Google can soon peek under dresses with mapping robots.

And then everybody else could take the tour too


Google has a street trike which a person rides as the newest way to make maps.[1]  It allows the company to map even smaller and closer spaces than a full car could manage.  As a matter of efficiency, the principle is to shrink down the apparatus so more places can be mapped.  Clearly this principle is extensible until you have the smallest of robots scurrying around the nooks and crannies of every publicly accessible place. In principle, then, one could take the view of a mouse or a fly (eventually) and cruse around at Google's "street view" and see things from that perspective.  No doubt Google can already do this, but to explicity advertise such abilities would be too shocking for the public.  (But already used for intelligence agencies, of course.) Privacy concerns are already a touchy issue in Europe, and would be so here in the U.S. were it not for this country's general ignorance about the implications of its own Science.

O.

REFERENCES

[image] "Pesky fly or Peeing Tom" The Latest and Greatest Technology (Accessed 8/20/11)

[1] "Google Street View trikes up close" TechCrunch (Accessed 8/20/11)

Mr. Marshal Brain on Customer Service Robots.

Marshal Brain makes some fascinating observations about how robots will change the economy.[1] I was especially interested in his case scenario of the McDonald's robot service worker. Since a McDonald's robot (attractive and humanoid in appearance) will remember every interaction with you, as the customer; along with what you ordered, what you talked about on your last visit, etc., it will present a very emotionally impacting experience. But what's more strange, if you go to another McDonald's in another state, that robot there will have all the same information as well. So you as the customer will have the very surreal experience of every McDonald's robot treating you like you're their best friend, most valued customer (of the moment) -- somewhat like Starbucks employees try to fake, but which the robots might really believe, if they have beliefs, by nature of their programming.

REFERENCES

[image] Raina's Thoughtful Thoughts blogsite Feb. 19, 2008 (Accessed Aug. 22, 2009)

[1] "Marshall Brain speculates on how robots will change the economy and replace human workers" Singularity Summit 2008.

[Video Link] Robots and tactical warfare

A few pictures up front, but then some very prescient views of tactical warfare scenarios using robots. I especially liked the gun-toting stair climber, which is certainly a manufacturable item should someone so wish. (You can click the video and get to the original YouTube for full screen.)

O.

Robot Emotive Expression (MDS project at MIT)

The Mobile Dexterous Social Robot (MDS) project out of MIT has developed the above video showing its latest model. I have seen earlier research[1] on robotic facial mechanisms, and this project is an extension of that research. Note that although we clearly know this is an artifact, it automatically plays on our lower level facial processing abilities for its uncanny effect. Part of its allure is that it changes "expressions" at a human-like pace too. Thus, our brains are tricked into imparting emotive content to the basic movement of the parts of the robot's "face".[2]

REFERENCES:

1. "The speaking robot @ MIT" YouTube Dec. 6, 2006. (Accessed Oct. 4, 2008) - This video is interesting because of the level of emotion and communication which is automatically imparted upon the (more primitive, but related) robot by museum visitors.


2. "Official MDS Robot Video - First Test of Expressive Ability" YouTube April 15, 2008. (Accessed Oct. 4, 2008) -- Another, but more corporate-like video showing similar abilities of the MDS robot.


O.

Robot hand development

Wired magazine has been running a special on robotic hand developments.[1] The video above is one component of the Wired story, but I think it is the most revealing. Such developments strike me as not only advantageous for paraplegics, but for robotics generally. The feedback, grip, and range of motion of such robotic hand-arm combinations could just as well work for space exploration vehicles. The interface to such vehicles could present a virtual presentation of an environment, for instance on another planet, which would be comfortable to the intuitions of humans interacting with such technology. Generally, material handling and demolition robots are much more claw-like, and very bulky. On the other hand, since it is robot hand, the materials science could be scaled up to very huge proportions, as have other claw-like robots. On the other side of bigger, comes more graceful, but I think there are probably aesthetic limits to what are acceptable robot hand tasks.

O.

"Robot hands get a grip on the future" Wired (Accessed Sept. 21, 2008)

Robotic infantry units coming to an Iraq near you

The Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System" (SWORDS) robots have recently been deployed to Iraq. These remote controlled robots are armed with M249 machine guns, but can also be armed with any standard issue weapon that an American infantry soldier might utilize, such as anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers. (The video above gives an excellent 9 min. overview.)

The ability of a wealthy, technologically advanced nation like the US to field robotic infantry units is the next logical step from what has already been occurring with Air Force ordinance.

There will inevitably come a nasty transition point where one nation fields robotic infantry units while another must field human infantry units. It seems to me that the immediate response would be the quick deployment by the less technologically advancd nation of some form of constrained radius EMP device, such as a pulse bomb, focused wave generator, or even pulse mortar. I suspect knocking out the circuits of such a robot (or collection of robots) would not be difficult, if the much hang-wringing over the complexity of shielding avionics in the 1980s from nuclear blasts is any indication.

O.

US Military challenges in Iraq and robotic aircraft development

{ Audio this essay @ 7min @ 1.59MB } Two excellent articles on military analysis have appeared in Slate magazine in the last few days.

The first one is titled, "Broken Arrow: How the U.S. Army broke in Iraq" by Phillip Carter

Here is a quote:

Four years into the war, the Army still has too few troops to persevere in Iraq and Afghanistan and too few deployed in each place to win. To surge its forces in Iraq, the Army has dipped deep into its well, returning units back to combat after less than a year at home, leaving many with little time to train incoming soldiers and come together as a team. Of all the signs of breakage, perhaps the most acute is the decision to redeploy Army brigades to Iraq sooner and for longer tours in combat. The entire active-duty force is either deployed, set to deploy soon, or within one year of coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan. Short of conscripting millions of Americans to rapidly build a larger military, contracting out for a larger force, or mobilizing the entire reserves at once, military leaders say they have no other choice—to surge in Iraq, they must reduce the time soldiers spend at home between deployments and lengthen their combat tours from 12 to 16 or 18 months. But sending troops to Iraq after such a short time to reorganize, refit, and retrain is a recipe for disaster.[1]

The second one is titled, "B-52, Where Are You? Why the Pentagon doesn't want you to know its bombers finally work" by Gregg Easterbrook

And a quote from that one:

The withering away of the bomber corps reflects planning assumptions a quarter-century old. Then, the thinking was that precision-guided munitions delivered from low altitude by jet fighters would take over nearly all conventional bombing roles. As recently as a few months before 9/11, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the mothballing of 30 B-1 bombers on the theory that they'd never be used in a modern, fighter-dominated air war anyway. Pentagon planners assumed that bombers would play a secondary role while low-flying fighters put the smart explosives on the target. Instead, unexpected technical breakthroughs resulted in extremely accurate munitions that can be dropped from high altitude by bombers, at less cost and risk than using low-flying fighters. The result has been that during the Afghanistan and second Iraq campaigns, most of the air punch has been delivered by a handful of the remaining bombers. Some 80 percent of the bombs dropped during the U.S. seizure of Afghanistan fell from bombers; the share dropped on Iraq since March 2003 is nearly as high. Though bombers have in this decade turned out to be far more important to U.S. military action than Pentagon strategists expected, the government still plans to invest fantastic amounts of money in fighter planes that would be used mainly to drop bombs.[2]

What makes these articles nice "book ends" to one another is that one covers issues in ground military power, while the other covers issues in air military power.

In the end, I think problems identified in both articles will be somewhat alleviated by robotic aircraft, both of the tactical variety[3] and of the strategic variety.[4] However, there seems to be two general problems with robotic aircraft.

First, it appears that they threaten a certain mystique of pilot culture, a culture which is reinforced by the standard profile of a fighter pilot and by society at large. Psychologists have observed that first-born children form a statistically significant proportion of fighter pilots. There have been many reasons cited for this. First borns tend to be more successful, and the very occupation of fighter pilot is highly prized in greater society. Also, older siblings have higher self esteem, confidence in social interactions, and proclivities toward leadership roles.[5] Since there are many individuals already in the profession who both prize and influence the values of fighter pilot culture, and since society itself prizes (and socially rewards) the job of fighter pilot, it is no surprise that a shift to robotic aircraft has not inspired those within (and even outside of) combat aircraft culture. Note, however, that predictors for a person becoming a pilot and predictors for the performance of a pilot are not the same: "Reviews of the research literature have generally concluded that personality factors contribute little to pilot performance."[6]

Second, the appearance of robotic aircraft make the current financial commitments towards advanced, manned fighter programs seem extravagant, perhaps even unnecessary. Naturally, there are people in the Air Force who want to deny this:

Col. Christopher Jella is the commander of the 18th Reconnaissance Squadron, the newest Global Hawk unit. From Beale Air Force Base in California, Jella oversees pilots and sensor operators who control 120-foot-wingspan reconnaissance drones that are launched from forward locations in Southwest Asia. “I think a lot of the mysticism with UAVs [i.e., Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] comes with the fact that we’ve lumped them all into this UAV [rubric],” Jella said. “Remember, back in 1920, you had this thing called an ‘airplane’, and you had the same problem.“What we now call UAVs represent so many diverse aircraft performing such diverse missions that it’s pointless to generalize about them — and pointless to compare them to manned aircraft,” Jella said. What’s more, he adds, the Air Force should be interested in “effects,” not specific hardware.[4]

Colonel Jella's position that it's pointless to generalize and compare robotic aircraft to manned aircraft is in error. There is indeed a very general and straightforward rebuttal to such thinking: when robotic aircraft are destroyed in combat, somebody temporarily loses some money; but, when when manned aircraft are destroyed in combat, somebody loses a husband and/or a parent. Sorry Colonel--I hardly find that generalization about robotic aircraft pointless.


REFERENCES

[1] "Broken Arrow: How the U.S. Army broke in Iraq." Slate Magazine Online (March 2007)

[2] "B-52, Where Are You?: Why the Pentagon doesn't want you to know its bombers finally work." Slate Magazine Online (April 2007)

[3] Frank Colucci "Army Developing Tactics for Armed Robotic Aircraft" National Defense (April 2005)

[4] By David Axe August 2006 "Clouds on the horizon for pilot-less bombers" National Defense (August 2006)

[5] Tenney, Rogers, and Pew, 1988; Gras, Moricot, and Poirot-Delpech, 1989; Rogers, Tenney, and Pew, 1991; Sarter (1991); Woods and Sarter (1992); Madigan and D.Tsang, 1992; Sherman, Helmreich, Smith, Wiener, and Merritt, 1992; Sherman, 1995.

[6] Siem & Murray "Personality factors affecting pilot combat performance: a preliminary investigation." Aviation, space, and environmental medicine 1994 May;65(5 Suppl):A45-8.

O.

Disclosure: I was in the Air Force in the early 1980s, and in the Army National Guard in the late 1980s.

Robots, androids, and my future nursing home experiences

My wife is Korean, so I have a long-standing interest and appreciation for Korean culture, but I'm willing to admit that I'm weirded out by that country's non-chalant usage of labor-delivery robots.[1] What else might this culture be willing use robots for -- perhaps High School sex education? (No thanks.) It seems a small step though.

Apparently, I'm becoming unavoidably conservative in my old age. But that's okay, for there will be another kind of Japanese robot, Repliee (picture above), to spend time with me when I'm crotchety and senile:

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.[3] She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.[2]

It's a bit eerie for me to watch these developments in robotics coming along so quickly. Perhaps I won't like being around robots. What then? On the other hand, I certainly recognize how, someday, I'll eventually need yet a third robot to carry me to the bathroom. Sigh.

REFERENCES

[1] "Robot births help Seoul students" Reuters (Accessed 1/8/2006)

[2]"Japanese develop 'female' android" BBC News (Accessed 1/8/2006)

[3] "Repliee Q2" Google Video (Accessed 1/8/2006) and 2.5 minutes into this: "Presentation of Repliee Q2- ROBORAMA.info" Google Video (Accessed 1/8/2006)


.O.