Robolift 11 conference news

Robolift was a superb conference. Nicolas did an amazing job of assembling a diverse and passionate group of  who discussed the current challenges, hopes and promises of robotics. For three full days, robots have taken the center stage and all those sessions ended up forming a coherent picture made of several key ideas and questions surrounding what will be major market in the future. Here is a quick recap of the key points that were made:

We can create emotional connections to robots

I'm human. Sometimes there are things that I believe against all logic. For me robots had to be objects we were keeping a certain distance with. Several speakers showed how that is not true: the Paro robot was one of the most striking example. Used with Alzheimer patients, this robotic seal creates authentic relationships with the people using it (see video, choose "PARO for patients in Italy"). Beyond these special usages, several talks showed how we engage with robots, whether it is kids helping a Roomba clean their bathroom's floor, or people giving bots nicknames and treating them as members of the family.

As Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino pointed during her Q&A session, "Robots are objects, and we spend our life creating emotional attachment to objects. You feel sad when you break a vase your grandma offered you. It is the same with robots, we mourn them when they break down." Robots are just regular objects, my intuitions and culture was creating an intriguing distance with that notion, but one can indeed be emotionally attached to them.

Robots really don't have to look like robots

To make a long story short: movements and attitudes mean more than shape. That was clear after seeing tenth of videos, like those presented by Fumiya Iida. His robots mimic the movements of animals, and it is striking how this is enough to make you relate to and engage with the robot. You completely forget the fact it is a piece of metal you are watching, and start making a lot of parallels with creatures made of flesh and blood. You engage more than when looking at those humanoid robots that always fail at recreating the human touch effectively.

Robots can do amazing things, and stupid things

We saw a ball throwing robot, and a robot helping alzheimer patients. We saw Aibo learning to recognize objects with more or less success, and robots fighting in Afghanistan. The universal laws of innovation apply to robotics: technology is neutral. You can not say they are either smart or stupid. They are what people do with them, with all the diversity that represents.

Robots make us more social, and they make us less social

Another area where robots are just like other technologies (= neutral). Cynthia Breazeal talked about how a robot could allow a grandma to read a story to her grandchildren, and therefore expand our social capacities, allowing interactions that used to be more complicated, less fun, or otherwise impossible.

But robots could also be interpreted in a negative way. We saw kids playing with their roomba, and not with other kids. So expect many people to say "robots make us lonelier, we will stop interacting with humans". As usual the truth is in a balanced view: sometimes the robot will allow us to expand our social horizon, sometimes they will make us choose to communicate with a machine rather than with other humans physically close to us.

There are a lot of open questions with ethics and legal

Robotics is like the internet in 1995. A space for hackers and pioneers, starting to be recognized by businesses, with a couple of success stories under its belt. The problem (or is it the opportunity...?) is that the field is way too young to be legislated by governments that barely know this is happening. So it is up to those pioneers to self regulate. And now is a time of big questions. Do we want robots to kill? Drones are being used by politicians because they offer a "dream" equation: fight with no risk of human casualties, at least on the drone's army side. The problem according to Noel Sharkey: the "buffer" created between the fighter and the field, materialized by a 2 second delay between a command and it's concretization on the field.

The army is apparently recruiting the video games generation with ads like "you were a good fighter on your PS3? Come and join us, we have a job for you!" Civilized war has several principles, like applying a proportional response to a specific threat. Judgment capabilities that robots are not yet able to reach (will they ever be?), yet we have them fight our wars, more and more every day. Another question: who is responsible if your Google car crushes adog  on a pedestrian passage? Are you responsible because you signed a 500 pages user agreement approval you never read, or are the programmers responsible? Tons of open questions here, probably a few decades of legal debate and landmark cases before we have answers.

Cultures approach robots differently

One of the quote of the conference came from Fujiko Suda who answered my question on "why robots are coming from Asian countries like Japan or Korea?" by saying that Japanese "are not afraid to play god as they already have 8 millions of them". There is an intriguing idea here, that our culture shapes how we perceive robots. Apparently in the West, we all consider that there is a superior being above us, the only entity allowed to create life-like creatures. Robots are, at least in our imagination, going to one day equal men in their appearance and intelligence. Maybe surpass us, and get out of control?

All this conditions our vision, and makes us more nervous than Japanese who see god in many aspects of their daily life. When they build a machine, they don't cross as many lines as we do, hence their early adoption of these technology. It is not the only factor (an aging population in need of care is another one) but it is an important one.

Robots have something to do with god

As mentionned in my previous post, god came up quite a few times, and it seems there is definitely a relation between robots and religion. Dominique Sciamma claimed that "robots will finish the work Nietzche started, and kill god". Maybe inventing and creating something as sophisticated and intelligent as humans will make Christians reconsider the genius of god? If a man can do it...

Overall, all the speakers gave very good talks. Congrats to Nicolas and the whole Lift team for doing such a great job. As Frédéric Kaplan told me in the train that was taking us back home, "it is rare to see a conference on Robotics able to make that topic as informative, thought provoking and entertaining".

We had a great first edition of Robolift with over 500 participants and hundreds of robots in action! Great to see all the positive twitter comments. While we rest a bit, gather our thoughts and publish the contents -- check out Laurent's post "The Ideas of Robolift" and...

The Press Coverage

We are gathering the press/blog coverage and need your help. We can't find articles easily, especially if they are published outside of France. So please send us links (by email or twitter) and we will add links from our site.
To see the great robots that were exposed at Innorobo see this article by Echo featuring videos of the robotstars exposed. There was an impressive number of TV stations present at this first edition of the robotics summit. See for example this short clip by France3.

Slides & mp3 recordings

We will be uploading most of the slides to the talks page. We will also provide soon the mp3 recording of the speeches on the same page. Stay tuned!

Photos

We will be uploading our picture to our flickraccount. There were a lot of good photographers among the participants, check all pictures on flickr tagged with innorobo, such as the pic below by Feuillu

Thank you all for the inspiring time at Robolift !

Robolift's second day is starting after a great day of talks yesterday on the shape of robots, ethics, our emotionnal connection to machine, military usage of robots, and much more. Today's schedule has been slightly adapted to fit an official inauguration that will take place on the main stage at 11:30. Here is the program:

10:00 instead of 10:30 Human-robot interactions (Session starts earlier)
Robots seem to live either in the long-distant future or in the realm of research labs. This vision is wrong and these speakers will show us how nowadays people interact with them in Europe and in Japan. The session will also address how robots can be useful in developing or understanding our emotions.

11:30 Official inauguration

12:00 Lunch

14:00 Conference: Robot Market Focus

16:00 Artificial intelligence: acquired versus programmed intelligence? (Both two-speakers sessions merged into one four-speakers session)
Artificial Intelligence used a recurring objective of engineering. This session will give an overview of the recent progress in this field and the consequences for robotic technologies: How much pre-programming can you put into robotic intelligence? Can robots learn on their own?

The Future of robotics
This session will feature two talks about how robots might be in the future. From assistive care products to new forms of interactions, we will see tomorrow's technologies, their usages and applications.

18:00 End of the day

See the update program here.

Frederic Kaplan is the co-founder of Ozwe, a company that develops interactive systems ranging from gesture-controlled displays to multi-touch screens. Then a researcher at the EPFL, Frederic takes us "Beyond robotics" at Lift07 in Geneva.

More Lift videos here.

In 2 days we will be right at the Robolift opening! Here comes a quick update while you wait
• We have 428 registered participants for this first edition of Robolift
• Our host, the service robotics summit Innorobo, has 2 200+ registered participants, over 80 exhibitors, coming from 12 countries and more than a 100 robots, of which about 30 will be shown for the 1st time in Europe!
• Be sure to print-out and bring your e-ticket, it will make your registration process much faster and prevent from waiting. For those who have not done it yet, it is still time to register and join us and the robotics pioneers in Lyon
• You can see the final program and an overview of all exhibitors' events happening during Innorobo not to miss
• We are proud to welcome a great number of prestigious media at Innorobo. See a selection of the media and journalists who will be present here or check-out our press section featuring press releases and pictures of amazing robots

See you in 2 days at Robolift @ Innorobo :)

Thanks to technological progress in the areas of human-machine interface, artificial intelligence, miniaturization and geo-localization services, robotics today is fulfilling more and more important needs. Innorobo offers an exceptional opportunity to apprehend this « Robolution » and discover the most amazing robots in the following sectors:

Events

• The robot museum guide COREBELL moves around autonomously and is able to organize interactive museum visits by broadcasting images and sounds.
• ROBOTEVER feature event robots in his service robotics product line, featuring Roborama (scientific museums in Korea, festivals and international tradeshows).

Telepresence

Education

Assistance and companionship

Innorobo offers an exceptional opportunity to apprehend this « Robolution » and discover the most amazing robots in the following sectors:

Transport Robots

• INDUCT, an autonomous electric vehicle capable of driving up to 8 passengers to the destination of their choice.
• T-Bot by ROBO3 offers simplified urban mobility on gyroscopically wheels.
• AMV-1 by BLUEBOTICS, a robotized solution for transport of goods and human-beings.

Healthcare Robots

• Kompaï by ROBOSOFT, a robot companion for persons who need special assistance. Already in use in hospitals and at home.
• BIOPARHOM products (for ex. Z-Métrix) offer diagnostic aid using bioimpedance.
• INSAVALOR, a robot simulating childbirth for training purposes.
• The TOPCHAIR wheelchair, allowing people with reduced means of mobility to climb the chairs thanks to a robotic motor activity.

Domestic appliances

• Roomba by iROBOT, distributed by ROBOPOLIS, the legendary vacuum cleaner robot that has already been sold over a 5.6 Mio. times all over the world.
• Windoro distributed by ROBOPOLIS, the first window cleaning robot.
• ZODIANET with its products Zbase and Zoé are specialized in intelligent homes. They have revolutionized the relationship of mobile humans with their homes (promotion of networked objects communicating by RFID and internet connection)
• NAV ON TIME offers highly precise navigation of mobile machines such as for example the mowing robot by BELROBOTICS.

Entertainment Robots

• Karotz by MINDSCAPE, a playful, communicating bunny robot.
• Sparx by ROBOPOLIS, merges video games, augmented reality and robotics for education purposes (fusion of virtual and real worlds).
• AR.Drone by PARROT (check out the video), an augmented reality quatricopter, which can be operated by WLAN or through an iphone / ipod, featuring an integrated camera.
• Jessiko by ROBOTSWIM, a robot fish for amusement parks and pool surveillance.
• Pleo, distributed by ROBOPOLIS, a young dinosaur robot, adapting progressively to live with humans.

Besides the conference, the Innorobo exhibition offers an amazing opportunity to play and interact with the latest robot technologies. Here are four bots you will be able to "meet" next week in Lyon:

Darwin from Robotis: The open platform humanoid project
Darwin is an affordable, miniature-humanoid-robot open platform. Featuring advanced computational power, sophisticated sensors, high payload capacity, and dynamic motion ability. Learn more about Darwin and how you can program your own robot.

The biomimetic robots by robot studio
Robot studio is a specialist supplier of biomimetic robot hardware for both research and entertainment. The ECCERobot copies amazingly well the human body (but let's be honest it's quite a freak creature without clothes on:)

Induct car robots and mobility solutions
Induct specializes in mobility solutions using new technologies. CYBERGO is a robotic electric vehicle specially designed for transporting people in cities. Its design brings out new technologies in robotics applied to the automobile. Take your drive at Innorobo!

Acroban by INRIA Flowers: the sweet child robot
Acroban is a lightweight compliant humanoid robot capable of life-like movements. It offers the possibility of a new kind of playful physical human-robot interaction. This widely buzzed about robot is developed by the flowers research team at INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, headed by Robolift speaker Pierre-Yves Oudeyer.

See the Acroban robot in action in the video!

Television & Radio:
Radio Télévision Suisse, Euronews, LCI, M6, Paris Première, TF1

Newspapers and Magazines:
20minutes, Journal des Loisirs Interactifs, L'Expansion, L'Ordinateur Individuel, La Tribune de Genève, Le Figaro, Le Figaro éco , Le Point , Les Echos, Lyon Capitale, Micro Hebdo, Républicain Lorrain, Robot Magazine

Online news and Blogs:
InternetActu.net, Groupe 01, JeuxOnline.info, Lyon Entreprises

Fumiya Iida is a SNF professor for bio-inspired robotics at ETH Zurich since August 2009. He received his bachelor and master degrees in mechanical engineering at Tokyo University of Science (Japan, 1999), and Dr. sc. nat. in Informatics at University of Zurich (2006).

In 2004 and 2005, he was also engaged in biomechanics research of human locomotion at Locomotion Laboratory, University of Jena (Germany). From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in USA. In 2006, he awarded the Fellowship for Prospective Researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation, and in 2009, the Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship.

His research interest includes biologically inspired robotics, embodied artificial intelligence, and biomechanics, where he was involved in a number of research projects related to dynamic legged locomotion (video below), navigation of autonomous robots, and human-machine interactions.

Based on the research achievements, he has so far published over forty publications in major robotics journals and conferences, and edited two books. Currently he serves as the editorial board of Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems and Frontiers in Neuroscience (Neurorobotics), the program committee member of international conferences and workshops. In addition, he has organized a few seminar meetings such as International Conference of Morphological Computation and International Seminar of Embodied Artificial Intelligence.

Check his video about MiniDog

As well as his video about Two-Segment Leg Monopod (BioLeg 1) :

At Robolift Fumiya Iida will speak in the session about "The shape of robots" to come.