Devangshu Datta: Wrestling with robotics

TECHNO BEAT

Science-fiction fans wallowed in nostalgia when the Hollywood version of Isaac Asimov's I Robot hit the screen this summer.

Of course, it was just a small wallow. The movie (as usual) had little to do with the book, with a bizarre plot featuring Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan as a human partnership fighting robot rebellion.

The book consisted of several short stories connected by the cold, unemotional personality of Dr Susan Calvin, a psychiatrist who sorts out personality and programming disorders in the "positronic brains" of humanoid robots. Asimov also invented the three laws of robotics (which he later expanded with the addition of a fourth, paramount "Zeroth" law).

Under those laws, #0) robots had to protect humanity at all costs; #1) protect individual human beings only when such protection didn't conflict with the zeroth law; #2) obey human beings if their orders didn't conflict with laws zero and one; #3) protect themselves and other robots if protection didn't conflict with laws zero, one and two.

Modern robotics renders these laws irrelevant. Robots have been designed to mimic specific human functions; they have never been designed to possess either "free will" or look human. Robots are constructed for specific purposes.

Androids, as humanoid robots are known, would be prohibitively expensive to construct and perhaps useless. The most ambitious "droid" project on record, the Japanese Atom Project, posits the development of an artificial intelligence program with the mental, emotional and physical capacities of a five-year-old.

It is estimated that it will take at least 30 years of work at $ 450 million a year. Neuroscientists at Tokyo University hope that the research would yield insights into human physiology "" the aim isn't as ambitious as building an inherently useful artefact.

Most cutting-edge robotics is done in Japan, which has highly-automated assembly lines across its famed electronics, automobile and ship-building industries.

But a walking, talking, feeling android remains the ultimate goal of robotics. Each advance in computing speed, battery capacity and camera technology brings it a little nearer.

Modern robots such as the Honda Asimo can walk on two legs on uneven floors or climb stairs. Other robots can handle simple conversations and do repetitive assembly-line tasks with inhuman speed and accuracy.

But despite advances in Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and software, a robot would find it impossible to cross a busy street or drive a car in rush-hour traffic with objects moving unpredictably in all directions.

A normal human being performs a variety of difficult tasks simultaneously. Most robotic researchers have tried to split those tasks up. NASA, for example, sponsors the "Arm-wrestling Grand Challenge" where robots compete against human arm-wrestling champs.

Muscle-group movement is often mimicked by running electric currents through graphite fibre "muscles", causing them to contract and expand as desired. Strength is not an issue here "" the control is what NASA is interested in developing.

The hand has 25 different movements and when we add the complexity of wrist and elbow joints, an arm-wrestling robot requires high-class programming. An ability to mimic these delicate movements would help NASA immensely in its remote-controlled research.

Toyota has funded a project for developing control of the equally complex interaction of facial movements. To this end, it is trying to develop a trumpet-playing robot.

The project's aim is ultimately to develop a bot that sounds as good as Louis Armstrong! Rather difficult because that requires great sound-differentiation as well as lip movements and air-control. Not to mention improvisation on the fly.

For the sound-effects, Toyota could end up going to Kyoto University, which is reported to have the best auditory bot around. The Kyoto "ears" are good enough to be used by medical schools and the software can manage to unravel a three-way simultaneous conversation.

Combined to sophisticated language understanding via voice-recognition software, this could result in a robot that holds its own at cocktail parties. There are also attempts on to create bots with noses that can detect specific odours "" this has obvious security and safety applications.