Asimo illustrates why frustration plagues observers of the robotics industry. Honda spent tens of millions to build the Asimo prototypes, but it won’t say anything more about their long-term potential than that one day such robots will be “a useful benefit to the human race.” In other words: tell your great-grandchild to get ready for a robot friend!
But hold on. Over the past few years, robots have infiltrated our ranks, robots that look nothing like the luminescent-eyed androids of science-fiction lore. They can’t emulate the human brain’s boundless flexibility, but they do take advantage of the latest innovations in computing power, sensors and artificial intelligences, and can do one or two things well. Today robots work in homes, hospitals and in dirty, dangerous environments like tunnels under New York City streets. Perhaps most significantly, they populate military bases around the world, where the next generation of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles are currently being battle-tested. In an industry that has risen and collapsed several times since the early ’80s, there is at last optimism that the Age of Robots might finally have arrived. “For the first time, lots of ordinary people are actually using robots,” says Rodney Brooks, chief of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
“Elvis” might very well be the king of the new age. It’s one of 100 HelpMate robotic couriers, made by the San Diego-based Pyxis, for the nation’s hospitals. It weighs 600 pounds, looks like a five-foot-tall cabinet on wheels and toils beneath the University of California, San Francisco, hospital, ferrying blood samples and medicine throughout the building. Once directed to a location, Elvis can chug down the hallway, wirelessly beckon the elevator and easily avoid other people and obstacles in its path.
Elvis is among an increasing number of robots being created to meet the needs of the health-care industry. Today there are five workers for every senior citizen. By 2020, the ratio will decrease to 3 to 1 (and in Japan, 2 to 1). Robotics firms are trying to stem the coming shortage of caregivers with products like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ Wakamaru, due out early next year. It’s a three-foot-tall, yellow-faced robot with beady black eyes, designed to serve as a home caretaker for the elderly. It can talk, hug and send e-mail to the owner’s relatives if something seems wrong. But there will be a whopping $10,000 price tag.
Robots are invading messier territory, too. The torpedo-shaped Wisor is due to begin crawling through New York City’s leaky steam pipes to weld cracks later this year. Wisor finds, cleans and fixes the holes in the pipes, and has five cameras to help it navigate the dangerous twists and turns. It’s made by the same firm, Honeybee Robotics, that’s building tools to help the new Mars Rovers–which launch this spring–grind through Martian rock.
The U.S. military is also pushing the robotics envelope in the wake of its success with the remote-controlled Predator surveillance drone in Afghanistan. In its latest budget, the Army said it plans to spend $1.14 billion between 2004 and 2009 researching unmanned vehicles such as Boeing’s X-45, a tailless, stealthy plane designed to attack –enemy air defenses from 40,000 feet in the sky. In tests this month at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the aircraft took off, opened and closed its bay doors and landed–all by itself. “There were, of course, some very nervous people there watching it,” says Anthony Tether, head of the military’s research arm, DARPA.
All this skirts the really important question: when will robots bring us our beer? Five years ago Carnegie Mellon robotics guru Hans Moravec predicted that multifunction household robots would be here by 2003. “It always takes a little longer than you think, doesn’t it?” he now says. But there have been some successes–particularly in the realm of utility bots that mirror Elvis, the X-45 and Wisor in their single-mindedness. The Roomba, a simple, disc-shaped $200 robot vacuum that moves in an ever-widening spiral, has sold four times more than all the home robots that preceded it, according to its maker, Boston-based iRobot. “No one had crossed the threshold, the magical line that says, ‘This works’,” says CEO Colin Angle, who thinks the device will unleash a flood of specialized home-helpers.
But the Japanese are still trying to shoot the moon with multipurpose robots that can be true companions. Sony, whose successful Aibo toy dog invigorated the home robotics field in 1999, is currently working on a humanoid entertainment robot, SDR-4X, that will sing, dance and allow hobbyists to customize its moves. Sony believes robotics will be bigger than the computer industry in 30 years, and may constitute the conglomerate’s greatest revenue source.
Is that just more robotics hype? Maybe. But it could be proof that the robots are finally among us to stay. Just squint your eyes, lower your expectations and soon you’ll be seeing them everywhere.
