The Hindu Business Line : My robot and I

Man is going to share even more space with robots in the future. The task at hand is powering them to do our tasks, as in the scene in the picture below where a very human-like robot is getting its battery replaced.

FIRST up, following the worldwide premiere of the Will Smith starrer "I, Robot" based on the book by the same name by legendary science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, Wired magazine (www.wired.com) has a guide to some of the world's advanced robots.

Here are some of the more interesting ones: EWA - 1, with artificial muscles; Shadow Hand, capable of replicating the human hand's 25 individual movements; WE-4R can express seven emotions and can also hear, touch and smell; KRT-V.3, which can speak not through electronic speakers, but through mechanical devices; Vera, with a skin substitute that mimics the elasticity of natural skin; Jerry, a seeing robot that imitates the way people "see", relying on visual context; Robita, with speech and face recognition, can identify multiple sound sources, and speak; RAT, which can follow a scent trail through a maze; and Ecobot, which powers itself by "digesting" sugar.

Meanwhile, according to Canada's The Globe and Mail, researchers at Queen's University, Canada are hard at work developing Deep Green, which they want to be the world's best pool shark - capable of beating the best human players at the pool table.

While the objective seems frivolous, this quest for the best pool player will lead to advances in robotic vision, especially colour and pattern recognition. Right now, Deep Green can just about "see" the ball and pocket it; The next step in the project is to develop software to help Deep Green master the strategy side of the game.

While these robots are for the future, there are far simpler robots that are already in service - like industrial robots used in manufacturing and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Not all robots are mechanical humans or represent the body parts of a human being. Some robots can be expert systems and purely software. An example is Deep Blue - the chess playing computer/robot designed by IBM as against Deep Green mentioned above which can actually play pool.

Researchers in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University in the US have developed a program to summarise documents.

So what's new? Search engine results also contain summaries. What is new is that the search engine results of today try and find a matching phrase or word whereas the new system can actually generate a summary of a web page based on the topic that you are looking for.

One of the problems that the new system solves is the problem of human digression.

The system learns and can find out when the author is digressing to discuss a topic rather than discussing the topic itself.

And how do we handle hackers in the robot and expert system and smart devices age? Malicious hackers are not going to disappear overnight and your systems are always going to be vulnerable.

Hackers will also probably move from simple tricks and denial of service attacks on computers to more serious things like denial of service attacks on robot groups within companies. Hackers already have the capability to intercept and tinker with network and wireless communication.

Once hackers figure out the internal workings of embedded systems, robots and smart devices will become easy prey.

The major issues in this battle will be: authentication and data loss.

What if your robot obeys your neighbour and not you? What if your robot forgets to lock the door after you leave for work? These are the things that you will have to worry about.

And you might be surprised that there is a special institute - The Institute for the Interdisciplinary study of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) at the University of West Florida - that focuses on "amplified intelligence" as against artificial intelligence.

This basically shifts the onus from making machines more like humans to making humans more comfortable and productive with machines. It works on the premise that machines and their capabilities should leverage and extend human effort and thought rather than simulate human processes.

nagaraj@thehindu.co.in

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My robot and I

Up or down...
The `Why' matters

Be different

I know what you're doing

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Handle with care

Trouble installing, uninstalling software

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