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A Brief History of Robots and Robotics, from 300 B.C. to 1969

Philip Graves — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 13:21:00 +0000

The Early History of Robots and Automata

Written and researched by Philip Graves for GWS Robotics, 25th-28th June, 2018

What is a Robot?

Oxford Dictionaries gives multiple definitions of robot^[1]. One is limited to the realm of science fiction, while another is figuratively employed in respect of people. But it is the real-world use of robot to describe a type of machine in which we are interested here: ‘a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by computer’.

Since the use of the modifier ‘especially’ implicitly extends the definition of robot to all forms of machine that carry out complex actions automatically, we must look back to before the age of computers for the first examples of robots.

The modern use of the word ‘robots’ in representation of machines that operate automatically dates back to Czech writer Karel Čapek's science fiction play Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, first published in 1920; before then, the term ‘automata’ was widely used instead to convey the same meaning.

Before 1920, 'robots', though it was in fairly common use as a word, was typically restricted in its application to the sense of servile human labourers: see for example the references in 'Revelations of Austria Volume 2' by Michał Kubrakiewicz (1846).^[1a]

In fact, a study of literary references as automatically collated by Google Ngram shows that 'automaton' and 'automata' have continued to be widely used alongside 'robot' and 'robots' to the present day.^[1b] It was only in 1941 that the volume of references to 'robot' first surpassed that of references to 'automaton'; and they subsequently changed places over the following decades, before 'robot' definitively took the upper hand in 1971; while the plural form 'robots' first overook 'automata' in 1931 before also changing places with it sporadically over the decades to follow, and definitively surpassing it in 1978.^[1c]

What do we know about the History of Robots?

A useful recent source on the history of robots, particularly focused on those designed to take a human form, is the book ‘Robots: the 500-year quest to make machines human’ edited by Ben Russell, Curator of Mechanical Engineering at the Science Museum, London, and published in 2017 by Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd..

We owe its expert compilers a debt of gratitude for their research; and while the book looks beyond the simple history of robots as machines to address essentially philosophical questions such as the difference between a robot and a human, questions that exceed the scope of this article, we shall refer extensively to its historical findings here, in summary form.

Ancient Automata

Contributing author E. R. Truitt traces the production of automata back to the 3^rd century BCE, and the moving figures designed and built by engineers trained in Alexandria, ancient Egypt^[2].

During the Ptolemaic Dynasty that ruled Egypt for the next three centuries, moving figures and statues of humans (including mechanical trumpeters), animals and mythological beasts were integrated into the Royal pageantry.

Some of them used the most advanced hydraulic and pneumatic engineering of the day, while others, designed as theatre props, operated on the same principles as clockwork, being powered by falling weights that drive axles, as evidenced in the account by the famed technical writer Hero of Alexandria entitled ‘Peri automatopoietikes’ (‘on making automata’)^[3].

Medieval Automata, 900-1400

In early medieval times, Arabic-speaking scholars translated ancient Greek texts on automata into Arabic, paving the way for further developments in automation engineering over the following centuries.

Truitt records^[4] that Arabic mechanical engineers introduced new types of gears and valves that assisted them in producing more complex automata than the ancient Alexandrians had managed, including (among other examples) wine-servants able both to pour a liquid from a large vessel to a smaller one and to hand the smaller vessel to a human; water-clocks tracking time with moving zodiacal dials; and programmable water jets and fountains. Some of these were described in ‘The Book of Ingenious Mechanical Devices’ by Ismail Al-Jazari, which has been dated to 1206, while other sources describing medieval automata date back to the 11^th century.

There are surviving eyewitness accounts of chirping mechanical birds in middle-eastern palaces as early as the 9^th and 10^th centuries, with some reports of mechanical lions in what was then known as Constantinople (nowadays Istanbul). The knowledge of how to make mechanical birds had spread to western Europe a few centuries later, and realistic examples were found at Hesdin, the French chateau of Count Robert II of Artois in Picardy, in the 14^th century, alongside mechanical monkeys^[5]. Robert’s successor at Hesdin, Duke Philip III of Burgundy, took this theme further in the following century, adding a mechanised fountain, a mechanical talking hermit, and more malign playful contraptions such as jets of soot and figures armed with sticks programmed to attack visitors.^[6]

Albertus Magnus, a 14^th century Dominican friar who was also an astrologer, created a talking metal statue that pronounced oracular responses to questions asked to it before it was deliberately broken by Saint Thomas Aquinas, another friar from the same order who had studied under Albert but believed the automaton to be an evil idol^[7].

King Richard II of England was ceremonially crowned by a mechanical angel built by the goldsmiths’ guild the day before his official coronation in 1377.

Renaissance and early modern automata, 1400-1799

By the sixteenth century, the creation of realistically human-looking robotic figures had become more commonplace, and the sophistication of robotic engineering had been considerably refined and developed. Robotic musicians able to play instruments were now featured alongside robotic dancers.^[8] By 1738, a fully functional flute-playing robot had been created by Jacques de Vaucanson and put on show in Paris, as Andrew Nahum records in great detail.^[9]

In religious settings, robotic monks were popular for display, alongside bleeding models of Jesus and roaring depictions of Satan. A surviving example of the Renaissance robotic monk, commissioned by King Philip II of Spain, used a clockwork mechanism to pray, walk, move its lips, lift objects, and beat its chest.^[10] The Catholic Church widely commissioned clocks that featured advanced automata playing out Biblical scenes.^[11]

In the 1770s, Swiss clockmaker Pierre Jacquet-Droz built a series of sophisticated robots, some of which are kept in working condition to this day. They include a breathing woman playing a harpsichord, and a boy writing a series of notes with real ink drawn from a quill.^[12]

Also in the 1770s, Belgian mechanic Joseph Merlin created a mechanical swan able to dive into a mechanical bed of turbulent water, and catch and swallow a small mechanical fish^[13]; while Hungarian Wolfgang von Kempelen created a remote-controlled chess-playing Turk that became a popular stage showpiece on tour, its mechanical arm liftable to move chess pieces between squares on demand by the concealed controller, thereby creating the illusion of artificial intelligence^[14].

Early industrial automata, 1740-1800

While automata were mainly used for entertainment purposes in those days, their industrial potential as cost-saving efficiency-boosting devices had begun to be explored. Aside from his flute-player, de Vaucanson had also developed in the 1740s an automatic silk-weaving loom able to follow instructions programmed into it on cards. This invention caused riots by crochet workers and left the inventor in fear for his life^[15], but was subsequently further developed with the first proven commercial application of digital programming in the form of cards punched with unique patterns by Joseph Jacquard.

Also around the 1740s, an automatic lathe was produced, reputedly for King Frederick II of Prussia. It has since been acquired and restored by the Science Museum.^[16]

In 1785, an integrated fully automatic water-powered industrial flour mill that operated continuously using elevators and conveyor belts to transport material through the system was introduced by Oliver Evans in Delaware, USA.^[16a] The industrial revolution, assisted by automatic machinery, was well underway.

The development of the Watt steam engine^[16b] between 1763 and 1775 is commonly regarded as a turning point in the industrial revolution, since it vastly increased the efficiency of steam engines, earlier, inefficient iterations of which had been in use to pump water since 1712, and therefore allowed for much more power-demanding automated industrial tasks to be engineered. By 1800, nearly 500 Watt engines were in industrial use powering mill machinery, water pumps and blast furnaces.^[16c]

Early modern robots, 1920-1959

In the 1920s and 1930s, in the UK a number of remote-controlled full-sized humanoid robots with multi-part metal bodies and limbs able to carry out sophisticated movements was produced. These were designed and built for public display and show by a couple of British engineers seemingly working independently of each other at similar times.

Captain W. H. Richards of Devon built ones called Eric (1928) and George (1932). Eric has been described as a 45kg aluminium armour-plated knight with spark-shooting electrified teeth. He was able to stand and sit, bow, gesticulate, turn his head to either side, and speak for up to four minutes.^[17] At a later stage in his development, the playing of more than fifty pre-recorded spoken answers could be activated in response to questions posed by live audiences or other interlocutors at the intervention of a remote human operator^[18], in a manner not dissimilar to how today’s social robots are deployed in live demonstrations almost 90 years later.

George featured a more refined physical form bearing a closer resemblance to the natural shape of the human body, and was invested with wireless remote control and virtual eyes based on photo-electric cells.^[19]

Subsequently, Charles Lawson of Northamptonshire created a robot called Robert, the prototype for which was completed in 1938. Robert talked using prerecorded sounds reproduced on an internal record player. His trademark party trick was the nowadays deeply unfashionable habit of smoking a cigarette – quite a feat for an inorganic body having only a metal half-cylinder in place of a chest and bellows instead of lungs^[20]. He was activated by voice control to perform dozens of preset routines.

In 1937, another smoking robot named Elektro had been showcased at an exhibition in the United States, leading some historians to suspect that Lawson’s Robert took inspiration from it.

Also in the United States, another robotic humanoid named Robert, but this one bearing more corporeal resemblances to George rather than to the British Robert, emerged as an acting prop for the actress Diana Dors in the early 1950s. The family of Captain Richards reports that this Robert was also built by him, although he was not publicly credited with it in promotional materials of the time.^[21]

Early Modern Computers, 1830-1969

Before signing off, we shall present a brief overview of the early history of computers, since computers are the essential programming control systems that drive modern robots, as well as driving purely visual and sonic routines such as graphical displays and animated computer games on visual display units.

Starting in 1833, Charles Babbage designed a blueprint for the first modern computer involving separate software-serving and hardware components, which he called the Analytical Engine.^[22] It incorporated arithmetic logic, conditional branching and loops, and memory, and had several dedicated programs written for it in subsequent years.^[23]

But only small parts of Babbage’s massive design were constructed in his lifetime; and it was not until the 1930s and 1940s, a whole century later, that the modern development of computers really took off, thanks primarily to Alan Turing, who In 1936 developed his detailed concept of a universal machine that became the blueprint for all modern computer design.

In 1941, a computer able to simultaneously solve 29 equations was constructed by J. V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry of Iowa State University, while in 1943-4, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania built a huge digital computer called ENIAC (Electronical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) that deployed 18,000 vacuum tubes and filled a 6*12 metre room. The subsequent invention of the transistor in 1947 paved the way to space-saving tubeless solid state electronics and to the integrated circuit in 1958.^[24]

The first modern computer languages allowing programmers to convey simple-to-understand instructions instead of having to use assembly language were developed in the 1950s. The late Corrado Böhm of the University of Rome was an early pioneer. In the UK, a language called Autocode was developed in 1952. Subsequently, the better-known Fortran appeared in 1957, with Lisp following in 1958, Cobol in 1959, and the first incarnation of BASIC in 1964. C, a staple of late 20^th century computing, was a relative latecomer to the scene, with development taking place from 1969 to 1973. ^[25]

Conclusion:

The lineage of robots and history of robotics has perhaps unexpectedly ancient origins; and much as 21^st century developments have thrust the field into the spotlight in a novel or futuristic light, these developments are only the most recent products of thousands of years of successive developments in mechanical engineering driving automatic routines; while even the digital technology by which today’s robots are programmed has been under development since its first appearance in industrial applications in the 1740s.

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/robot

[1a] Kubrakiewicz, Michał 'Revelations of Austria Volume 2' (1846), p. 227

[1b] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=automaton%2Cautomata&year_start=1900&year_end=2017

[1c] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=automaton%2Cautomata%2Crobot%2Crobots&year_start=1900&year_end=1980

[2] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 34-5

[3] https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/classicsresearch/researchprojects/heroandhisautomata/

[4] Russell, ed., op. cit, p. 35

[5] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 42-5

[6] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 45

[7] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 45

[8] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 46

[9] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 51-3

[10] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 48-9

[11] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 54

[12] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 54-7

[13] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 58

[14] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 58-60

[15] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 64

[16] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 68-9

[16a] http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3567

[16b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine

[16c] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Steam_power

[17] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 76

[18] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 77

[19] Russell, ed., op. cit., pp. 78-9

[20] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-39057312

[21] http://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1932-%E2%80%93-george-robot-%E2%80%93-capt-w-h-richards-british/

[22] Russell, ed., op. cit., p. 64

[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine

[24] https://www.livescience.com/20718-computer-history.html

[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrado_B%C3%B6hm

The post A Brief History of Robots and Robotics, from 300 B.C. to 1969 appeared first on GWS Robotics.

Robot Ethics and Pepper: Twenty Questions

Philip Graves — Sat, 26 May 2018 13:13:00 +0000

Twenty Questions On the Ethics of Robotics and Pepper Robot

Journalist Eithne Dodd interviewed Philip Graves of GWS Robotics on May 26th, 2018

In early June, parts of the interview were used in her article for Decode Magazine on the use of Pepper Robot in assisting patients with autism and dementia.

With her kind permission, we now publish the full unedited transcript of her thought-provoking interview

1. If an AI machine has no pain receptors, is it ethical to kick it?

No. While causing pain to life-forms that can experience it is infinitely more unethical, kicking an artificially intelligent machine is still unethical.

There are two main reasons I can think of for believing this.

The first is that the wanton destructiveness of, or infliction of deliberate damage upon, useful non-destructive objects is generally unethical from the standpoint that once damaged and deformed, they are less likely to be useful to anyone. If an artificially intelligent device is no longer wanted, a more ethical way to dispose of it would be to give or sell it to someone who wants it.

This is partly an environmental argument but could also be a purely economic one from the standpoint of the efficient use of limited resources.

If the device is obsolete technology for which there is no market any more, or has broken down irreparably, then there are ethical procedures for seeing about the recycling of its parts, which deforming it with a sharp kick will do nothing to assist and may hinder.

The environmental cost of producing a sophisticated artificially intelligent device in the first place is a considerable one, and it would be recklessly irresponsible to then take actions to destroy it if it is working properly and could deliver continuing value to others.

The second reason has to do with the impulse to kick or otherwise aggressively attack an apparently intelligent object, even if this appearance is known to be an illusion, being an unethical one to act upon, because in so doing, one would be giving free rein to one's appetite to hurt or destroy apparently living entities out of anger or spite.

While there are many who would feel that even damaging obviously inanimate property, such as by kicking in a metal garage door or smashing a glass, is a recklessly destructive application of aggressive impulses (and may even be criminal if the property belongs to someone else), targeting a machine that is designed to behave in a lifelike fashion could be seen as an aggravated offence. At the very least, it sets a very bad example and could be mentally training the one carrying out this act to feel more confident about or at ease with attacking real live creatures in the future.

It is important to note, however, that the point encapsulated in this second reason does not imply that artificially intelligent machines have rights. They are still machines, but it is nonetheless demonstrably unethical with regard to the aforementioned considerations to kick or otherwise aggressively attack them.

2. If you were to kick one of the robots at your work, would disciplinary action be taken against you? If so, on what grounds would that disciplinary action be?

I would very much hope and expect that disciplinary action would be taken against me in that circumstance! In fact, I would hope and deserve to be sacked. There would be at least two grounds for this - one is that I would have caused criminal damage to my employer's property, and the other is that I would have behaved in an unacceptably aggressive fashion in the workplace, not befitting of my status as an employee.

As an ardent pacifist who has never punched or kicked a soul - not even when on the receiving end of such treatment by other boys in my schooldays, I would be astonished and shocked at myself if I were ever to find myself in this situation.

3a. Does GWS Robotics have a code of conduct for how to treat your fellow human workers?

I'm not aware of an explicit one. It's a small, family-run business, and the directors (my elder brother David and father Richard) generally make an intuitive personality assessment of prospective employees as well as assessing the fitness of their technical skills and training to do the job before offering them a role.

Personality assessment at the time of interview is to a large degree a subjective process, but the general unspoken assumption is that anyone who passes the initial screening process by the directors is presumed of 'good character' (or at least, willing and able to abide by standards that would generally be considered to constitute this while on duty in the workplace) until proven otherwise.

If a newly hired employee began to show previously unsuspected signs of problematically aggressive or bullying behaviour to other members of staff, the directors would move fairly swiftly to terminate their employment.

3b. Does it have one for AI machines? If not, do you think it is likely to develop one?

There is again no explicit code of conduct for the treatment of AI machines at GWS Robotics, but the unwritten assumption is that such devices should not be abused. Whether the individual employee understands this simply in terms of the belonging of the devices to the employer, or further takes a view that it is generally wrong to abusively treat such devices, is perhaps a moot point, provided that respectful and non-destructive standards of behaviour are maintained.

It is possible that the company may develop an explicit code in the future. This would be more likely if it grew in size to the point where it became important to codify the otherwise merely generally understood reasonable expectations of employee conduct.

4. What is your job role?

Within GWS Robotics, I am officially a copywriter and digital marketer. This entails that I write text for the pages of the company website, optimise the website for visibility in search engines, and write articles about topics of general interest in the domain of robotics for the website.

In practice, I also participate in promotional opportunities by liaising with the press and with organisations who want to arrange for a visit by our robot, for example schools; operate the robot at expos and shows where it is interacting with the public, and contribute specific ideas to the core programming team for the development of applications, behaviours and lines of speech for use by the robot in particular settings.

5. Do you help to build artificially intelligent machines?

No. GWS Robotics does not construct robot hardware. We custom-program hardware produced by much larger corporations such as Softbank Robotics, the company that owns Pepper robot. The development of robot hardware requires a particular set of skills in mechanical engineering. This is not our collective interest, which lies much more in the software (programming) side. Others produce robots; we envision creative uses for them and program them accordingly.

6. Are computers smarter than us?

That depends on one's understanding of 'smart', but, even taking it for granted that the intended meaning of 'smart' here is the American sense of 'intelligent' and not the traditional British or Irish one of 'well-dressed', I would generally say 'no' in answer to this question.

The two areas of relevance in which computers excel and already win over humans are the power to process calculations and the exact, lossless storage and recall of memory.

Already in the 1980s, the former attribute (processing power) was being demonstrated effectively by chess computers and chess software that was difficult for players of ordinary club-level abilities to defeat. And by 1997, a chess computer had managed to defeat a reigning chess world champion in Garry Kasparov. Since 1997, computer processing power has increased many times, and with it the advantage of computers over humans in terms of raw mathematical processing power.

Similarly, the memory and quickly retrievable data storage capacities of computers have vastly increased since 1997, when a typical hard drive on a well-specified new PC would fit 2 Gb of data, compared with 2 Tb 20 years later, an increase of 1000 times in two decades alone.

Humans are no match for advanced computers in these attributes because computers are precision-built from solid materials continuously powered by an even stream of electricity, and are designed to detect, process and store nothing but digital binary code, whereas humans are organic life-forms made from cells that depend on a regular supply of a host of vital nutrients, have evolved to put their own needs for survival and companionship before mathematical operations, and are designed to detect, process and store analogue signals from the complex physical world. In short, humans are equipped to live and to experience their environments, computers merely to process. Computers are, after all, machines.

But our deficiencies in comparison to computers in the specific areas outlined above do not make us less intelligent than computers. The stem of the word 'intelligent' is the Latin verb intellegere, which means 'to understand'. Computers can process a lot of binary code, and quickly deliver informative appropriate outputs reflecting that processing when they have been programmed to deliver processing for a particular purpose. But they understand absolutely nothing, because they are not conscious entities, and have no brain, nervous system, feelings or soul.

Any outputs from computers that might appear to us to show intelligence are merely the product of how they were programmed by intelligent human programmers. And the same is true of robots. It doesn't really matter whether we dress them in desktop cases or in robotic bodies - they are still digital processors without consciousness. In the final analysis, they are programmable arrays of logic gates and nothing more.

Humans have the quality of true consciousness that gives them vastly superior intellectual potential to any machine. We are able to interpret our environment based on continuous experience and learning at very subtle levels, conscious and subconscious, and to understand from the predictably replicable patterns in the behaviour of the external world that it is real and that it interacts with us. We also understand that we have limited lifespan and fragile bodies and health, and can draw behavioural and moral lessons from this. Not all of us are able to solve complex equations that to a well-programmed computer would be easy, but that again is not a deficiency in true intelligence, which lies more in the wisdom of intelligent adaptation to reality in all its facets, personal and material. Some of us can even theorise and philosophise on open-ended questions of the nature, meaning or value of life and existence in ways that would be completely incomprehensible to a computer.

7. How do we know artificial intelligence from human (organic?) intelligence?

A fair test of this would require blindness on the part of the beholder as to whether he or she was interacting with a human or a computer. To achieve this blindness, the interaction would have to be mediated by digital or electronic means that prevented the obvious signatures of human behaviour such as the ebb and flow of a continuous human voice or the appearance of a real human face from giving the game away.

If you ask a series of questions to a hypothetical digital interface that may be responded to by either an unseen human or a computer at a distance, it should ordinarily be possible for you to distinguish the human from the computer after a while, as a result of the computer delivering obviously repetitive or stock answers.

However, it is worth remembering that artificial intelligence is designed to give the illusion of true intelligence and, if programmed by a thoughtful human programmer with a thorough repertoire of answers in response to all manner of possible questions, an artificially intelligent device accessed blind through a digital interface could deliver a fairly convincing illusion of being intelligent.

This is ultimately because the original programmer's intelligence is being experienced by the one receiving the answers from the artificially intelligent device. It may then take considerable probing to shatter the illusion by exposing unnatural patterns of responses.

Fortunately, in most situations where we interact with either people or A.I. machines, we are exposed to plenty of other cues by which to differentiate their nature. In social situations where interactions are conducted in situ rather than through electronic means of communication, for example, there are numerous additional signals by which people communicate, including movements, facial expression, patterns of eye contact, variations in tone and amplitude of voice, and energy or vibrations, that we may register at a subconscious level, and that allow us to understand a lot about the other person and what he or she is thinking or feeling on various levels.

Social robots are nowadays being programmed to read some of these cues and respond to them, but this is not an organic process, unlike the one that humans experience, so at best it can give a fairly crude set of data that feed into the interaction with the human onlooker.

8. Do you think we will always be able to tell the difference between the two kinds of intelligence?

As the self-learning capabilities built into artificially intelligent devices become ever more sophisticated, we can expect them to deliver ever more sophisticated illusions of intelligence that could trick onlookers blinded as to their true nature into imagining them to possess a form of consciousness. However, the subtleties of real human communication are very sophisticated, and the volatile sentimental and emotional nature of organic human beings as reflected in their attachments to each other and to pets and other life-forms would be extremely difficult for any programmed artificially intelligent device to pull off entirely persuasively.

Actors are trained in effect to lie, from a strictly literal point of view, but can do so in a persuasive way because they are humans playing the roles of other humans using the human form and while interacting in real time with those around them. Even then, we can tell the difference between people acting and being themselves most of the time.

Computers and robots don't have the resources by which to act. They simply process inputs and respond with outputs, exactly as they have been programmed to do by their human programmers.

9. Do you work with robot Pepper? What kind of intelligence and intelligence level does Pepper have?

Yes, I do. Pepper I would assess to be a stepping stone in the evolution of artificially intelligent social robots. Its level of artificial intelligence is moderate in absolute terms and a lot more limited than we can expect to be exhibited by state-of-the-art social robots in another thirty to fifty years from now, but enough to make for some entertaining experiences for those who seek to interact with it.

Pepper is able to use visual sensors and a microphone to draw information about its immediate environment, and is programmed to respond in a fairly natural-looking manner, for example by turning to face the source of the loudest human voice in its vicinity, or following the human standing closest to it within its field of vision with its eyes. It is programmed with voice recognition and language interpretation capabilities, but these are relatively rudimentary out of the box, and custom programming is needed to develop them. It is also programmed to detect some signs of basic emotions such as sadness and anger and to adjust its behavioural outputs accordingly.

People tend to find interacting with Pepper to be a lot of fun, but it is very obviously a robot, and no-one interacting with it could reasonably be expected to mistake it for a human. It is however possible for human operators observing Pepper's interactions with a human to remotely type in speech that directly and appropriately responds to the human and is spoken by Pepper. This kind of manual intervention can provide an entertaining illusion, much as a magic trick would, if the human interacting with the robot is not aware of the presence of the operator. It can be a useful standby at shows and exhibitions where the background noise is too great for Pepper to hear and respond to what is being said to it effectively. But it is not true artificial intelligence of course.

10. Should one refer to Pepper as 'he' or 'she'? Is Pepper male or female?

Overall, Pepper has somewhat androgynous features, with a head that looks more obviously robotic than possessed of a gender, a relatively flat upper body that might more often be assumed a hallmark of a male than a female, but a hip-to-waist area ratio that usually creates a more feminine impression.

The men in our office used to commonly refer to Pepper as 'he' and 'him', but the external consensus seems to be that, as one of our Twitter followers insisted, 'Pepper is a girl'.

Ultimately, Pepper is a machine, and therefore a dispassionate scientist would probably prefer 'it', a practice to which I am adhering for the purposes of this interview. But since the whole idea of social robotics is to program robots to interact with humans in a way that creates a pleasant social experience, and people are prone to divide up their social worlds into genders, it is understandable that most prefer to use either the male or the female pronouns, depending on their perceptions.

11. Can one observe Pepper or other robots you work with getting smarter / accumulating knowledge?

One can observe Pepper tracking its environment, and it can permanently learn the layout of the location where it is kept by moving around it and detecting obstacles, then committing a map of the environment to memory. However, its self-learning abilities from interactions with humans are relatively limited, and by and large to improve either the apparent intelligence of its behaviour or its knowledge base requires improvements in custom programming.

12. What characteristics does Pepper have? Does he have them or does he display them? How do you know the difference?

I think I covered many of Pepper's behavioural characteristics in outline under question 9. above.

I think it is reasonable to say that even a machine can have characteristics. A characteristic is merely a defining feature. You know the difference between a possessed characteristic and a displayed characteristic according to whether or not there are outwardly manifest signs of it. Some characteristics of a robot will be manifestly displayed through its behaviour, while others may be highly technical ones that are outwardly invisible to the general public or the end-user but known to the hardware and software developers that have worked on the device. I would contend that a displayed characteristic is still a characteristic, even if it is designed to convey an illusion of autonomous intelligence that is not really there.

It may be worth mentioning Pepper's mechanical characteristics at this juncture. Pepper contains many joints. It has fingers with multiple separately angled imitation finger bones, so it can curl up its hands and uncurl them again in quite a human-like manner. It can tilt its waist at different angles, and is especially good at moving its arms and neck. However, it does not have feet, and when it 'decides' to move, it simply speeds off on its wheeled base, either until it detects a risk of collision, or until it 'decides' to stop again for some other reason. Its motors allow it to move in four different directions.

13. Can Pepper display a social intelligence?

Yes, but only within limited parameters. It can for instance flash its eyes in different colours to represent emotions, and respond to the proximity of people in ways that appear reasonably natural, for example by avoiding hazardous collisions but accepting gentle contact by people who are not behaving aggressively. However, if you compared a robot like Pepper with a real, live pet like a dog or cat in comparable situations, the social intelligence of the real pet would be observed to be vastly superior to that of the robot.

14. Do you think we will ever live in a world where robots can do anything a human can do?

If by 'anything' is meant 'at least one thing', then we already got there in the earliest days of the development of robotics. But if by 'anything' is meant 'everything', then no, we will never live in such a world. There will always be aspects of human experience that depend on our nature as organic life-forms.

15. Do you think the Turing test is still a reliable way to determine the intelligence level of AI?

I referred to a hypothetical test akin to the traditional Turing test in my response to 7. above. I think that generically this kind of blind user experience test is an important kind of test for determining the subjectively perceived sophistication of artificial intelligence. But the devil is in the detail, and a great many tests of this character are likely to fail to differentiate as effectively as a human would in a natural situation.

If the Turing test requires a particular, pre-scripted set of questions devised by an assessor to be asked, then it is only as good or as useful as that set of questions, and should be relatively easy to 'game' by a programming team with the time and budget to devise answers to every conceivable common human question.

If, however, the blind user charged with the task of trying to determine which of the two devices being interacted with is operated by a live human and which is not is permitted to ask a different set of questions to each, and to build from one question to the next in an entirely natural way depending on the previous answers given, or to jump on a whim to a different kind of question altogether, at will, it should be more likely that the A. I. device will exhibit unnatural behaviour in its patterns of response than that the human operator will - provided that the human operator is not obtuse or unusually socially stilted in manners, which might tend to a false positive impression that he / she is in fact an A. I. device.

So overall, Turing-type tests are a generically useful methodology, but a huge amount of careful thought and planning needs to go into the detail of their design, execution and interpretation in order for the data they generate to be reliably meaningful in the ways that it is supposed to be. Much the same is arguably true of virtually any experiment in psychology.

L-R: former GWS developer Tom Bellew; Pepper Robot; GWS director David Graves
Pictured in August 2016

16. If a robot such as Pepper were destroyed, would that result in an emotional loss for you or any of the people that Pepper works with?

That would probably depend on the manner and spirit of the act of destruction. We actually had this happen once already in a way, as did all other registered owners of Pepper, about a year ago. Softbank Robotics announced a recall for a hardware upgrade of all Pepper units. In practice, this entailed the one we had being collected by a courier and returned to Softbank Robotics for recycling and disposal, while an entirely new unit was sent in its place just days after it was collected. So the Pepper we have now is not the same Pepper we began with. Physically, it's a completely different object. It just looks roughly the same, and has most of the same characteristics. It's certainly faster to respond and to move than the original Pepper was, so it's a clear upgrade, but it is not the same device.

I don't recall anyone in the office getting at all upset over the loss of the original Pepper and its replacement with a new one. It would be a bit like getting upset by a familiar computer or telephone giving up working and needing to be replaced.

People can get attached to electronic devices that they interact with a lot, just as children can get attached to their toys in which they invest imaginary personalities, or grown-ups can get attached to their furniture, houses, or objets d'art. But replacing one machine with another of the same basic design that looks and behaves in almost exactly the same way does not seem to upset people so much as the loss of a belonging felt to be unique (at least to their life experience).

People who work with robots have to be logical in their approach to them in order to get good results from them, and that same quality of logic probably tends to an unsentimental manner when faced with the replacement of one robot by another.

If, however, a robot such as our Pepper were destroyed by malice or violence, the reactions of our team would conceivably be quite different because of the spirit of the act of destruction being a malign one, whereas with the Pepper upgrade programme this clearly was not the case.

Ultimately, it is reasonable for people to feel emotional loss when they are abandoned by loved ones or when loved ones die, but love is best reserved for truly sentient beings such as humans and other animals, which benefit from and arguably deserve it.

Dispassionately viewed, attachment to robots, cuddly toys and other inanimate objects invested with personalities by their owners and keepers is purely a function of projection.

17. Do you believe people have good reason to fear AI machines going rogue?

Yes, to the degree that AI machines can be developed and programmed by irresponsibly negligent or criminally rogue humans.

In the absence of sufficient regulatory oversight, robots could be designed or programmed as killing machines. It is really of paramount importance that lawmakers legislate to prevent these scenarios from becoming commonplace in the future.

The related risk of robots being negligently allowed to turn rogue by being given too free a rein to learn and act on destructive impulses (albeit ones ultimately driven by their programming) is one of the reasons why I'm an outspoken opponent of the idea promoted by a working committee of the E.U. Parliament in 2016-17 that robots should be granted electronic personhood.

The establishment in law of any kind of legal get-out clause that could exonerate the makers and programmers of robots from responsibility for the damages they may cause to humans by shifting the responsibility to the robot itself on the pretext that it is an autonomous person would be a colossal mistake.

By requiring the manufacturers and programmers of robots to build in safeguards that prevent them from causing harm to others, and making these parties legally liable for any harm caused to a human by a robot they have worked on, lawmakers can play a valuable role in guiding the ethical development of AI far into the future.

Unfortunately, the temptation of some governments and terrorist groups around the world to develop sophisticated lethal autonomous weapons capable of using artificial intelligence to select and launch fire at targets is a danger that looms large across the future and, if allowed to prevail, will undoubtedly blight the wider public image of robotics, which in itself is an ethically neutral bank of technical knowledge that can equally be used for good or evil. It is incumbent on us to lobby politicians at all levels of government to help to ensure that robotics and A.I. are only used for good.

18. Do you believe it would be ethical for an AI machine to pose as a human?

No, if the intention was truly to deceive people into believing that the AI machine was human, that would be profoundly unethical, just as it is unethical for one human to pose as another human in order to deceive.

This does not, however, mean that it is unethical to develop robots with a physical likeness to humans, as has already been done to a remarkable degree by Hanson Robotics with its creations such as Sophia. Context is all-important. Robots like Sophia are extremely impressive exponents of state-of-the-art mechanical and material robotics design, and artificial intelligence. But they are used to entertain and not to deceive, and there is nothing wrong with entertaining in a good spirit.

19. Is it right to turn off forever, or otherwise destroy, an artificially intelligent machine when it can no longer function as it was designed to?

It is neither wrong nor necessarily the only option. It is not wrong because it is still a machine and not a life-form. We should be much more concerned about animals held in captivity for scientific experiments and product research being involuntarily killed, or 'euthanised', than we should about broken robots being dismantled and recycled. Such animals may have reached the point in their lives when they can no longer provide useful data to scientists, but that doesn't make it right to kill them - they should be set free or retired to a wildlife park that will take reasonable care of them.

It is not necessarily the only option because the machine could be reworked with new parts, just as old cars with worn-out parts can usually be got on the road again by the selective replacement of worn-out parts, as an alternative to being consigned to the scrap metal yard.

20. Do you think it is right to turn off forever or otherwise destroy an artificially intelligent machine when it has outlived its usefulness to its owner?

I think I covered this largely in my answer to question 1. above. While there is nothing particularly right about this, there is nothing inherently wrong with turning off an artificially intelligent machine either. What is more problematic is the potential waste of materials and the resources that went into producing them. If the machine is still useful, it would preferably be passed on to someone else who would gain value from using it. If not, then its parts should be recycled.

The post Robot Ethics and Pepper: Twenty Questions appeared first on GWS Robotics.

7 Star Trek Technologies Made Real in the 21st Century

Philip Graves — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 14:12:00 +0000

Seven imaginary technologies represented in vintage episodes of the cult Sci-fi series Star Trek that have since to a greater or lesser degree been implemented in reality.

This article was written by Carling Knight and David Graves of GWS Robotics, on April 6th, 2017.
It was copy-edited prior to publication by Philip Graves on April 21st, 2017.

1. Communications badge

Overview

The type of communications badge used in The Next Generation now not only exists in a closely matching design, but is available to purchase! The real-world version of the badge allows you to communicate through Bluetooth, so you can take phone calls and reply to messages. You can also access your phone’s virtual assistant through it – just as the computer is used in the series.

For example, you might say: “Okay, Google, turn the lights on!”

In the show

The show has had some iteration of these since the first season. They operate as a means of communicating between crew members; but additionally they record information on the crew members’ health and their location.

To communicate, the crew member simply taps the badge and then says the name of the person they are trying to contact, and a voice communication line is started. Generally, the crew member would say the name of the person they are trying to contact and a small subject line. This is then played to the target, who can choose how to answer.

In real life

The communicator badge on the linked website works perfectly as a Bluetooth communications device. You can even tap the badge to activate your phone's virtual assistant, resulting in Google or Siri asking you what you would like to do. From there, you can call someone, and the call will be routed through to the communications badge, allowing you to talk just as they would on Star Trek.

Currently, the commercially available communicator badge can’t do location tracking or health monitoring. However, modern smartwatches are fitted with GPS, heart-rate monitors, microphones, and everything that would be needed to complete the functionality of the communications badge. It’s surely now just a matter of time until someone fits everything into the same form factor of the communications badge that is existingly for sale.

2. Virtual Display Device

Overview

In Star Trek, a virtual display device is used by the Jem’Hadar and their Dominion Overlords as a means of controlling their ships. It sits over the wearer’s eye, creating a virtual field in front of you, and allowing you to look through the ship’s hull.

This is identical in function to the Microsoft HoloLens, which creates virtual objects that mix in with the real world.

In the show

The devices are used to control the Jem’Hadar ships. In the show, the first of the Jem’Hadar units wears one, along with the Vorta commander in charge of that cell.

They allow the user to look directly through the hull of the ship, giving a situational awareness advantage over traditional sensor readouts. However, they were designed specifically for the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta, and give other species severe headaches when they attempt to use them.

In real life

The Microsoft HoloLens is a technology that is technically classed as augmented reality. It doesn’t require you to block out the real world around you as a true VR device like the HTC Vive would. Instead, it adds virtual objects around you.

For example, a globe can be moved around and controlled by the user with hand gestures. Or if you had a TV in the augmented world, you could increase the size by simply dragging the corners wider. This is identical in practice to the Virtual Display Device in Star Trek, that served the needs of users to interact with the world around them at the same time as being able to look through the ship's hull.

3. Automatic Doors

Overview

This is a technology that many people take for granted nowadays, because automatic doors are everywhere.

Imaginary automatic sliding door technology was presented in the original series of Star Trek long before the technology existed in reality.

In 2017, most urban environments include doors that open automatically for you.

In the show vs. in real life

Today’s real automatic doors work by means of a small sensor above a door that detects when a person approaches, activating motors to slide or swing the door open.

This technology is identical to that used in the doors on the show. The main difference is that the doors on the show were typically exceptionally strong, being able to withstand huge impacts and immense heat. However, this mostly comes down to the type of material envisaged: we haven’t invented the material needed for these properties yet.

In the original series of Star Trek in 1966, the technology did not yet exist but was represented as though it did. The cast had no way of opening the supposedly automatic doors, so two members of the production crew were used to manually pull them apart behind the scenes whenever cast members walked up to them. They had to lie down and pull the doors open as the cast walked up to them. This is why, if you watch closely, you’ll often see one door open more quickly than the other one!

4. Klingon Language

Overview

The Klingon language is now an official language. What’s more, Duolingo, a service dedicated to teaching languages for free, have begun developing a program for it to allow anyone to learn Klingon. This is slated for release in 2018.

In the show and in real life

The Klingon language is described in Star Trek as an exceptionally harsh language with very few ways of saying basic niceties like ‘thank you’. It’s not that the Klingons are rude, although they do come across as that by the standards of most other races – it comes down to them being entirely focused on war and combat, as a result of which they do not deem it necessary to say things like ‘thank you’.

The language itself was fleshed out by the show’s creators; but fans took it to the next stage of development.

If you learn the Klingon language, you can even get to understand the parts of the shows that were spoken in Klingon without being given subtitles.

5. Tractor Beams

Overview

Tractor beams were used by almost every ship in the Star Trek universe, the idea being an energy force that can pull or push objects away from the ship.

A Bristol engineering team has successfully developed a method of achieving this through sound waves.

In the show

These devices were used by ships, docking platforms and heavy equipment for manipulating physical objects through energy fields.

The basic premise is that the energy field acts as a net around an object, which can then be moved around. These fields were exceptionally strong, to the point of being capable of essentially warp-towing a disabled ship.

There were also a few instances in the show where the engineers were able to repurpose them to form energy shields, or simply to push objects away from the ship.

In real life

Sadly, the energy net aspect of the hypothetical technology is not identical to the real-life method that has been developed. Instead, the real-life equivalent uses sound waves. The Bristol-based engineering team is able to ‘grab’ beads using sound waves, pulling them back and forth, to the effect of levitating the objects around.

While this is certainly far away from what was envisaged as being achievable in the Star Trek implementation, it is a good beginning.

6. Deviceless Control

Overview

In Star Trek, the cast often controls computers with regular buttons. However, in newer iterations, they simply swipe messages away and perform actions without ever touching a screen.

This is a technology that is available for purchase today in the form of the Leap Motion controller.

In the show

These types of devices aren’t seen in the earlier shows often, since they didn’t yet have the graphical technology needed to represent them effectively during the filming of the shows.

However, they have begun making an appearance in the newer movies, where the crew members are able to control objects on a monitor by simply swiping left and right, manipulating the objects by pulling and pushing.

In real life

The Leap Motion controller is a fantastic first shot at this, allowing users to control their display using their hands. It’s even starting to advance into new territory by tying this into existing VR solutions, allowing for the manipulation of virtual objects using your hands.

7. Renewable Energy

Overview

Star Trek heralds the creation of the antimatter reactor as the way that they generate massive amounts of clean, free energy. However, there is also a great emphasis on renewable sources such as wind energy throughout the series.

In the show

Within Star Trek, we see antimatter powering the USS Enterprise and most of the other starships. However, this isn’t the only power source available. In fact, we see things like tidal barrages and wind turbines throughout most of the series.

One of the earlier episodes features a ‘paradise’-like planet, which is littered with wind turbines in the background, demonstrating how the population are able to keep the planet looking amazingly clean while still supplying all of the energy that the inhabitants need.

In real life

Aside from antimatter drives, Star Trek doesn’t really focus on the ways the characters generate their electricity. Instead, we see recognisable renewable sources throughout the show. In fact, a Ferengi makes a confused comment about how it doesn’t understand how early humans could pollute their own planet.

The human race has the ability to create all of these technologies - and we are, albeit slowly! With further research in this area, we could even overtake Star Trek’s envisioned implementations of renewable energy.

The post 7 Star Trek Technologies Made Real in the 21st Century appeared first on GWS Robotics.

Softbank Robotics Pepper Robot Exhibition Pepper World Paris

Philip Graves — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 13:29:00 +0000

Pepper World Paris event took place on April 20-21, 2017

Carling Knight and David Graves of GWS Robotics report on the exhibition.

The Pepper World Paris event was hosted by SoftBank Robotics at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, a large science museum located in the Pont-de-Flandre district within the 19^th arondissement of Paris.

The museum is focused on exploring the recent advances in science and industry, and includes various showrooms. It is serviced by an extensive series of restaurants dotted alongside the showrooms.

The building itself is architecturally impressive, with a futuristic design, featuring large amounts of metal and glass intertwined with water fountains around the outside.

It is further surrounded by the Parc de la Villette, a sea of green amid the grey architecture of the city. The effect is an impression that leaves you thinking of the integration of technology with a healthy environment, two aspirations that might be seen as difficult to reconcile.

This was a very appropriate setting in which to host a conference dedicated to the future of a robot whose aim is to give people friendly assistance with the business of their day.

The event itself was hosted in Le Loft, a showroom within the museum that, with the sheer scale of the building as a whole, felt like an underground venue. This sense applies to the rest of the building too: rooms felt like bunkers thanks to the scale.

Within Le Loft, SoftBank had positioned 36 partner booths with Pepper robots ready to go. We arrived earlier than most of the visitors, so when we walked through the crowd of Peppers, they turned their heads to look up to us as we passed by.

SoftBank Robotics Partners are companies that have agreed to a close business relationship with SoftBank. To qualify for Partner status, companies must support SoftBank’s business development goals and communicate the same brand messages. A Partner shares publicity for SoftBank promoting the adoption of robots in business and leisure environments.

Most of the Softbank Partners at the event were present on the first day. 36 of them had booths demonstrating the work that they had been doing on Pepper, while the others were present to discuss their work.

SoftBank kicked the event off with a choreographed dance featuring six Peppers. They performed a complicated dance routine to some suitably robotic music. You can see five of the six ’dancers’ below taking a quick breather while the speaker began his talk.

Carrefour, Renault and AXA Bank then gave presentations describing what they had learned in their experiences with deployment of Pepper robots in their own business premises. Carrefour described how they had initially launched Pepper robots running six applications in their stores; then after assessing the popularity and usage levels of each, they pared this down to the three that are most popular, which remain in active use. These are a simple chat with Pepper, some simple games, and a wine advisor. Carrefour found that while the wine advisor had the fewest interactions of the three applications it decided to retain, it had the longest interaction time, whereas the quick chat was interacted with at a higher frequency but the period of interaction was shorter.

Renault described how they had successfully deployed 113 Pepper robots across their showrooms, demonstrating similar apps to those of Carrefour. For the most part, they reported that Pepper was serving as a catalogue or as an interesting way to engage children while their parents visited showrooms. AXA Bank reported very similar findings to those of Renault.

One of the Partners demonstrated an incredible combination of hand-tracking and virtual reality by allowing you to see through Pepper’s eyes and move his arms by moving yours! The demonstration was impressive, showing the potential for future robots to enter areas that would be hazardous for humans while being completely and intuitively controllable by a human being.

ZoraBots demonstrated a time-saving payments system they had developed that would allow Pepper to walk up to people in a queue and take their order, and then take payment for it before they even reached the counter.

SoftBank now have more than 70 Partners, with most of those coming on board in 2016. They have become increasingly partner-facing in their strategic business orientation: by supporting their partners, they can increase the value and popularity of Pepper.

As the first day drew to a close, Pepper World Paris was over as a public event. The second day was an exclusive conference between SoftBank and the Partners. Throughout this day, SoftBank covered their future plans in terms of business, software and hardware. There is a number of exciting developments in the works.

The post Softbank Robotics Pepper Robot Exhibition Pepper World Paris appeared first on GWS Robotics.