Singularity Sunrise

Japan Promotes Elder-Care Robots

This video demonstrates that Japan is making great strides in elder-care robots. Japan may be the only country in the world with an aging population that would have a built-in comfort level with robots, I can't see these being all that popular in assisted living facilities in the States, but who knows, if it works, it works. Let's just hope they don't read this report from MSNBC about what happens when good robots go bad.

Debating The Use of Warbots

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been traveling. Here's something that caught my eye and may be of interest to you. According to this report from BBC News, a leading academic is calling for an international debate on using robots in warfare. The report notes that the current state of artificial intelligence is not yet advanced enough for an autonomous warbot to be able to tell friend from foe or to determine the proper amount of force to use in any given situation. Although it's encouraging that the need for debate on this issue is being recognized, I suspect that the debate will be ongoing even as more advanced nearly-autonomous warbots are deployed in combat, and eventually the state of the debate will be overtaken by the state of the technology. After all, it's not like the U.S. or any other country will call a halt to the use of warbots until the academic community reaches a consensus on their proper use. For more on this subject, check out this h+ magazine interview with Dr. Ronald Arkin on the difficulties arising in teaching robots the rules of war.

Photo Credit: BBC News

Warbots in Training

We have talked about warbots before, and it remains an interesting area, if only because the use of robots in warfare is such a natural technological development arising from our very human propensity to use almost every new and promising technology available to kill each other. RoboteX Inc. has released the following video showcasing their vision of the robotic firepower of tomorrow, today:

HT: Singularity Hub

Band of Warbots

The premier of the new Terminator Salvation movie has the news services abuzz with headlines featuring robots. In this MSNBC report we are told that real life soldiers love their warbots:

Human warriors have long spoken of the bonds forged in combat and of becoming a "band of brothers." The fact that some of those fellow soldiers are made of metal has not discouraged human feelings toward them. Thousands of robots now fight with humans on modern battlefields that resemble scenes from science fiction movies such as "Terminator Salvation ." But the real world poses a more complex situation than humans versus robots, and has added new twists to the psychology of war.

The report goes on to note the many ways the soldiers are bonding with their warbots and the impact the use of aerial drones has had on ground operations.

Photo: MSNBC/Warner Bros.

Warbots Fight in Afghanistan

I just want to say up front that I don't normally read or watch Fox News, not so much out of political reasons, but because I don't like opinionated news and shout-fests (which seem to be popular these days), and having said that, I noted this Fox News report on the use of warbots in Iraq:

The U.S. military is calling out the "BigDogs" in addition to its big guns as it deploys more troops to fight terrorists in Afghanistan. The BigDogs — four-legged robots that can navigate the country's treacherous terrain — and pilotless helicopters than can transport tons of supplies to very remote bases are just two of the new weapons being tested in Afghanistan. The war zone is increasingly becoming a development laboratory for machines that don't eat, sleep, polish their boots or suffer casualties. But can they succeed where man struggles?

We will only see more of this kind of thing, so I note it now and will continue to note it to encourage the kind of public debate we need to have about the pros and cons (and there are many of both) of using robots in warfare. What do you think, do the benefits of using robots in war out way the potential harm?

Photo: Boston Dynamics

UK Warbots to Afghanistan

This report in the Telegraph notes three types of robots that the UK will soon deploy in Afghanistan (and notes that one of them is being used by the U.S. already). This related video (below) shows one of them, the Dragonrunner, in action. As the report notes, the Dragonrunner is:

a small, highly robust four-wheeled buggy that can be mounted with an array of cameras and gadgets. But the” selling point of the “throwbot” is its agility. Soldiers can chuck it through windows and the machine will zip around a room identifying enemy and bombs before bursting out of the back of a house smashing windows as it goes. It has also been thrown out of the back of vehicles by troops driving through hostile towns where it can hide and spy on the population while soldiers can view the scene on a screen from a safe distance. It also has the ability to place a disrupter device to detonate a bomb.

And here is the Dragonrunner in action:

Warning On Warbots

Author P.W. Singer warns about the need to think about the implications of using more and more warbots in his new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. Here is his thesis stated at the conclusion of his interview with CNet:

You may be getting new technological capabilities, but you are also creating new human dilemmas. And it's those dilemmas that are really the revolutionary aspect of this. What are the laws that surround this and how do you insure accountability in this setting? At what point do we have to become concerned about our weapons becoming a threat to ourselves? This future of war is again a mix of more and more machines being used to fight, but the wars themselves are still about our human realities. They're still driven by our human failings, and the ripple effects are still because of our human politics, our human laws. And it's the cross between the two that we have to understand.

It's a timely warning, as the military is only now starting to build and test autonomous weapons systems, this is the time to have this kind of discussion.

Calling All Mad Scientists

Here is a report about a conference last summer in which the U.S. military invited, recruited and encouraged scientists to build a bigger, badder future:

Last August, the U.S. Army held a three-day conference in Portsmouth, Virginia, to look at new developments in military science and hardware. The confab was called the "2008 Mad Scientist Future Technology Seminar." Really. It was. "The objective of the seminar was to investigate proliferating technologies with the potential to empower individuals and groups in the next 10-25 years," according to an unclassified summary of the Mad Scientist gathering, obtained by Danger Room. As you'd expect from such a colorfully-titled gathering, the collected brains predicted a world in which individuals would have easy access to everything from ray guns to nano-bots to bioengineered weapons to arms for creating international chaos online.

I'm still waiting for my nanobots but I certainly appreciate that they are making an effort.

Nao Robot

Aldebaran Robots introduces the Nao consumer robot:

Kondo Pushups

In this Reuters photo, "Imformatics PHD student Sebastian Bitzer performs push up exercises with a programmed Kondo humanoid robot at the newly opened Imformatics Forum building of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland September 3, 2008. The university's new 42 million pound ($74,734,800) development brings together over five hundred scientists whose interests include virtual reality, robotics, artificial learning and intelligent systems."