I had the incredible honor last week of hosting an all day symposium on robotics for the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science (AAAS – the mother org of Science Magazine.)

The speakers at the seminar were pretty much the dream team of US roboticists. I was incredibly lucky that all my first choice speakers agreed to come: Three speakers are in the Guinness Book, two have robots in the Smithsonian, one was the DARPA Grand Challenge winner, and between them enough patents to choke an attorney.

The best thing about the sessions, is that they are all incredibly gifted speakers as well as roboticists. The speeches weren’t the boring ones with lots of equations and graphs – but riveting videos of autonomous cars driving through traffic, animatronic bots that can learn and have abstract thinking, and demos of robots that will change the world.

One of the highlights of the event was Bob Full of Berkeley and Sangbae Kim of Stanford demonstrated their gecko-bot, which can climb up windows, walls, and almost anything else (I’m a sucker for live demos). The thing is, it’s not using suction cups, hooks, or tape. It mimics real geckos (who aren’t slimy) who have microscopic hairs that rely on the Van der Waals force for Directional adhesion. Basically this means that the days of masking tape, glue, and staples are over. This stuff can support hundreds of times it’s own weight, is infinitely re-usable, and can come off easily so long as you pull it the right way. Really short version – the robot climbed up the window, no problem-o. Some videos here.

Cynthia Breazeal (Kismet, Leonardo) gave a great talk on social robots. It seems that she’s taught Leonardo to do what I can’t get my freshman to do – understand other people’s points of view. Further, they’re teaching Leo to learn by example. This is the first real step by anyone to getting robots to learn by themselves, so the programmer doesn’t have to include every little variable in the db.

Sebastian Thrun (Grand Challenge winner) gave an awesome overview on their new robot, Junior. Not happy with getting a robot to drive through desert wasteland, Sebastian’s team is getting the robots ready for city streets. For those who can only see military applications, think about this: 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents. Mostly, because of human error. Imagine a robot-car being able to brake instantly when the car ahead stops short, or better still, change lanes without worries of hitting someone else. A robot-car which will never hit a pedestrian because you were busy changing radio stations. A car that can let you sleep an extra hour while it commutes to work for you. This future is much closer than you think.

Robots aren’t just for helping people. Ken Goldberg of Berkeley talked about a robotic platform they’ve installed to look for the presumed-extinct ivory billed woodpecker. The survival of every species is keyed to our own survival, and Ken is showing how bots can be used to help man-animal interaction. His project has proven itself already, with hundreds of photos of actual birds. The system isn’t just a camera shooting video – it doesn’t need someone to go over every frame. The robots do it. The system figures out when a bird has gone by, and captures it. It’s even caught a helicopter. The woodpecker – if alive – is next.

I talked about domestic robots. Not as slaves, but companions. Robots who will help nurse the elderly, and allow doctors to check in on people at home – the return of the housecall! But it’s not just that simple. Bots can track blood pressure on a daily basis, dispense medicine at the right times (never miss your meds, never take too many), and even call for help when grandma falls and can’t get to the phone. As we talked about here, they’re not just helpers – they can become friends and playmates. My grandma is still crazy for the re-programmed Aibo I gave her (it talks to her, and performs on command.) No need for computer literacy, the robot does the tough stuff – people just interact.

Ah, the Pleo – everyone’s favorite tease-bot. John Sosoka of Ugobe brought two, and We played with it! It’s not ready for release yet, but the darn thing sure is cute. Pleo will really live up to it’s expectations – it’s got an incredible array of sensors and abilities, and moves in random, unexpected ways – which gets into your subconscience that it’s a real living thing, not just another collection of plastic and copper.

My colleague at SFSU, Mike Holden, gave a great talk on robot aircraft. Again, most people view them in a strictly military capacity. But Mike’s been developing them for agricultural use. Too often farmers over-fertilize, which is bad for the soil and can be bad for ground-water. But Mike’s planes can shoot complete maps of a crop in near-infrared, and show which plants need fertilizer, and which don’t. Which are dying, and which are thriving. Crop production can go up, while man-hours, waste and fertilization can go down. All using a 3×3 plane that can take off and land by itself, while producing better maps than any satellite ever could.

Last up was Khalid Al-Ali of CMU. Khalid doesn’t make robots so much as he gets kids interested in making robots. And they do. His course allow kids to do things that they can’t do elsewhere, and gain confidence they didn’t have. He told the story of a girl who built a GPS and camera guided R/C-sized truck. Her dad and brothers told her she couldn’t, cause she didn’t have a Y chromosome. She excelled, got excited about building bots, and is now on her way to becoming an engineer. I asked Cynthia and Missy SuicideBot if they still took that sexist crap. Noone would dare do it to Cyn (who’s one of my heroes, and possibly the smartest and most driven human being I’ve ever met.) As for Missy SuicideBot, she just kicked me in the groin. I took that as a ‘no.’

All of these people inspire me, and they are the ones on whom the future is being built. It was a great session, and I’m thrilled and honored that they all took part.

Some news links covering the various sessions:
Man’s best friend just might be a machine
Experts lay out scenarios for the next decade of robotic evolution
Robots join search for ivory-billed woodpecker
Make way for the robot with feelings
Making the right robot for the right job
Hello, I’m a Johnny cab, where to sir?
We’re going the way of the robot
Urban road race to test limits of robotic cars

Full abstracts below the link

Full abstracts:

• Robot Evolution
  Cynthia Breazeal, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Autonomous Guidance Systems and Vision
  Sebastian Thrun, Artificial Intelligence Lab, Stanford

• Robotic Motion
  Robert J. Full, PolyPedal Lab, UC Berkeley

• Building an Autonomous Creature in a Remote Control World
  John Sosoka, Ugobe Robotics

• Searching for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker: Robotic Observatories for Natural Environments
  Ken Goldberg, IEOR and EECS Depts, UC Berkeley

• Domestic Companions and Patient and Elder Care
  David E. Calkins, Engineering Design Center, SFSU

• Flying Robots – Robots in 3 Dimensional Space
  Michael Holden, Mecatronics, SFSU

• From Ideas to R&D to Commercial Applications: A Research Lab’s Perspective
  Khalid Al-Ali, Robotics Program, CMU West

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Bill Joy Is Probably Wrong, Images 'n' Stuff, Medical Robots, Neat Stuff, This Is So Blade Runner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.