Them, robots
by Prakash Chandra
It's official now: this planet is about to be invaded by robots. The UN's annual World Robotics Survey says the use of robots to do domestic work will surge seven-fold by 2007. That means over four million robots doing chores that have been the exclusive preserve of human beings: from mowing lawns and cleaning floors to babysitting and pulling guard duty. They may only be automated vacuum-cleaners that drive this domestic helper boom, but they'll boost orders for industrial robots and ‘leisure' robots like Sony's all-dancing, voice-recognising, dog-like Aibo. High-end robots not only play football and jig (watch QRIO, Sony's bipedal entertainment robot, showing off in Delhi this week), but are increasingly used for specialised and sometimes dangerous jobs in scientific and medical research, defence and surveillance. ‘Service robots' carry out tasks like handling toxic waste, ferrying medicine around hospitals and assisting surgeons with the same elan as they milk cows or clear mines.
Ever since Karel Capek coined the word ‘robot' from a Czech word for ‘work', these creations have evolved faster than you can say Capek. Sci-fi helped them mutate into androids and cyborgs, and today technology can virtually translate them into bionic humans ― an entity whose organic and mechanical parts are melded completely. For years, researchers tinkered away on prototype gizmos to make humanoid robots ‘smarter' by developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Take the original ‘iron man' the Americans developed in 1972: it stood over six feet, weighed a hefty 100 kilos, and used its computer brains to wander through the corridors of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics laboratory in Baltimore, surprising the unwary. Actually robots only need the object recognition of a two-year-old, and the dexterity of a six-year-old, to substitute humans in everything from manufacturing to healthcare for the elderly. But this is easier said. Currently, the best robots have neither the pliant hands nor the sensors for touch, moisture and temperatures to handle objects half as well as, say, a dog does with his teeth and paws. They don't have human vision capabilities either to compensate for shadows or recognise facial changes that happen over time.
Organising AI along biological lines got a leg-up in 2000 when scientists created a bionic chip that mixes human cells with layers of silicon to incorporate a live biological cell in the electrical circuit. Fancy having a man-machine interface where each neuron and integrated circuit hums with synchronised electrical fidelity. Robots could then be provided with sexual identities, personalities and real feelings. Israeli scientists have designed robots that embody man-like muscles and can see, talk and even feel. And the machine that can create another machine has been invented using GOLEM (genetically organised life-like electro-mechanics), suggesting a possible future where robots outnumber man and rule the world.
Remember, robots evolve millions of times faster as man combines separate improvements directly, while nature has to depend on fortuitous events of recombination to drive evolution. Your cortex may accommodate a billion bits of permanently retrievable information; but computers transfer this from one magnetic memory to another in less than a minute. Still, a child tossing up a ball and catching it is too intricate a feat for the advanced robots to perform. "At least for now." Er... that was the computer!