The Ten Most Important Emerging Technologies for Humanity
Practical robots offer tremendous potential for enhancing the quality of life for humans everywhere.
The robotics industry is emerging now, and progress is steady. The world leader in robotics is
Japan,
which has invested heavily in social robots -- robots that interact with people.
The United States, in contrast, is focused primarily on robots that kill people. The vast majority
of robotics research in the U.S. is underwritten by military interests. The Pentagon essentially
wants to develop a Terminator: a battlefield robotic soldier that can accomplish political or military
objectives without resulting in human casualties that cause troublesome dissent back home.
Once again, we see that a promising area of technology can be both constructive and
destructive, depending entirely on the intent of its creators.
For this section, however,
I will focus on the far more peaceful Japanese approach to robots, because this is the area that
holds promise for enhancing the lives of human beings.
Social robots already exist
Early social robots are already on the market: AIBO, Japan’s cute robotic dog, is owned by more
than fifty thousand people. AIBO offers basic interaction with humans such as face and voice
recognition,
cute-looking movements, and simple environmental navigation (it can walk around).
In the U.S., the household robot Roomba (developed by a Russian researcher, by the way) sweeps
the floors of hundreds of thousands of homes. Roomba is one of the first few practical robots to
be widely available, and it is, indeed, rather useful. I own one myself. However, its interactive
capabilities are extremely limited. It has no vision system, for example, no voice recognition, and
seems to operate more on random walk theory than any sort of intelligent navigation pattern.
The real promise in robotics will come from humanoid robots, most likely from Japan. Honda,
Toyota and Sony are all working hard on humanoid robots and have working, walking prototypes
right now. Why humanoid? As humans, we’ve created environments built for humanoid creatures.
Our physical environments (cities, houses, stores, etc.) have been constructed for the convenience
of people with a certain height, a certain eye level, and a certain stride length. As humanoid robots
are developed, the more easily they can navigate our environments the more helpful they can be
to humans.
It is the “helpful” category in which humanoid robots offer the greatest promise. At a basic level,
these robots promise to free us from physical labor (factory work) and household chores such as
doing the dishes, taking out the trash, folding laundry, cooking, etc. This alone, as gimmicky as
it may seem, would free people from time-consuming chores. (None of these chores are simple
from a robotics point of view, by the way. The technology needed for robots to engage in such
tasks is still many years away.)
