Daily Archives: February 23, 2017

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In January, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliamentput forward a draft report urging the creation and adoption of EU-wide rules to corral the myriad issues arising from the widespread use of robots and AIa development, it says, is poised to unleash a new industrial revolution.

Its an interesting read, and a valiant effort to get a handle on how to standardize and regulate the ever-expanding robot universe: drones, industrial robots, care robots, medical robots, entertainment robots, robots in farmingyou name it, theyre all inthere.

Beginning with Frankensteins monster, Pragues golem, and Karel apeks robot and ending with a code of ethics for robotics engineers and some daunting lists of shoulds for robot designers and end users, the 22-page worry catalog toggles between practical concerns about liability, accountability, and safetywhos going to pay when a robot or a self-driving car has an accident?and far-ranging ones about when robots will need to be designated electronic persons, and how we will ensure that their creators make them good ones.

The practical concerns addressed include a call for the creation of a European agency for robotics and artificial intelligence to support the European Commission in its regulation- and legislation-making efforts. Definitions and classifications of robots and smart robots need to be detailed, and a robot registration system described. Interoperability and access to code and intellectual property rights are addressed. Even the impact of robotics on the workforce and the economy are flagged for oversight.

The electronic persons discussion, tucked halfway through the report, caught everyones attentionperhaps because its much more fun to catastrophize about HAL 9000 and Skynet than it is to ponder robot insurance requirements. And because personhoodwhat it legally means to be recognized as a personissuch a loaded topic.

Mady Delvaux, a Luxembourg member of the EP and the reports author, attempted to clarify the designation of what a limited electronic personality would be, saying that it would be comparable to the standing that corporations have as legal persons, making it possible for them to conduct business, limit liability, and sue or be sued for damages.

But we havent finished addressing legal definitions of personhood for women, children, and higher-order animals like chimpanzees yet. Are we really ready to take on robot e-personhood?

I called Joanna Bryson, reader in the department of computer science at the University of Bath, in England, and a working member of the IEEE Ethically Aligned Design project, to ask her what she thought, having just read the Reddit Science Ask Me Anythingshe did about the future of AI and robotics. Her response? As soon as you put the word person in the draft, youre probably in trouble.

She told me about Australian law professor S.M.Solaimans article Legal Personality of Robots, Corporations, Idols and Chimpanzees: A Quest for Legitimacy,which argues that corporations are legal persons but AIs and chimpanzees arent. Legal persons must know and be able to claim their rights: They must be able to assert themselves as members of a society, which is why nonhuman animals (andsome incapacitated humans), and artifacts like AIs should not, according to Solaiman, be considered legal persons.

But then Bryson said something I had not considered. Since robots are ownedthey are in a sense our machine slaveswe can choose not to build robotsthat would mind being owned. We arent obliged to build robots that we end up feeling obliged to, says Bryson. So instead of assuming that an ethically challenged future saturated with sentient machines is inevitable, we could choose to maintain agency over the machines we are building and defy the technological imperative. Could we do it? Or are we so in thrall to the notion of creating artificial life, monsters, and golems, that its irresistible?

This article appears in the March 2017 print issue as Do We Have to Build Robots That Need Rights?

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Building Robots Without Ever Having to Say You're Sorry - IEEE ... - IEEE Spectrum

People have been exploring the Earth since ancient timestraversing deserts, climbing mountains, and trekking through forests. But there is one ecological realm that hasnt yet been well explored: the oceans. To date, just 5 percent of Earths oceans have been seen by human eyes or by human-controlled robots.

Thats quickly changing thanks to advancements in robotic technologies. In particular, a new class of self-controlled robots that continually adapt to their surroundings is opening the door to undersea discovery. These autonomous, curious machines can efficiently search for specific undersea features such as marine organisms and landscapes, but they are also programmed to keep an eye out for other interesting things that may unexpectedly pop up.

Curious robotswhich can be virtually any size or shapeuse sensors and cameras to guide their movements. The sensors take sonar, depth, temperature, salinity, and other readings, while the cameras constantly send pictures of what theyre seeing in compressed, low-resolution form to human operators. If an image shows something different than the feature a robot was programmed to explore, the operator can give the robot the okay to go over and check out in greater detail.

The field of autonomous underwater robots is relatively young, but the curious-robots exploration method has already lead to some pretty interesting discoveries, says Hanumant Singh, an ocean physicist and engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. In 2015, he and a team of researchers went on an expedition to study creatures living on Hannibal Seamount, an undersea mountain chain off Panamas coast. They sent a curious robot down to the seabed from their manned submersiblea modern version of the classic Jacques Cousteau yellow submarineto take photos and videos and collect living organisms on several dives over the course of 21 days.

On the expeditions final dive, the robot detected an anomaly on the seafloor, and sent back several low-resolution photos of what looked like red fuzz in a very low oxygen zone. The robots operators thought what was in the image might be interesting, so they sent it over to the feature to take more photos, says Singh. Thanks to the curious robot, we were able to tell that these were crabsa whole swarming herd of them.

The team used submarines to scoop up several live crabs, which were later identified through DNA sequencing as Pleuroncodes planipes, commonly known as pelagic red crabs, a species native to Baja California. Singh says it was extremely unusual to find the crabs so far south of their normal range and in such a high abundance, gathered together like a swarm of insects. Because the crabs serve as an important food source for open-ocean predators in the eastern Pacific, the researchers hypothesize the crabs may be an undetected food source for predators at the Hannibal Seamount, too.

When autonomous robot technology first developed 15 years ago, Singh says he and other scientists were building robots and robotics software from scratch. Today a variety of programming interfacessome of which are open-sourceexist, making scientists jobs a little easier. Now they just have to build the robot itself, install some software, and fine-tune some algorithms to fit their research goals.

While curious robot software systems vary, Girdhar says some of the basics remain the same. All curious robots need to collect data, and they do this with their ability to understand different undersea scenes without supervision. This involves teaching robots to detect a given class of oceanic features, such as different types of fish, coral, or sediment. The robots must also be able to detect anomalies in context, following a path that balances their programmed mission with their own curiosity.

This detection method is different from traditional undersea robots, which are preprogrammed to follow just one exploration path and look for one feature or a set of features, ignoring anomalies or changing oceanic conditions. One example of a traditional robot is Jason, a human-controlled ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, used by scientists at Woods Hole to study the seafloor.

Marine scientists see curious robots as a clear path forward. To efficiently explore and map our oceans, intelligent robots with abilities to deliberate sensor data and make smart decisions are a necessity, says yvind degrd, a marine archaeologist and Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

degrd uses robots to detect and investigate shipwrecks, often in places too dangerous for human divers to explorelike the Arctic. Other undersea scientists in fields like biology and chemistry are starting to use curious robots to do things like monitor oil spills and searching for invasive species.

Compared to other undersea robots, degrd says, autonomous curious robots are best suited to long-term exploration. For shorter missions in already explored marine environments, its possible to preprogram robots to cope with predictable situations, says degrd. Yet, for longer missions, with limited prior knowledge of the environment, such predictions become increasingly harder to make. The robot must have deliberative abilities or intelligence that is robust enough for coping with unforeseen events in a manner that ensures its own safety and also the goals of the mission.

One big challenge is sending larger amounts of data to human operators in real time. Water inhibits the movement of electromagnetic signals such as GPS, so curious robots can only communicate in small bits of data. degrd says to overcome this challenge, scientists are looking for ways to optimize data processing.

According to Singh, one next step in curious robot technology is teaching the robots to work in tandem with drones to give scientists pictures of sea ice from both above and below. Another is teaching the robots to deal with different species biases. For example, the robots frighten some fish and attract othersand this could cause data anomalies, making some species appear less or more abundant than they actually are.

degrd adds that new developments in robotics programs could allow even scientists without a background in robotics the opportunity to reap the benefits of robotics research. I hope we will see more affordable robots that lower the threshold for playing with them and taking risks, he says. That way it will be easier to find new and innovative ways to use them.

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The 'Curious' Robots Searching for the Ocean's Secrets - The Atlantic

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A popular approach to designing robots that can navigate a world built for living creatures is to simply copy Mother Natures designs. But while trying to improve how a six-legged robot walks, researchers at the cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne actually found a faster way for six-legged creatures to get around.

While many vertebrates are able to run quickly and with minimal ground contact, six-legged insects take a different approach to speed. They use whats called a tripod gait, which means that when scurrying across flat terrain, they always have at least three legs touching the groundtwo on one side, and one on the other.

The researchers at EPFL, who also worked with the University of Lausanne, were curious to know if the tripod gait really was the fastest way for a six-legged creature to get around. So they pressed the fast-forward button on evolution and used a series of computer simulations and real-life experiments to see if there was a more efficient alternative. They eventually discovered that a bipod gait, where a six-legged creature has only two legs on the ground at any one time, allowed it to move faster, without any hardware upgrades.

But lets not a point a finger and laugh at Mother Nature just yet. While the bipod approach to six-legged running works great on flat terrain, the simulations the researchers ran also revealed that the more traditional tripod approach is actually better for insects who use sticky feet to walk on walls, ceilings, and other surfaces where theyre constantly fighting gravity.

When crawling through a jungle where the terrain changes from inch to inch, it makes sense that insects would use an evolved approach to getting around that allows them to navigate every possible hazardas opposed to one that prioritizes speed. But since the robots humans design are usually created and customized for very specific tasks, this discovery shows that copying Mother Nature verbatim isnt always the best approach. Sometimes, we can improve on it.

[EPFL via Robotics Trends]

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Robotics Researchers Discovered a Better Way For Insects to Walk - Gizmodo

MESA - Students at Mesa's Westwood High School are gearing up for a big robotics competition, and some of the teens say they never knew they had a passion for engineering or high-tech learning until they joined the club.

The robotics program is part of the school's STEM program, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

"I never thought I would be even into engineering," said junior Jill Barcena. "If I hadn't joined robotics, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to grow in this way."

The students design and build their own robots. They learn about problem solving, creativity, teamwork and getting prepared for big tech jobs.

"We can get certificates that are certifying us to work in places like Intel and Boeing," said junior Nic Peters.

The program already has big name sponsors like Boeing and Cox Communications. The instructor says it's a great program because there is no one right answer to a problem. The kids work in all kinds of ways to solve problems.

"I think the kids you see in here are the kids you are going to see in the workforce and kids who the economy is going to be built on in the future," said robotics instructor Tom Saxon.

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Mesa robotics class helps students find passion for technology - KNXV - ABC15 Arizona

Why it matters to you

Exoskeletons promise to make us stronger and faster, but most of them remain bulky pieces of kit. Roam Robotics has created a lightweight alternative.

There are a number of companies in existence developing cutting-edge exoskeletons that will help us perform feats of strength or endurance beyond what our bodies can otherwise manage.

But while a lot of these creations are bulky, expensive, and rely on electromechanical components to work, San Francisco-based Roam Robotics is taking a different approach.Instead, its focusing on designs that are largely constructed out of plastic and high-strength fabrics, but which nonetheless dont give up too much in terms of power compared to other designs.

More: A robotic exoskeleton powered this disabled U.S. athlete to a prize in the Robot Olympics

We are making a new type of exoskeleton that is primarily made of plastics and fabrics instead of the metal and motors that make up traditional devices, Roam Robotics co-founder Tim Swift told Digital Trends. The goal is to make devices that can dramatically reduce system cost and weight without sacrificing overall performance. The thing that is exciting, though, is that it creates a pathway to what has always been the dream for exoskeletons: a lightweight device that regular people can get access to and use in their everyday life. Early work has shown capabilities well beyond any device to date such as making people run faster and for less energy.

Swift said that the resulting exoskeleton could be useful in a number of everyday scenarios such ashelping a person recover from a knee injury, lift heavy objects, or simply maintain the ability to go on long hikes.

Roam Roboticshas been investigating the underlying technology for several years now, and Swift noted that the plan at present is have the first devices commercially available in 2018.

The best way to interact with our technology is to reach out to us on our website and tell us what you are interested in them for, as we are always looking for people to evaluate early devices during development, he said. Also, as we progress towards commercial release, we will be looking to complete early pilot trials where we plan to draw from interested parties.

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Roam Robotics' lightweight, affordable exoskeleton designed for everyday folks - Digital Trends