Robot: Answer Me Now!
In the near future, we’ll begin issuing commands to our home robots by voice. But this will soon evolve beyond the mere one-way issuance of orders. For robots to be truly useful in our homes. it will be imperative that we be able to carry on actual conversations with them. But, just as you have no patience for slow response times on your computer now, researchers have found that you likewise will have no patience from a slow-to-respond robot. Even if that means filling awkward moments of silence with small talk, as your robot is thinking, humans need to receive near-immediate input. Toshiyuki Shiwa and colleagues at the ATR laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, set out to find out just how quickly domestic robots should respond to their owners’ requests by asking 38 students to give orders to a robot. The robot was set to respond in from anywhere from zero to 5 seconds. The students’ patience began to run out after 2 seconds, with 1 second being the optimal response time. However, and this is very interesting, the impatient students were okay with a slower response time if the robot filled in the time with “filler” words, such as “well” or “er.” When the this occurred, people did not notice the delay. In other word’s, make the robots more human-like. Uh, yeah, um, like, I agree. The study was presented at Human-Robot Interaction 2008 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
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by “Father of Robotics” Sees Versatile Caregiving Robots
Joseph Engelberger, often called the father of robotics, at 82 is still working to advance robotics. His work has long been in industrial robotics, but he sees robots moving from factories into homes, where they could be caregivers for the elderly and shut-ins. He and his partner Andrew Silverthorne are seeking funding to develop them through PALS Robotics. The acronym PALS stands for Personal Assistance Living System. Silverthorne says, “Nobody wants to be shipped off to nursing homes. The idea is that robots live at home with you for a buck an hour—that’s our pitch. ...They can’t do a lot of things for which you can call a visiting nurse, but they can help around the house a lot. ...They can do a lot of cleaning, they can operate in the kitchen.” He disagrees that robots should be single purpose machines such as robot vacuum cleaners like the Roomba; instead he is developing a versatile two-armed robot that can understand your voice commands and do household chores like unpack groceries, cook, pour drinks, vacuum, etc.
Read MoreLifelike Robots Coming Sooner than you Think
Just how long will it be until you can talk to your home robot just like you would a member of your family and watch it react as if it were human, so much so that you could not even tell if it’s a robot? I don’t mean merely issuing commands to it, but actually “talking” to it. Have a conversation. Ask how “he” or “she” is feeling. And be interested. Not in the lab as a leading edge product, but in your home, and in your neighbor’s home. So what do you think, maybe 50 years? That’s a time frame that gets thrown out quite often by many scientists, researchers and futurists who are supposed to know about these things. How could it be any sooner, after all, after decades of work, we’re just now at the point where robot floor vacs, plastic toy pets and foot tall, metallic humanoids are the state of the art for the consumer. It’s a huge leap to full size, always on, full-sensory, lifelike, complex-thinking robots that for all intents and purposes are “alive,” with the exception of a soul. Of course it will be 50 years—at least—right? Wrong. Expect sooner.
Read MoreSoftbot: A Step Toward Soft-bodied Robots
For robots to become more lifelike, they are going to need to replace their metallic “skin” and hard bodies with a more pliable and soft membrane. There have been various research projects that are currently in the works, and a new promising project is called the Softbot is now underway at Tufts Biomimetic Devices Laboratory. Their goal is to carry out research into biologically-based technologies that use soft materials not only for skin, but for the body as well.
Read MoreHey Good Looking
Despite all the controversy about whether or not we will require home robots to look human or not, technology that literally brings a human face to robots is moving forward at a rapid pace . Nowhere is robotics advancing as quickly as it is in Japan, where exciting projects are underway in their university labs. At one such lab in Tokyo, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic human expressions - happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise and disgust. But it does more than create these expressions on command; it is connected to a database of words clustered by association and responds to various words, reacting to their meanings.
Read MoreYour Future With Robots
While at Barnes and Noble last weekend, I found a fantastic Special Edition on Robotics by Scientific American. The heading of the report is “Your Future With Robots, How Smart Machines Will Change Everything.” It’s an 88-page magazine jam-packed with eleven feature articles. I highly recommend that you get down to your local bookstore and pick it up for $5.95. The issue says “Display until May 2008” but they could run out before then.
Read More2008: Year of the Home Robot
Apparently, great minds do think alike. We’ve been making plans for our 2008 debut of Home Robots for some time now, and right when we’re about ready to go live, none other than ComputerWorld.com crowns the product category of home robots as the number three top personal tech trend for 2008. Seems our timing is perfect.
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