subsequently written about whether dogs trained in this way could rival and be better than domestic robots.  I suspect that some would have opinions about the ethical aspects of the canine solution to domestic automation.  

Actually, I would still prefer a robot anyway.  There are plenty of reasons why the dog could choose not to follow its training on any particular day.  The dog will also eventually tire from domestic work.  The programming "breadth" possible for a robot should out-strip the number of tasks that a dog can be trained to do.  Finally, the dog will always require more maintenance, and have a more limited lifespan.  Unless its training extends to clearing up after itself then I still prefer the robot alternative, all of the previous points not withstanding!   

What is perhaps more interesting than to debate the merits of robot versus dog, is to wonder what might be the motivation behind the scientists who chose to train and clone the pit bulls?  Which species of animal do would be considered next?  

Robotic futures

I have blogged here about the impact of robots in the future a few times, but recently the number of scientists, researchers and articles featured on the BBC News website that agree with me has increased significantly!   This week alone there was a report about dancing robots, another about swarming co-operating robots, and a third about a robot plane.  Finally there was one about how robots could learn to move.

So is it just a fad?  Well robots are still interestingly different enough here in the west to make good news articles, and there is certainly plenty of research going on in the field of robotics to report about.  In Japan, I have seen more impressive robots than anywhere else.  And in Japan, the culture seems to accept the idea of robots much more than here in the west.  Perhaps if anyone reading this from Japan would like to comment on this.  I love to read the comments people leave on the blog here.  

But long term, no it is not just a fad.  Robots will be doing more and more, and substituting for human workers in a number of roles.  So perhaps we should all start getting used to it, and asking ourselves which jobs we would rather they did! 

Machines doing more - not an option!

Last evening I had the pleasure to attend an evening lecture by an old friend and fellow futurist, Peter Cochrane, organised by the ITP.  I share many of Peter's views about the future, but enjoy his style of delivery, and so was happy to attend yet another of his lectures.  This time, Peter talked about the future of machines outnumbering and out-performing humans.  

So we know that we can program machines to develop their own evolving behaviours.  And we know that there are already more microprocessors on the planet than people.  And we know that there will be a time when these machines will do even more of the things humans currently do, better, faster and more accurately than humans.  Clearly robots, already extremely able, will be a subset of such machines.  And in the same way that Japan already embraces robots in applications which the rest of the world only thinks about, the rest of the world will need robots increasingly to do these tasks and hence will become more comfortable with the idea.

Technology isn't an option in today's world.  If computer technology was turned off, countries like the UK would be in a disaster situation within weeks, with insufficient food and other resources to sustain the population.  Technology in the future will be even more essential.  Those who lag behind will have to catch up or simply struggle to survive.   

Robot pets and healthcare

Demographics tell us that in the future there will be an ageing population.  There won't be enough young fit people to look after sick and elderly people in future.  We will need machines to play a bigger part in healthcare.  We already do this with little concern in hospitals, where machines commonly keep people alive and provide for critical functions in cases where the body is unable to do so.  Of course in hospitals we expect those machines to be operated by skilled consultants and practitioners.  Increasingly we will see technology tasked with health monitoring and care in people's homes.  

The machines in homes can be made more personal than those in hospital.  An elderly person may be looked after by a robotic pet, while believing that they are in fact looking after the pet.  Such a robot may monitor physiological characteristics of the person, or analyse daily routines, or how often medication is taken.  They may alert the person or signal others outside the home if such monitoring detects an abnormal or unusual pattern of behaviour.   I don't mind if my mother-in-law is looked after by a robot; my wife has a slightly different view!  The technology is arriving before people are comfortable with its uses.  As attitudes change, more will be done by robotic healthcare solutions.  

Robots are coming...

The revolution in the 80s, which resulted in car manufacturers adopting robotic production lines to weld automobiles together and spray paint them, has left many people with the idea that this is what robots do.  I have to warn those people that things have moved on rather a lot from this.  After meeting a number of robots at a Japanese consumer electronics show about 18 months ago, I am under no illusions that these machines are well capable of far more already.  Had my Japanese language ability been better, I am sure I would have been even more impressed!  And we know that future demographics will mean that we won't have sufficient people to do all the jobs we need doing (such as looking after the elderly or sick), so we can expect some applications to include these things too.  Guiding guests in corporate environments and providing security patrols are other obvious applications that are already possible.  It is not so much a case of what the robots of the future will be able to do, but more a case of what people and society is ready for them to take responsibility for.  I have no qualms about my Mother-in-law being looked after by a robot but my wife has a different opinion!   Society's acceptance of new technology is often more difficult to judge than when the technology itself will be mature enough.