30 June 2004

Robots are here

By Jim Pinto

Rodney A. Brooks is director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also chairman and chief technical officer of iRobot Corp. His lifelong work in robotics and many prescient articles and books are making him the preeminent guru in this fascinating technology.

We've heard for a long time that robots were coming. Now they're actually arriving. There are robot toys everywhere, robotics graduate programs in many universities, and house-cleaning robots. U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are using reconnaissance robots.

Rodney Brooks says robots today are where computers were in 1978. It took another fifteen years before computers truly became pervasive in our lives. About fifteen years from now, Brooks says, robots will be as pervasive as e-mail and the Internet are now.

One of the keys is navigation improvement. Today, lawn-mowing, house-cleaning, and military reconnaissance robots do their specialized tasks almost as a side effect of their navigation programming. Similarly, robotic versions of large farming equipment, golf carts, and specially built supply mules for the military are primarily navigation machines.

Robots today are still not very good at recognizing generic objects or readily manipulating them. But accelerating intelligence is starting to solve those problems. Computer vision is still lagging (far behind the average two-year-old), but it is catching up fast. Experimental robots are already tracking motion and recognizing faces. New sensors enabled by microelectromechanical systems and nanotechnologies are tackling robot vision and dexterity. Military funding helps.

Rodney Brooks insists that robots with the vision capabilities of a two-year-old and the manipulation capabilities of a six-year-old will be disruptive to our way of life. They will reorder world labor markets and change immigration patterns and the massive shift of labor from developed to developing countries.

Perhaps the most important impact, Brooks says, will come from care-giving robots that will assist the elderly when the baby boomers' bubble begins to burst.

Related links:

• MIT Tech Review – Rodney Brooks: The Robots Are Here
• Forbes – Five Robots That Will Change Your Life
• Jim Pinto – Robotics technology trends
• Rodney Brooks' book: Flesh and Machines – How Robots Will Change Us

Behind the byline

Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and founder of San Diego–based Action Instruments. You can e-mail him at jim@jimpinto.com or view his writings at www.JimPinto.com. Read excerpts from his book, Automation Unplugged, at www.jimpinto.com/writings/unplugged.html.