Hardly a week goes by without a report announcing the end of work as we know it. In 2013, Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne were the first to capture this anxiety in a paper titled: “The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?”.
Robots used to be restricted to heavy lifting or fine detail work in factories. Now Boston Dynamics’ nimble four-legged robot, Spot, is available for companies to lease to carry out various real-world jobs, a sign of just how common interactions between humans and machines have become in recent years.
The latest industrial robots look like petting zoo versions of the big machines found in many modern factories – small, cute and you can play with them. But don’t be deceived by their cuddly appearance. They have the potential to change the way humans work with machines and disrupt the existing market for industrial robots.
Science fiction is brimming with visions of the future and the many wondrous things the human race can achieve. But it is full of warnings too – and we should be careful to take heed of some of the big messages that are more relevant now than they ever were before.
Researchers have designed a “Multimodal Turing Test” to judge a machine’s appearance, movement, voice and what we call embodied artificial intelligence (EAI). This is a measure of how well artificial intelligence is integrated with a robotic body in order to expresses a personality.
A sustainable space program requires reliable, fully autonomous robotic systems both for maintaining the existing space infrastructures and for building new ones beyond low Earth orbits. Autonomy is particularly essential to near-future space robotic systems as they must operate in harsh and partially understood environments.
During the course of a day, robots might be expected to do everything from making a cup of tea to changing the bedding while holding a conversation. These are all challenging tasks that are more challenging when attempted together. No two homes will be the same, which will mean robots will have to learn fast and adapt to their environment. As anyone sharing a home will appreciate, the objects you need won’t always be found in the same place – robots will need to think on their feet to find them.
In one San Francisco hospital and other places, delivery robots – about the size of a mini-fridge – zip through the hallways delivering pills, bringing lunch to patients and ferrying specimens and medical equipment to different labs
Your vacuum cleaner that you leave to do its job while you are away is a robot. It senses the world around it and makes driving decisions as it sucks and sweeps.
But your washing machine is not a robot. You tell it how to wash when you select the cycle and it gets on with it. There are grey areas and the definition is debated, but let’s leave it there.
Humans will always make the final decision on whether armed robots can shoot, according to a statement by the US Department of…