Robot

Robots

Robots exist for so many different reasons. Many robots replace humans, whether it’s because a situation is dangerous or just tedious. There are rover robots to explore space and drone robots that play a part in our military today, but then there are also vacuum robots available for the average household’s chores. In Japan, there is a robot teacher that can mimic a wide range of human emotions—including anger at uncooperative students—thanks to eighteen small motors hidden beneath the latex skin covering her face. The Japanese government hopes to use robots to fill jobs left vacant by an anticipated labor shortage due to an aging population. In the United States, robots even help with surgery, allowing for incisions to be cut much smaller than they would be otherwise—meaning fewer complications and faster recovery times. This fascinating book in the Fact Atlas series explores the history of robots, from the very first robot designed by Leonardo da Vinci to predictions of the roles robots will play in our future. Kids will learn about how robots are often modeled after real life-forms, such as bees, sharks, and, of course, humans. Robots also takes into account the robots in pop culture—robots we have imagined could be a part of our future. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not they think robots should be developed to their fullest potential or kept in check by safety limitations.

An Introduction to Robot Technology

How to Grow a Robot

How to develop robots that will be more like humans and less like computers, more social than machine-like, and more playful and less programmed. Most robots are not very friendly. They vacuum the rug, mow the lawn, dispose of bombs, even perform surgery—but they aren't good conversationalists. It's difficult to make eye contact. If the future promises more human-robot collaboration in both work and play, wouldn't it be better if the robots were less mechanical and more social? In How to Grow a Robot, Mark Lee explores how robots can be more human-like, friendly, and engaging. Developments in artificial intelligence—notably Deep Learning—are widely seen as the foundation on which our robot future will be built. These advances have already brought us self-driving cars and chess match–winning algorithms. But, Lee writes, we need robots that are perceptive, animated, and responsive—more like humans and less like computers, more social than machine-like, and more playful and less programmed. The way to achieve this, he argues, is to “grow” a robot so that it learns from experience—just as infants do. After describing “what's wrong with artificial intelligence” (one key shortcoming: it's not embodied), Lee presents a different approach to building human-like robots: developmental robotics, inspired by developmental psychology and its accounts of early infant behavior. He describes his own experiments with the iCub humanoid robot and its development from newborn helplessness to ability levels equal to a nine-month-old, explaining how the iCub learns from its own experiences. AI robots are designed to know humans as objects; developmental robots will learn empathy. Developmental robots, with an internal model of “self,” will be better interactive partners with humans. That is the kind of future technology we should work toward.