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The Common Wisdom

Recipes

The year was 1975. I was attending a local meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in Chicago.  The guest speaker that evening was an IBM employee who had brought in a small Intel 8080-based computer with a few KB of memory that could be purchased for several hundred dollars.

We were all quite impressed with the novel concept that ordinary people could actually afford to buy their own home computers.  After an amazing   demonstration of blinking lights, someone thought to ask "How will people use it?"

The response, which was greeted with widespread nods of approval, was:

"To keep recipes!"

I must confess that I could not visualize the advantages of random access memory and ALUs, compared with a few cook books and some index cards, when it comes to sticky fingers and a pinch of this or that, particularly where the most treasured cooking secrets come from the more elderly and less technically inclined family members.

Over the next few years the same question arose again and again about how computers will be used in the home.  Almost every single time the unanimous consensus was:  "Recipes!"

I did not, however, chance to meet anyone with a computer who actually used it for anything in the kitchen.  It became quite popular for games, spreadsheet calculations, and text editing, pretentiously renamed Word Processing! (Have you ever processed a word?)  The computer found a very useful place in the home, but not immediately in accordance with the wisdom of the masses.

And today, many decades later, people do actually use computers to share recipes on the internet.  I guess that everyone must have been a few years ahead of their time!

Humanoids

Over the past several years I have noticed a great deal of research effort directed towards the development of humanoid robots that are able to crawl, walk, and run in much the same fashion as you and I.  These demonstrations are always greeted with a great deal of popular interest and enthusiasm.  It is my impression that when people see humanoids such as Honda's ASMO they have a natural desire to attribute thought and feelings to these walking machines, even though most know otherwise.

I recall my personal reaction when I first saw a demonstrations of the SONY AIBO.  I could not help feeling that all the motions and mannerisms were so cute and lifelike, even though the machine was almost totally oblivious of it's surroundings.  I could just as well have been watching a wind-up stuffed animal at the toy store.  I began to realize that what was significant about AIBO was not the technical choreography of those moving limbs, but instead how people reacted emotionally to it.  If people happened to react as strongly to a boulder, then one could almost argue that the boulder was just as advanced.

Which is not to say that I am personally against research into walking and other forms of locomotion.  It is just that I feel that most of those efforts could be more wisely invested into improved dexterity for armed manipulators.  I am convinced that wheels and treads happen to be much more efficient and effective in most situations.  Machines do not have to imitate life in order to excel.  I am not sure that I would want to fly on an airliner that was propelled by flapping wings!

I was therefore quite pleased last year when Joseph Engleberger, one of the pioneers of the industiral robot industry, spoke out against all the time and money that was being invested in humanoids.  I entirely agree with him that so much of this is not particularly serious or practical, and just for show.   Robots do not need to look human in order to be useful and effective.

Elderbots

For several decades in Japan there has been an awareness that the sharply declining birth rate since the 1950s will result in a future abundance of older members of society.  Many years ago when Japanese researchers, who have been vigorously pursuing the refinement of humanoid locomotion, were asked to explain the practical justification for these machines, one of them replied, to near-unanimous nods:

    "To care for the elderly!"

I must confess that my imagination is once again at a loss!  None of our current robotic capabilities come anywhere close to matching the needs of the elderly inside the home.  And with our slow rate of progress, our current crop of seniors will all be long gone before we reach that promised land.

Eventually, there will come a day when robots will be quite capable of providing safe and superb care for humans, both young and old.  Their services will include general house cleaning and personal assistance to the infirm.  But today the typical household is far too unstructured for mindless robots that have almost no comprehension of their surroundings.

Chauffeurbots

There is one forthcoming application of  robotics technology in the immediate future that will have an enormous positive impact on the young as well as the old.

For the elderly, the loss of a drivers license can be a major hardship.  But far more significantly, in the United States alone, more than 40,000 deaths result each year from more than 6 million automobile accidents.  For young people between 16 and 24, these accidents are the number one leading cause of death.

Although we are several years away from the autonomous car that can operate safely and effectively under all driving conditions, the basic problem is so much simpler, more straight forward, and well defined than the household cleaning robots that have been promised for so long.  Automobile manufacturers are beginning to incorporate millimeter wave radar and stereo vision into active collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control features on higher-end models.  Self parking technology has also been introduced.  And major advancements in long distance autonomous navigation are being developed and demonstrated at the DARPA Grand Challenge competitions.

Compared to other mobile robot applications, automotive uses of robotic technologies are especially viable because the additional cost of the technology does not dramatically increase the final cost of the vehicle.   Cars are also far more forgiving in terms of weight, size, and power consumption.  And this high volume market will result in unusually beneficial economies of scale for the robotics industry.