Tag Archives: terminator

#431371 Amazon Is Quietly Building the Robots of ...

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Android

Science fiction is the siren song of hard science. How many innocent young students have been lured into complex, abstract science, technology, engineering, or mathematics because of a reckless and irresponsible exposure to Arthur C. Clarke at a tender age? Yet Arthur C. Clarke has a very famous quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
It’s the prospect of making that… ahem… magic leap that entices so many people into STEM in the first place. A magic leap that would change the world. How about, for example, having humanoid robots? They could match us in dexterity and speed, perceive the world around them as we do, and be programmed to do, well, more or less anything we can do.
Such a technology would change the world forever.
But how will it arrive? While true sci-fi robots won’t get here right away—the pieces are coming together, and the company best developing them at the moment is Amazon. Where others have struggled to succeed, Amazon has been quietly progressing. Notably, Amazon has more than just a dream, it has the most practical of reasons driving it into robotics.
This practicality matters. Technological development rarely proceeds by magic; it’s a process filled with twists, turns, dead-ends, and financial constraints. New technologies often have to answer questions like “What is this good for, are you being realistic?” A good strategy, then, can be to build something more limited than your initial ambition, but useful for a niche market. That way, you can produce a prototype, have a reasonable business plan, and turn a profit within a decade. You might call these “stepping stone” applications that allow for new technologies to be developed in an economically viable way.
You need something you can sell to someone, soon: that’s how you get investment in your idea. It’s this model that iRobot, developers of the Roomba, used: migrating from military prototypes to robotic vacuum cleaners to become the “boring, successful robot company.” Compare this to Willow Garage, a genius factory if ever there was one: they clearly had ambitions towards a general-purpose, multi-functional robot. They built an impressive device—PR2—and programmed the operating system, ROS, that is still the industry and academic standard to this day.
But since they were unable to sell their robot for much less than $250,000, it was never likely to be a profitable business. This is why Willow Garage is no more, and many workers at the company went into telepresence robotics. Telepresence is essentially videoconferencing with a fancy robot attached to move the camera around. It uses some of the same software (for example, navigation and mapping) without requiring you to solve difficult problems of full autonomy for the robot, or manipulating its environment. It’s certainly one of the stepping-stone areas that various companies are investigating.
Another approach is to go to the people with very high research budgets: the military.
This was the Boston Dynamics approach, and their incredible achievements in bipedal locomotion saw them getting snapped up by Google. There was a great deal of excitement and speculation about Google’s “nightmare factory” whenever a new slick video of a futuristic militarized robot surfaced. But Google broadly backed away from Replicant, their robotics program, and Boston Dynamics was sold. This was partly due to PR concerns over the Terminator-esque designs, but partly because they didn’t see the robotics division turning a profit. They hadn’t found their stepping stones.
This is where Amazon comes in. Why Amazon? First off, they just announced that their profits are up by 30 percent, and yet the company is well-known for their constantly-moving Day One philosophy where a great deal of the profits are reinvested back into the business. But lots of companies have ambition.
One thing Amazon has that few other corporations have, as well as big financial resources, is viable stepping stones for developing the technologies needed for this sort of robotics to become a reality. They already employ 100,000 robots: these are of the “pragmatic, boring, useful” kind that we’ve profiled, which move around the shelves in warehouses. These robots are allowing Amazon to develop localization and mapping software for robots that can autonomously navigate in the simple warehouse environment.
But their ambitions don’t end there. The Amazon Robotics Challenge is a multi-million dollar competition, open to university teams, to produce a robot that can pick and package items in warehouses. The problem of grasping and manipulating a range of objects is not a solved one in robotics, so this work is still done by humans—yet it’s absolutely fundamental for any sci-fi dream robot.
Google, for example, attempted to solve this problem by hooking up 14 robot hands to machine learning algorithms and having them grasp thousands of objects. Although results were promising, the 10 to 20 percent failure rate for grasps is too high for warehouse use. This is a perfect stepping stone for Amazon; should they crack the problem, they will likely save millions in logistics.
Another area where humanoid robotics—especially bipedal locomotion, or walking, has been seriously suggested—is in the last mile delivery problem. Amazon has shown willingness to be creative in this department with their notorious drone delivery service. In other words, it’s all very well to have your self-driving car or van deliver packages to people’s doors, but who puts the package on the doorstep? It’s difficult for wheeled robots to navigate the full range of built environments that exist. That’s why bipedal robots like CASSIE, developed by Oregon State, may one day be used to deliver parcels.
Again: no one more than Amazon stands to profit from cracking this technology. The line from robotics research to profit is very clear.
So, perhaps one day Amazon will have robots that can move around and manipulate their environments. But they’re also working on intelligence that will guide those robots and make them truly useful for a variety of tasks. Amazon has an AI, or at least the framework for an AI: it’s called Alexa, and it’s in tens of millions of homes. The Alexa Prize, another multi-million-dollar competition, is attempting to make Alexa more social.
To develop a conversational AI, at least using the current methods of machine learning, you need data on tens of millions of conversations. You need to understand how people will try to interact with the AI. Amazon has access to this in Alexa, and they’re using it. As owners of the leading voice-activated personal assistant, they have an ecosystem of developers creating apps for Alexa. It will be integrated with the smart home and the Internet of Things. It is a very marketable product, a stepping stone for robot intelligence.
What’s more, the company can benefit from its huge sales infrastructure. For Amazon, having an AI in your home is ideal, because it can persuade you to buy more products through its website. Unlike companies like Google, Amazon has an easy way to make a direct profit from IoT devices, which could fuel funding.
For a humanoid robot to be truly useful, though, it will need vision and intelligence. It will have to understand and interpret its environment, and react accordingly. The way humans learn about our environment is by getting out and seeing it. This is something that, for example, an Alexa coupled to smart glasses would be very capable of doing. There are rumors that Alexa’s AI will soon be used in security cameras, which is an ideal stepping stone task to train an AI to process images from its environment, truly perceiving the world and any threats it might contain.
It’s a slight exaggeration to say that Amazon is in the process of building a secret robot army. The gulf between our sci-fi vision of robots that can intelligently serve us, rather than mindlessly assemble cars, is still vast. But in quietly assembling many of the technologies needed for intelligent, multi-purpose robotics—and with the unique stepping stones they have along the way—Amazon might just be poised to leap that gulf. As if by magic.
Image Credit: Denis Starostin / Shutterstock.com Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#431315 Better Than Smart Speakers? Japan Is ...

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Android

While American internet giants are developing speakers, Japanese companies are working on robots and holograms. They all share a common goal: to create the future platform for the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart homes.
Names like Bocco, EMIEW3, Xperia Assistant, and Gatebox may not ring a bell to most outside of Japan, but Sony, Hitachi, Sharp, and Softbank most certainly do. The companies, along with Japanese start-ups, have developed robots, robot concepts, and even holograms like the ones hiding behind the short list of names.
While there are distinct differences between the various systems, they share the potential to act as a remote control for IoT devices and smart homes. It is a very different direction than that taken by companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple, who have so far focused on building IoT speaker systems.
Bocco robot. Image Credit: Yukai Engineering
“Technology companies are pursuing the platform—or smartphone if you will—for IoT. My impression is that Japanese companies—and Japanese consumers—prefer that such a platform should not just be an object, but a companion,” says Kosuke Tatsumi, designer at Yukai Engineering, a startup that has developed the Bocco robot system.
At Hitachi, a spokesperson said that the company’s human symbiotic service robot, EMIEW3, robot is currently in the field, doing proof-of-value tests at customer sites to investigate needs and potential solutions. This could include working as an interactive control system for the Internet of Things:
“EMIEW3 is able to communicate with humans, thus receive instructions, and as it is connected to a robotics IT platform, it is very much capable of interacting with IoT-based systems,” the spokesperson said.
The power of speech is getting feet
Gartner analysis predicts that there will be 8.4 billion internet-connected devices—collectively making up the Internet of Things—by the end of 2017. 5.2 billion of those devices are in the consumer category. By the end of 2020, the number of IoT devices will rise to 12.8 billion—and that is just in the consumer category.
As a child of the 80s, I can vividly remember how fun it was to have separate remote controls for TV, video, and stereo. I can imagine a situation where my internet-connected refrigerator and ditto thermostat, television, and toaster try to work out who I’m talking to and what I want them to do.
Consensus seems to be that speech will be the way to interact with many/most IoT devices. The same goes for a form of virtual assistant functioning as the IoT platform—or remote control. Almost everything else is still an open ballgame, despite an early surge for speaker-based systems, like those from Amazon, Google, and Apple.
Why robots could rule
Famous android creator and robot scientist Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro sees the interaction between humans and the AI embedded in speakers or robots as central to both approaches. From there, the approaches differ greatly.
Image Credit: Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories
“It is about more than the difference of form. Speaking to an Amazon Echo is not a natural kind of interaction for humans. That is part of what we in Japan are creating in many human-like robot systems,” he says. “The human brain is constructed to recognize and interact with humans. This is part of why it makes sense to focus on developing the body for the AI mind as well as the AI mind itself. In a way, you can describe it as the difference between developing an assistant, which could be said to be what many American companies are currently doing, and a companion, which is more the focus here in Japan.”
Another advantage is that robots are more kawaii—a multifaceted Japanese word that can be translated as “cute”—than speakers are. This makes it easy for people to relate to them and forgive them.
“People are more willing to forgive children when they make mistakes, and the same is true with a robot like Bocco, which is designed to look kawaii and childlike,” Kosuke Tatsumi explains.
Japanese robots and holograms with IoT-control capabilities
So, what exactly do these robot and hologram companions look like, what can they do, and who’s making them? Here are seven examples of Japanese companies working to go a step beyond smart speakers with personable robots and holograms.
1. In 2016 Sony’s mobile division demonstrated the Xperia Agent concept robot that recognizes individual users, is voice controlled, and can do things like control your television and receive calls from services like Skype.

2. Sharp launched their Home Assistant at CES 2016. A robot-like, voice-controlled assistant that can to control, among other things, air conditioning units, and televisions. Sharp has also launched a robotic phone called RoBoHon.
3. Gatebox has created a holographic virtual assistant. Evil tongues will say that it is primarily the expression of an otaku (Japanese for nerd) dream of living with a manga heroine. Gatebox is, however, able to control things like lights, TVs, and other systems through API integration. It also provides its owner with weather-related advice like “remember your umbrella, it looks like it will rain later.” Gatebox can be controlled by voice, gesture, or via an app.
4. Hitachi’s EMIEW3 robot is designed to assist people in businesses and public spaces. It is connected to a robot IT-platform via the cloud that acts as a “remote brain.” Hitachi is currently investigating the business use cases for EMIEW3. This could include the role of controlling platform for IoT devices.

5. Softbank’s Pepper robot has been used as a platform to control use of medical IoT devices such as smart thermometers by Avatarion. The company has also developed various in-house systems that enable Pepper to control IoT-devices like a coffee machine. A user simply asks Pepper to brew a cup of coffee, and it starts the coffee machine for you.
6. Yukai Engineering’s Bocco registers when a person (e.g., young child) comes home and acts as a communication center between that person and other members of the household (e.g., parent still at work). The company is working on integrating voice recognition, voice control, and having Bocco control things like the lights and other connected IoT devices.
7. Last year Toyota launched the Kirobo Mini, a companion robot which aims to, among other things, help its owner by suggesting “places to visit, routes for travel, and music to listen to” during the drive.

Today, Japan. Tomorrow…?
One of the key questions is whether this emerging phenomenon is a purely Japanese thing. If the country’s love of robots makes it fundamentally different. Japan is, after all, a country where new units of Softbank’s Pepper robot routinely sell out in minutes and the RoBoHon robot-phone has its own cafe nights in Tokyo.
It is a country where TV introduces you to friendly, helpful robots like Doraemon and Astro Boy. I, on the other hand, first met robots in the shape of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and struggled to work out why robots seemed intent on permanently borrowing things like clothes and motorcycles, not to mention why they hated people called Sarah.
However, research suggests that a big part of the reason why Japanese seem to like robots is a combination of exposure and positive experiences that leads to greater acceptance of them. As robots spread to more and more industries—and into our homes—our acceptance of them will grow.
The argument is also backed by a project by Avatarion, which used Softbank’s Nao-robot as a classroom representative for children who were in the hospital.
“What we found was that the other children quickly adapted to interacting with the robot and treating it as the physical representation of the child who was in hospital. They accepted it very quickly,” Thierry Perronnet, General Manager of Avatarion, explains.
His company has also developed solutions where Softbank’s Pepper robot is used as an in-home nurse and controls various medical IoT devices.
If robots end up becoming our preferred method for controlling IoT devices, it is by no means certain that said robots will be coming from Japan.
“I think that the goal for both Japanese and American companies—including the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple—is to create human-like interaction. For this to happen, technology needs to evolve and adapt to us and how we are used to interacting with others, in other words, have a more human form. Humans’ speed of evolution cannot keep up with technology’s, so it must be the technology that changes,” Dr. Ishiguro says.
Image Credit: Sony Mobile Communications Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#431199 You just can’t keep a good robot ...

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Android

This Humanoid Robot immediately gets right up when it falls over. It is part of its so-called “Robotic Fall Protection System” but – to me – just looks a little bit scary! Anyone say “Terminator”?

Posted in Human Robots

#428838 Terminator and SKYNET are realities ...

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Android

Russian humanoid robot F.E.D.O.R. (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) is already here and – apart from destroying mankind and taking over the world – it can shake your hand and save you from the rubble (if it chooses), and apparently … Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots