robots

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.

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.

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!

Daniel Schatzmayr is a passionate software developer from Austria working for a Games Company in Vienna.

His interest lies within hacking robots and robotic technologies. Daniel started programming at the age of seven on a C64. Since then he is fascinated by computers, software, electronics and the possibilities coming with these technologies.

As a member of the Viennese hackerspace METALAB Daniel approves the basic idea of technology-based creativity in this social space and benefits from and contributes to the open source concepts of this group.

Daniel recently crafted a Spiderbot (Hexapod), a spider-like six legged robot. The constructions plans are published on Thingiverse so you can download and build your own Spiderbot. He programmed an Inverse Kinematic Engine running on an Arduino Mega microcontroller for calculating movement and behavior of the Spiderbot.

Daniel has been invited at Campus Party Europe 2010, an event for technology, creativity and digital culture and his Spiderbot has been exhibited at Ars Electronica 2010, Linz.

He is working on different robot projects and is currently developing a Cocktail robot for Roboexotica in Vienna. At Robolift Daniel will talk about the repurposing of robotic technologies and robot hacking.

Daniela Cerqui is a social and cultural anthropologist involved in the study of the relationship between technology and society and, more fundamentally, humankind. Her research focuses on the ethical and social aspects of the convergent robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology.

Daniela is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Lausanne. She is also a researcher at the Department of Cybernetics of the University of Reading, UK, where Lift08 speaker Kevin Warwick became (in 2002) the first human with a chip implanted in his body and linked directly to his nervous system.

Since 2004 Daniela Cerqui has been closely following Kevin in his activities, exploring his main values and the promotion of cyborg culture. Daniela’s mission is to make Kevin Warwick aware of the main social, ethical, philosophical and anthropological issues related to his work. See this World News video to find out more about Daniela's research on Cyborg Anthropology.

And don’t miss the great video of Kevin Warwick’s talk at Lift08, about implant technology enhancing human abilities! One of our all-time Lift favorites.

"We, Robot: Skywalker's Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots, and How Fiction Became Fact", the new book by Robolift speaker Mark Maedows will be available just in time for christmas!

"We, Robot" explores with an irresistible blend of hard science, futurist imagination, solid statistics, pop culture, and plenty of humor how close to becoming reality are our favorite science fiction robots. And what might be the real-life consequences of their existence.

Meadows reveals robots that hunt humans, walk your dog, tidy up the house, invest your money, and campaign for your favorite political candidate. What will we see in the coming decade? Robots just like the ones in Iron Man, Blade Runner, and Neuromancer. Readers will learn about the near-future robots who dodge bullets, love you, and get hurt when you don’t love them back.

At the Robolift conference Mark Maedows will speak in the "Social implications of robotics"-session and share his experience as robotics and artificial intelligence expert. Learn more about Mark Maedows on his Robolift speaker profile.

"After decades of hype, false starts, and few successes, smart machines are finally ready for prime time. [...] This map, and the associated series of written perspectives, are tools to help navigate the coming changes. As we scanned across ten application domains, seven big forecasts emerged. In the process, we also identified three key areas of impact where the robot renaissance will change our lives over the next decade.

In each domain we focus on three levels of impacts:
(1) Robots helping humans understand ourselves
(2) Robots augment human abilities
(3) Robots automate human tasks"

What is interesting here:

• The variation in terms of shape/forms and what is considered here as a "robots",
• The assumpttions made about humans needs and desires,
• The mix between engineering projects, quotes from sci-fi movies and pictures,
• The rhetorical tricks (present tense, "from XXX to XXX", "Rise", "Every machine", "self-manage".

That might be a good example of a cultural divide between Asia and Europe. I am not sure parents would be happy to know a robot is "registering and checking the students’ moods" while another one called Jenibo "works in the gymnasium".

The robots goal is "not to replace teachers, but to make class more fun". Hum.

Crazy Frog (originally called the annoying thing in case you didn't know ;) has company in the world of virtual music "stars". Meet the romantically named HRP-4C who is as sexa as a drunk Terminator in a L.A. nightclub.

A quick search on dancing robots reveals it is an emerging art form. There is Keepon, who actually achieves a certain level of grooviness, the dancing Sony robots who want to replace Japanese dancers, and the Speecys who - like all robots- have perfect synchronization through a routine that looks like a Véronique and Davina performance (click here if you don't know the legendary Véronique & Davina, now you know).

Another performance spotted recently: the bowling robot who strikes all the time. When you build robots, one of the treats is to be able to compete vs other robot makers (like the soccer world cup for robots), now with a sport like bowling it becomes a bit boring. Perfection vs perfection, how would the game end?

Some excerpts from an interesting interview with Bruce Sterling about robots from acm interactions in 2005:

AM: How do you think robots will be defined in the future?
I’d be guessing that redefining human beings will always trump redefining robots. Robots are just our shadow, our funhouse-mirror reflection. If there were such a thing as robots with real intelligence, will, and autonomy, they probably wouldn’t want to mimic human beings or engage with our own quirky obsessions. We wouldn’t have a lot in common with them-we’re organic, they’re not; we’re mortal, they’re not; we eat, they don’t; we have entire sets of metabolic motives, desires, and passions that really are of very little relevance to any- thing made of machinery.

AM: What’s in the future of robotics that is likely very different from most people’s expectations?
BS: Robots won’t ever really work. They’re a phantasm, like time travel or maybe phlogiston. On the other hand, if you really work hard on phlogiston, you might stumble over something really cool and serendipitous, like heat engines and internal combustion. Robots are just plain interesting. When scientists get emotionally engaged, they can do good work. What the creative mind needs most isn’t a cozy sinecure but something to get enthusiastic about.“

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