uncanny valley

Robot Evolution

 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.

The Bells of Nagasaki

'Almighty God, Father of grace, we pray you, let your grace come down upon the men who will fly in this night. Guard and protect those of us who will venture forth into the darkness of your heaven. Lead them on your wings. Guard their bodies and their souls and lead them back to us. Give us all courage and strength for the hours that lie before us, and reward us according to the hardships they will bring. But above all, my Father, give your world peace. Let us go our way trusting in you and secure in the knowledge that you are near to us now and for all eternity. Amen.'

Taken from The Bells of Nagasaki by Takashi Nagai, this is the prayer said by a US military chaplain to the crews of the Enola Gay and Bock's Car before they dropped the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. 

Irony, hypocrisy. Where to begin?

Concorde, Cold War Modern & Japan Car

Three exhibitions this year have proved quite revealing in what they have to say about global attitudes towards the future. Most recently, I caught the Concorde exhibit at Manchester Airport. The Great Bird is parked in a hangar, elegant and poised. All dressed up but with nowhere to go. Rather than criss-crossing the world as it is still capable of doing, the plane is grounded by that good ol' one-two punch - bad economics and lack of imagination. Concorde's future is lost, for now at least.

A quite different experience with the brilliant Cold War Modern show at the V&A in London at the turn of the year. That show looked at the period from 1945-70 from a design perspective, detailing some amazing products and structures - from the mundane to the awe-inspiring - as well as a whole host of artefacts that never came to be. Cyborg technology, immense Soviet architecture, Buckminster Fuller's domed cities and space stations all shone briefly on the drawing board and then came to nothing. It was a glimpse into other worlds - one that I grew up in, and one that might have been, both shaped by the splitting of the atom.

Japan Car at London's Science Musuem was a look at more likely futures - one where cars are either inspired by the kei car concept or are capable of zero emissions. It featured the Honda FCX Clarity, the unbelievably kawaii Toyota IQ and some interesting GPS-data-as-art from Tokyo.

Past trips to the US revealed that Cog and Kismet, two innovative social robot projects from MIT in the 90s and early 2000s, are already exhibited at the MIT Museum just outside Boston. At times it seems as if our future utopias are really destined to be just future museum exhibits. Relics of eras that falter once past the concept stage. One can easily imagine that we might find ourselves wandering through exhibits in 20 or 30 years, marvelling at Asimo or the Repliee androids, contemplating another world that might have been.

Concorde

Toyota iQ

Toyota iReal

HRP4C Gynoid Robot

There was startling footage this week of the HRP4C Robot Girl on show in Tokyo. One of the applications the robot is designed for is to act as a model - a moving mannequin - and it will take part in a Tokyo fashion show next week. You can see from the footage that there are still challenges ahead for the designers - Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. The inert hands, the 'old woman' walk, the slow response times for facial expressions. However, the designers say this version is just the first step.

It's interesting that this robot is being considered for work in the fashion world. A few years ago, an American university team put out a call for an artist to help them design the head of a humanoid robot. I don't know what became of the project, but it strikes me that it's now time for artists and designers to work with roboticists as we move closer and closer to robots / androids that will be present in our daily lives. The famous Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama worked on the design of the first generation of the Sony Aibo and so successful was the result that the Aibo is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

This HRP4C is in part a futuristic body with the head of a rather anodyne Japanese girl. Its hands don't move but are detailed with pink nail polish. In appearance, it is neither one thing nor another. There seems to be a tendency for androids - such as Repliee and Aiko - to look and dress quite conservatively and as a result they resemble awkward Sunday school teachers. 

We live in a post iPod world now where technology and design are inseparable - if these human-like creations are to feel comfortable, familiar and desireable to us, the makers need to reflect contemporary styles in both their design and appearance. Otherwise, the view that these (mainly) female humanoids are mere curiosities or demure surrogates for the inadequate will persist.

The New Laws of Robotics

About five years ago, Japanese roboticists proposed the Atom project - a thirty-year plan to develop a learning humanoid robot with intelligence and sentience equivalent to that of a five-year old child (for background see this link). The proposal was compared in scale to the USA's Apollo project in the 1960s and it was envisioned that Atom would stimulate the economy and provide multiple spin-off developments in new technologies, just as the space programme had done.

At this stage, Atom remains just a proposal - although the Japanese government does fund many smaller-scale robot projects - but what if one day it does get approved? What do we want our robots to do? What do we want them to be? Much has happened since Isaac Asimov proposed his legendary three laws and as robotics constantly evolves, perhaps it's time to look anew at the issue of robot ethics. We need to look at what qualifies as intelligence, how we determine emotion and whether we want to give robots the ability to kill human beings, whether they will need protection from our worst excesses.

A discussion like this can't help but reference the work of Isaac Asimov (as well as Lyuben Dilov and Nikola Kesarovski), so with that in mind what guidelines are needed for the next generation of robots - and the humans that make them?

1: A robot should represent the best in human nature - exemplifying compassion, self-sacrifice and empathy through roles as carers, therapists, explorers, co-workers, companions, teachers or entertainers.

2: A robot must protect human and animal life.

3: A robot must protect its own life, unless laws one and two require otherwise.

4: A robot need not obey instructions given by a human being if such instructions conflict with laws one, two or three.

5: A robot must be committed to its designated tasks, unless this commitment conflicts with laws one, two or three.

6: A robot may not be subject to abuse or degradation by human beings.

7: Sentient robots and androids have the right to recognition and protection as individuals under national and international laws.

8: If a robot has human form, it must know it is a robot and declare its status when asked.

...Discuss.

Repliee R1

The Repliee R1 has made a rare appearance in the news, albeit with a couple of factual errors in this Daily Telegraph report. I'd be surprised if the Osaka University team are claiming it's the most realistic android created so far - that honour surely goes to their later androids such as the Repliee Q2 and some of the Actroids.

I met R1's creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro, last year and he talked about how the robot was modelled in 2001 on his then five-year old daughter, describing how she was afraid of the R1 and wouldn't set foot in the lab. Things have moved on for the little girl and she now has an android dad, the Geminoid, which is a robotic copy of her father. I saw footage of her playing, very tentatively, with the Geminoid, slowly gaining confidence as she tugged at the robot in search of a reaction.

Killer Robot Terror!

More 1950s style headlines, this week courtesy of that bastion of neutrality Fox News, in an article based upon a presentation from Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield. He warns that western robotics expertise could be appropriated by terrorists and used against civilians:

'Current robots are dumb machines with very limited sensing capability. What this means is that it is not possible to guarantee discrimination between combatants and innocents or a proportional use of force as required by the current Laws of War. It seems clear that there is an urgent need for the international community to assess the risks of these new weapons now rather than after they have crept their way into common use.'

The full press release is here. It's good to see the issue being raised because there is always the mindset of 'it's ok for us to use these weapons, but not ok for our enemies to use them'. (In case anyone has been comatose for the last five years, the US/UK alliance is currently 'punishing the perpetrators of 9-11 / removing WMDs / laying the foundations for Democracy & Freedom ™' in two sovereign nations, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people there don't like it).

I try to take a philospophical approach to the negative aspects of robotics technology - the world is more shades of grey than black and white. Much of the work at MIT's robotics lab was funded by the US military at the time of my visits in 2003 and 2005. Cog, one of the first platforms for social robotics, might not have existed without Pentagon funding. iRobot, as well as developing the Roomba vacuum cleaner range, also make the PackBot for the US military. But it is a relatively short step from a reconnaissance robot like the PackBot to an armed reconnaissance robot like the South Korean robot sentry. I would guess that in the US, it is perhaps a case of researchers feeling that they have to deal with the devil in order to get serious funding for robotics research. A quite different situation exists in Japan. Hiroshi Ishiguro was passionate in his belief that robots should be developed in order to help people, not to hurt or destroy them. I tend to agree - robot weapons should not be made, because if we do make them they will proliferate in exactly the same way as all other weapons have done.

We have a choice about the type of robots that we make, it isn't inevitable that the military dictate the terms of development, setting in motion a tumour-like spread of destructive technology. Robots and androids can and should reflect the best of human nature, not the worst of it.

 

(originally published 29th Feb 2008)

 

Multifuncional said...

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(18th Mar 2008)

 

Repliee Article

There is now a full length article detailing my meeting with Hiroshi Ishiguro (creator of the Repliee androids) available on my main site. Professor Ishiguro speaks at length about his work and gives some insights into why robots are so popular in Japan, as well as a few hints on what he will be doing next. Follow this link

for the full story.

(originally published 20th Feb 2008)

On Japan

Bullet trains and androids, geisha and sumo, J-pop and pachinko parlours. Subtle etiquette amid bold layers of architecture, cuteness now softens years of ritual and austerity.

It's a little like home, but with a twist. That makes me smile.

Japan is forever on the precipice – the earth could tremble at any moment. In 1945, the country slipped off the edge and it's as if the humility lingers. It is a polar opposite to the UK and USA - here there are manners, slenderness, a government that funds infrastructure not war. The divine is in the detail - Braille signs embedded into handrails on the subway. Bicycles left unlocked in parking racks. Technology that helps make life a little easier.

Same globe, different planet.

(originally published 1st Oct 2007)

Repliee Q2: A Curious Obsession

2002’s Machine Nation, described an encounter between Alex Sorber and the android Kim Fox, in a Boston robotics lab in the year 2027:

‘A kind of pregnant energy, like the calm before the storm, inhabited the space. They all said they could definitely feel a presence. And they’re right, he thought, there was a presence. Existing but not living. Being but not thinking. Completely still, frozen in space and time, a flower blossoming from a bed of junk metal. She was a vision to behold.’

Not for one moment did I imagine that in September 2007, I would have my own similar experience with the android Repliee Q2 at the University of Osaka’s Intelligent Robotics Laboratory....

...The first time I saw her, I passed her by, a fleeting glance of a figure behind a curtained off area of a lab. As if she were no more unusual than a student at her desk. But something, stillness perhaps, marked her as being out of the ordinary.

Later, we had a more formal introduction – a chance for a few photographs and more careful study. Pale pink shirt, black pants, shoulder-length auburn hair. Her appearance quite demure. Silicone skin, detailed with eyebrows and lashes, her arms somewhat limp at her sides. The skin looks ‘right’ on her face, a little less so at her neck and fingers. She was blind and deaf when I met her – an array of out-of-body cameras, microphones and positional sensors were all turned off. But when motion came through electricity, computers and hydraulic pumps, she moved and spoke like any other person. There seemed nothing unusual about her at all.

Then, she was powered down and for a few minutes, we were left alone. Me and this presence. I stared at her, the way I would never stare at a flesh and blood person. I waited for her to move again, but she did nothing. Embodiment made her presence palpable, even though we did not touch. In this off-state, she has animation in potential only; but she is not dead. Instead, she is in a third state, life still present in the machines that power her, ready when the switch is flicked to bring her back into motion. Her maker, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, talks of the Japanese seeing the soul in all things, animate and inanimate. Perhaps then, this off-state is her sleep, tranquil moments of recuperation between periods of activity and sensation. Her dreams made on a quiet campus in 21st century Japan.

For now, Repliee is complete. She cannot yet walk, but she is a step on an evolutionary path. She and her kind will become the perfect expression of Japan as it aspires to be. Helpful and loyal, efficient and unthreatening. Technology that is warm and soft to the touch. As Japanese as Hello Kitty and the Osaka subway system. The future is here, and it wants to hold us and teach us and make our lives better.

(originally published 24th Sep 2007)