Noel Sharkey is professor of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics at Sheffield University, and was chief judge of the ace TV series, Robot Wars. And now Sharkey has things to say about the future of robots.
As Sharkey observes, “Nano-technology has reduced sensors and electronics to such a small scale that you can pack much more on to a robot now”. Simply put, the more computing power that’s available, the closer we come to the autonomous and intelligent robots of our sci-fi dreams. Droids like C3PO and R2D2 may finally be coming true.
Military robots (more than 6000 of them in Iraq alone) and industrial robots (more than 1.2 million around the world) get the headlines, but it’s servitor robots that will change our daily lives, and the way ahead is being led by the Japanese.
Japan is an aging society, and it is not a culture that has high numbers of immigrants of any sort, let alone in the caring professions. So Japan is concentrating on developing caring, sharing, helping robots, ones that will interact with people - particularly older ones - to make their lives easier.
Prototypes like the Honda Asimo (see pictures) have already proved they can be useful in a limited way. With development, little Asimo could be the forebear of a new race of robot servitors. Whether they’ll ever turn out to be mad and bad (Amazing cover) is anyone’s guess - let’s hope not!
You can read about Asimo and other Honda robots here.
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