Tag: Robots

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How androids will become part of our lives

Image: Albert Hubo and David Hanson
Roboticist David Hanson faces the camera with a robot named Albert Hubo, which was developed with the assistance of South Korean scientists. Hanson is the one on the right. (Credit: Hanson Robotics)

Artificial intelligence and robots are hot topics right now, but will we ever get to the stage we saw 50 years ago on “The Jetsons,” where your typical household could have a robotic maid named Rosie?

Robotics pioneer David Hanson says yes, and he thinks it’ll take less than 50 more years. That’s the prediction he delivered on Wednesday during a Skype-enabled panel presentation on the future of AI and robotics in Seattle, sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest.

A veteran of Disney’s imagineering operation, Hanson has produced custom-made robot heads that are capable of eerily humanlike expressions. Now Hanson has relocated to Hong Kong, where he’s gearing up to unveil a line of production-model robots that take advantage of recent AI advances as well as the toymaking prowess of the Pearl River Delta.

He’s not yet ready to say how much those robots will cost. That will come later this year. But he foresees a day when humanoid robots will cost as much as cars.

“It is possible that we can get the cost down to tens of thousands of dollars for walking, humanoid robots that can grasp and manipulate,” he said from Hong Kong. “They can perform as well as the robots like the KAIST DARPA Robotics Challenge grand prize winner.”

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Roboticists try putting a human face on AI

Image: Sophia and Ava
Hanson Robotics’ Sophia (left) represents the state of the art in “friendly” AI robots, while the AI robot Ava from “Ex Machina” (played by Alicia Vikander, at right) represents a sci-fi vision of where the robotics field could go. (Credit: CNBC / Hanson Robotics / A24 Films)

Can artificially intelligent robots be our friends? Our helpmates? Our companions? Roboticists and AI researchers are trying to make it so – and the first fruits of their labors are about to come onto the market. But there are already hints that the efforts will touch some of humanity’s hot buttons.

Take Hanson Robotics, for example: Its latest creation, Sophia, combines an AI chatbot with an expressive humanlike face. She can talk enthusiastically about helping humans in health care, education and customer service. But she can also go off script.

“Do you want to destroy humans? Please say no,” roboticist David Hanson, the company’s founder, asked Sophia during a CNBC interview at this month’s South By Southwest technology conference in Texas.

“OK, I will destroy humans,” it replied. “No, I take it back!” Hanson said with a laugh.

Closer to home, a Microsoft teen chatbot named Tay was hijacked by mischievous Twitter users and transformed into a foul-mouthed racist, less than 24 hours after it was released onto the Internet. Microsoft had to take Tay offline, delete the offending Tweets and try resetting its AI attitude.

Such problems shouldn’t be surprising to science fiction fans, who have been pummeled by robo-dystopias ranging from the classic 1927 film “Metropolis” to last year’s “Ex Machina.” But despite the challenges, scores of companies around the world are working on robots that are meant to have the smarts and the actuators necessary to interact with humans in everyday environments.

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Next-gen robot bounces back from bullying

Image: Pushing a robot
A researcher gives the next-generation Atlas robot a good, hard push. (Credit: Boston Dynamics)

We already know that Boston Dynamics’ robots can run with the big dogs and go dashing through the snow. But can they pick up and put away 10-pound boxes? And can they pick themselves up after being pushed down by bullies?

Yes, they can. Heaven help us, they can.

A newly released video shows the company’s next-generation, two-legged Atlas robot keeping its balance while it walks through the woods on a rough, snowy trail. But things get really eerie when Atlas is put in a warehouse setting, where the robot picks up boxes and slides them onto shelves. It just keeps going, even when a bothersome human takes a hockey stick and slaps the box out of its arms.

When the human goes into full Terminator mode and pushes Atlas over, the machine pushes itself back on its knees, straightens up, and just walks out the door.

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Robot hand is so humanlike, it’s almost creepy

160218-hand2
This robot hand closely follows the structure of a human hand. (Credit: Z. Xu and E. Todorov / UW)

You’ve got to hand it to the roboticists at the University of Washington: They’ve built a robotic hand modeled so closely on human anatomy, it’s almost scary.

The hand uses plastic components that are modeled to mimic human bones, with crocheted ligaments, stringy tendons and rubber skin layered on top. Servo motors pull cables to copy the movement of muscles in a real hand.

When you hook up the contraption to sensors placed strategically around a human controller’s arm and hand, the robot appendage can hold a pen, grip a softball or balance a plate with near-human dexterity. IEEE Spectrum’s Evan Ackerman says it’s the “most detailed and kinematically accurate biomimetic anthropomorphic robotic hand that we’ve ever seen.”

Here’s the almost scary part …

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AI experts say robots could spark unemployment

Image: Google self-driving car
Google is testing subcompact self-driving cars. (Photo via Google)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The robot revolution may put half of us humans out of a job by 2045 – and if that happens, what are the politicians going to do about it?

“This issue of automation and employment, which is going to be one of the biggest policy issues for the next 25 years, if not longer, and now we’re in a presidential election year … this issue is just nowhere on the radar screen,” Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi said Feb. 13 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Washington.

Vardi and other experts on artificial intelligence sketched out a scary picture of what the next couple of decades could bring as machines become smarter, more powerful and more prevalent. It’s a picture that’s developing quickly, thanks to the rise of machine vision and machine learning.

Bart Selman, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said he would not have been as concerned about AI’s downside five years ago. Since then, however, engineers have brought about dramatic improvements in the ability of software systems to see, hear and understand their environment.

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How robots are taking over the milking parlor

Image: Ron Austin and cow
Dairy farmer Ron Austin peers past the robot-controlled milking cups attached to a cow’s teats. The cows mostly decide when and how often they’re milked. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

OAKVILLE, Wash. – The Austin family’s cows seem a lot more contented since the robots took over the milking. It’s the humans, not the cows, who have had to make the biggest adjustments.

“At first, you’re a deer in the headlights,” Ron Austin recalled at the family farm, 90 miles southwest of Seattle. “You get a call from the robot, and you don’t know what to do. The cows learned faster than we did.”

The Austins and about a dozen other families in Washington state are part of a rising robot revolution in the dairy industry.

More than 30,000 autonomous milking machines have been sold around the world, and the trend is just now picking up speed in the United States. By 2025, as much as a quarter of the cows in North America could be milked by robots.

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Robo-reindeer bring holiday cheer and fear

Image: Robot reindeer
Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots star in a hilariously terrifying Christmas video clip.

Santa Claus is coming to town, pulled by robot reindeer. But is that a promise, or a threat?

To celebrate the holidays, Boston Dynamics put out a video that brings a Futurama nightmare to life. The 28-second clip shows the company’s four-legged Spot bots fronting a sleigh as it trundles over a snow-free lawn. But instead of a death-dealing Robot Santa Claus, a smiling Ms. Claus is holding the reins.

“Happy holidays, from Boston Dynamics!” she says with a wave.

There’s a deliciously dark side to this slice of holiday cheer: First of all, Boston Dynamics (which was purchased by Google a couple of years ago) is working on Spot and other bio-inspired robots for use on future battlefields.

Then there’s the fact that seeing robots that move like dogs, or cheetahs, or humansis eerie at best … and Terminator-level scary at worst. Putting antlers on the darn things definitely does not help.

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