The engineers of the HP company are working on the development of a particularly sophisticated robot, which can "represent" us at meetings and conferences
The international airline industry was one of the main victims of the terrorist attack on the United States in September 2001. The number of people willing to board a plane in the months after the attacks in New York and Washington dropped dramatically. The outbreak of the Sars epidemic in Asia and other countries in the world led to a further worsening of the problem, and the international business companies had to find an adequate solution for it. Most of them have found a good substitute for face-to-face meetings with customers and video and audio conferencing providers. But there may be an even more successful solution: human replacement.
The engineers of the research and development center of the Hewlett-Packard HP company claim: "What is more natural than having face-to-face meetings with a robot, which is operated by the person with whom you are supposed to meet?". In the company's laboratory in Palo Alto, California, they are already working on an experimental model of this futuristic robot. The engineers don't like being called their development "robot". According to them, robots are pre-programmed to perform certain actions. On the other hand, the replacement person they are developing will behave in real time according to the will of the person who activates it, so it is no more a robot than the car you are driving.
The engineers are going with the idea as far as possible, they will give the robot the ability to "speak", "hear", and maybe even dress it in a luxurious suit. His face will be designed as similar as possible to that of the person who will operate it remotely. He will be able to "directly look" at everyone sitting at the discussion table, ask questions and provide answers. In fact, there is no principled obstacle to him being able to "mingle" in the crowd and conduct small talk conversations with those present. Except for eating and drinking, it will behave almost exactly like whoever activates it.
Rides an elevator and plays basketball
The body, 175 centimeters tall, will be made of plastic and will move on wheels. According to the plan, it will have a self-navigation capability that will be based on sensors, which will prevent it from colliding with walls during its movement. The current master model still lacks arms, but when these are installed on the more advanced model, he will even be able to press the elevator buttons. One of the engineers said that he was planning to also give it the ability to throw a ball into the basket (only a sponge ball), but in internal discussions only opposition to the idea was voiced.
The robot will be connected through a broadband wireless connection to the Internet, so that it will be possible to transfer sound and image from it and to it. The operator will be able to hear and see what is happening in the discussion through his visual and auditory systems, and he will be able to speak to those present in the discussion through the "mouth" of the robot. The robot's head will consist of four computer monitors and four cameras, which will allow the operator to "see and be seen" from any direction in the room. Of course, the operator's image will be projected on the monitors in live video, so that those present will have a real sense of him and his reactions.
The main problem here, which the developers will try to solve, is the time difference in the response of the operator. This is of course due to the time it takes for the information to reach the operator and back to the robot via the network. During the remote discussion, the operator will of course have to stay in a special room with cameras, which will take pictures of him, and monitors, which will transmit the images from the discussion to him. He will control the robot's movements using a sophisticated system of joysticks. If necessary, he will be able to turn the robot's head towards the speaker's face in the discussion, and make eye contact with him.
For now, the development is only a "research experiment", but don't be surprised if in a few years you will have a discussion with such a robot. It is clear to those involved in the project that the robots will not be flown from country to country, but will be used if necessary at conferences or executive meetings. The owners of the idea even raised the (quite disturbing) possibility that in the future only such robots will be present at conferences and meetings, while the real people will not leave the office or the house at all.
High financial expenditure
Apart from the development, which as mentioned is in a rather preliminary stage, there is another reason why these wonderful robots will take some time to enter our lives. It can be assumed that even after it is already on the market, the companies will not rush to purchase it, due to the high financial expenditure that will be required of them. Of course, the robot does not yet have a price, but we can already guess that not every company will be able to purchase several of these, or even one. In order to operate it, a special control room is also needed for the operators, which is also not likely to be particularly cheap.
The project, which is not necessarily surprising, also has quite a few opponents. These come from the companies that built their (thriving) businesses on video conferencing. Take for example the heads of the American company PlaceWare, who claimed last week (after presenting the concept to them) that the idea "won't work". The executives explained that it is better to use technological solutions that already exist in the offices, and not impose new heavy expenses on them.
"It doesn't seem to us that the majority of people who already use video conferencing over the Internet care at all if they see (or not) the face of their neighbors," said the company's representatives. "All these people will only need a telephone line, a computer or a TV monitor, and not a robot doll that will require them to come to a special control room."
Data is not here yet
The word "robot" evokes different associations in each of us. Some will immediately think of the police robot for handling suspicious objects, many will imagine a cute and obedient domestic helper, and others will remember her expression in the futuristic terminator in the movie "Terminator", played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although the idea has fired the human imagination for years, most of what we think robots "should" do is still far from being realized.
The term "robot" (in the modern sense) appeared for the first time in the 20's of the last century, in the book ORR by the Czech Karl Chapek. The meaning of the word in Czech is slave, forced worker, serf. Chapek came up with the idea that robots would serve as servants to humans and obey them without resistance. Writers and thinkers who followed him expanded the vision to machines with artificial intelligence, which could assist humanity in performing sophisticated tasks, and not just as black laborers.
Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computing and artificial intelligence, invented in 1950 a test to test the artificial intelligence of a computer or machine, called the "Imitation Game". According to Turing, if a person talks to a machine for several minutes and does not notice that the other party is not human, then the machine can be said to have intelligence. To date, no robot or computer has been able to pass the test.
Today robotics is a field that combines researchers from the field of computer, physics and engineering. To date, the development of more than 90 types of humanoid robots has been completed. Every year robots become more sophisticated than their predecessors, but progress is still slow. Gadget stores sell a remote-controlled robot the size of a five-year-old boy, which is able to bring a bottle, four drinking glasses, a newspaper (in a compartment on its back) from the kitchen on a small tray. The robot, which can also beep and blink its eyes, was sold in the United States last year for $85.
In the last year we heard about the Japanese robot "Asimo" of the Honda company, which is considered the most advanced so far. In December 2002, he was sent to open the trading day at the New York Stock Exchange, to mark the 25th anniversary of the company's IPO. Asimo walked the streets of Manhattan (while being remotely operated by a team of students) and waved goodbye to everyone he met. Since then he has been traveling between exhibitions and museums in the world. Honda invested 16 years in its development and intends to offer it for sale in 4 years at a price of 365 pounds (about NIS 2,700). More details about Asimo (at http://www.asimo.honda.com)
Most robots today perform very specific tasks, such as a lawn mowing robot (developed by an Israeli company), the robot sent to Mars and of course the good old police robot. Most of them do not look like humans at all, but are built according to the task they have to fulfill.
Dr. Cynthia Breazeal Breazeal (), one of the seniors of the humanoid (human-like) robot development group at MIT, is trying to give a robot named "Kismet" human facial expressions, so that it can respond to its human interlocutor. In a less serious context, we have already heard about RoboCup, the world championship for robotic soccer, and a TV show called "Robot Wars" Battlebots, where real battles are held between robots (most of them look like small tanks).
How to ensure that robots do not harm humans? In his well-known book "I am a robot" I Robot, the author Isaac Asimov established three basic rules for the "community of humanoid robots", which resemble humans: a humanoid robot will never injure a human being and will never bring a human into a physical confrontation with it; The robot must obey human instructions, with the exception of an instruction that is contrary to the first law; A robot must protect its existence and its presence as long as they do not conflict with the first law." Even if the robots observe Asimov's laws, there is still a fear among many that due to some malfunction (for example a sudden voltage drop) one of the robot's arms will suddenly flick a terrible and deadly slap at a curious human .
Alex Doron
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