
It's been an interesting week for evolution of species. First, some remarkable
hominid remains have been found in South Africa, which are just under two million years old and which appear to be those of early human ancestors.
Then, at the opposite end of the evolutionary scale, there are a couple of notable developments in the world of robotics.
When I was researching the Sorber and Fox novels, I visited MIT and the University of Osaka on three trips between 2003 and 2007. At that stage, researchers at MIT were tackling the problem of how to get robots to recognise basic objects and then understand what to do with them - object recognition and perception - so it's great to see that just a few years later scientists at another institution - the University of Berkeley - have managed to create a robot which can fold towels. A fuller explanation and some quite beautiful video is available here. Though it may seem like a small step, this really is important in the field of perception and in terms of getting robots to perform useful tasks in our homes.
And over in Osaka, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro has been refining his androids, with the latest version being the Geminoid F - check the video here. This new android is even more lifelike in its appearance and behaviours, having greater flexibility and being able to mimic a wider range of facial expressions.
At the moment, all the androids are static in the sense that they are either seated or standing in one position while performing their movements. An important development with the new Geminoid is that the previous large-scale air compressors required to power the robot are now much smaller, with parts of the system actually built into the android's body.
Professor Ishiguro explained to me in 2007 that they could enable their androids to walk without too much difficulty, so perhaps the next stage for the geminoids will be some measure of mobility and independence from bulky power supplies?
So evolution is still unfolding before our eyes, even though with the robots the results may not be fully realised for another 30 or 50 years.