Ubercool

Robot Love

October 25th, 2007

David Levy, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, recently told LiveScience that by 2050 Massachusetts would become the first jurisdiction to legalize robot weddings.

Says Levy irreverently, “At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once a story like ‘I had sex with a robot and it was great!’ appears someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”

On May 13, The Associated Press reports, Honda’s stair-stepping Asimo robot will lead the Detroit Symphony Orchestra when it performs “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha” during a program featuring the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

A skeptical University of Edinburgh robot scientist provided this sober counterpoint: “who,” he asked, “would want to marry a robot?” The reality is we already live in a world where some people don avatars and lead double lives in Second Life. A few have even gotten married in their virtual-reality world, so the question is what does our robot future hold?

While scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics labor away on their vertical-application robots, around the globe in the Far East, a totally different attitude rules the emerging world of robots.

In 2005, South Korea’s Minister of Science and Technology Oh Myung predicted the Asian tiger would boast the world’s third largest robotics industry by 2013, exporting some $20 billion worth of products, or 15% of the global robotics market. If Myung’s forecast proves correct this suggests a worldwide robotics industry of roughly $135 billion in just six years.

The Japan Robot Association predicts that the robot market, now pegged at about $4 billion globally, will more than triple to $14 billion by 2010. That’s mega growth. This may explain why such formidable players as Honda and Toyota have established robotics development divisions. Toyota’s unnamed trumpet-playing robot was shown back in 2004, but besides a robotic corporate tour guide named Robina, little else has been heard from Toyota.

Robofish have captured everyone’s imagination. In 2005, the London Aquarium featured its first robot fish, created by University of Essex computer scientists. At right is a health-monitoring robot koi carp developed by Ryomei in Japan.

To reach that $135 billion market, the pace has quickened significantly in the past few years. Robots of every imaginable function and size are being introduced, from Citizen’s tiny Eco-Be, a miniature two wheeled robot that’s driven by a Citizen watch motor, to Japan’s RI-MAN humanoid, being developed by Riken, a government-supported research institute, which has a design target of being able to carry at least 154 pounds (70kg) by 2011.

The Japanese government is focusing its robotic efforts on helping its aging population, a smart goal indeed given that Italy and Japan share the distinction of having the world’s oldest populations.

iRobot’s Roomba vacuum-cleaning robot is the most popular robot on the U.S. market today. The company’s third-generation model, the Roomba 560, is not only entertaining to watch but now actually also does some cleaning.

But activity is not limited to Korea and Japan. All around the world, the pace of development is picking up fast. America’s foremost robot manufacturer, iRobot, has already launched its third generation vacuum-cleaning robot, the iRobot Roomba 560 ($350), which significantly improves on previous models, and which RobotAdvice.com says is “finally a robotic vacuum that you can rely on.”

If you’re interested in robots, visit the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center taking place today and tomorrow, where you can see the debut of Anybots, a six-year-old angel-funded Silicon Valley start-up. You may even fall in love. We won’t tell anyone.

For a listing of some major robot developers, continue reading.

Robot Developers
There are many robots presently on the market today or in development. Here’s a guide to some that received press attention in the past:

• Honda ASIMO – Introduced in 1996, Honda’s childlike 51-inch-tall (1.30m) robot jogs at up to four miles per hour (7km), walks up stairs, waves, avoids obstacles and can carry on simple conversations, serve tea (it’s Japanese after all), and is able to push a mail cart — which gives it an early headstart to climb from mail room to CEO suite.
• iRobot Warrior X700 – The maker of the Roomba vacuum robot will launch a 250-pound, weapons-firing, stair-climbing, ammo-carrying military bot, the Warrior X700, next year that will be able to carry a 500-pound payload, use its robotic arm to lift 150 pounds and run 10 miles (16km) per hour.
• Kawada HRP-2 Promet — Kawada Industries’ HRP-2 Promet is a five-foot-tall (60cm) silver-and-blue robot that’s able to walk slowly, carry small objects, perform warm-up stretches and bends, sit down on the floor and pull itself up. The robot speaks a few words and can wave goodbye.
• Riken RI-MAN — Riken, a government-supported research institute in Japan, has developed a robot that can see, hear, smell and even carry humans. Today, RI-MAN can carry a 12-kilogram weight but the robot is being designed to help take of Japan’s elderly population, so it’s set to carry at least 155 pounds (70kg) in the next five years.
• Ryomei koi carp – Hiroshima-based Ryomei Engineering (a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) has developed a robot koi carp, at a cost of $300,000, which can gather information about the koi it swims with. The remote-controlled koi not only looks like a carp but also moves like one, maneuvering with a flick of its tail, while monitoring the water’s oxygen level, a key indicator of fish health.
• Sony Aibo — Sony once made the best-known robot, the $2,000 Aibo robodog, which was scrapped in 2006 to cut costs. Consumers have bought 150,000 of the toy poodle-sized bot since its introduction in 1999. Given the future potential of robots, the decision to scrap Aibo is as misguided as Sony’s early absence from the LCD TV market.
• Toyota – In March 2004, Toyota unveiled a robot that walked, waved its arms, bowed and was able to play the trumpet. The four-foot-tall humanoid (1.22m) is a prototype for a series of robots that Toyota hopes to build over the next two decades to serve as personal assistants, aides for the elderly and laborers. At its unveiling in Japan, Toyota’s unnamed bot played “When You Wish Upon A Star,” using its artificial lips, a major engineering feat.
• ZMP Nuvo — Tokyo-based ZMP, a robot for research and rental firm, expects to sell about 3,000 of its Nuvo ($6,000) robots, a 16-inch-tall (39cm), two-legged bot that ‘s able to pick itself up after falling, recognizes voice commands such as “advance” and “stop” and is controlled by an NTT DoCoMo mobile phone to which it can also beam video images captured by its head-mounted digital camera.

Entry Filed under: Robots