ROBOTS IN THE NEWS
Be aware of what’s going on in the world of robots…before they rise up and kill us all.
NEWS BOT
One of the reasons that people who don’t like robots don’t like robots is the fear of automation—that robots and other machines will take away jobs from human beings. That’s a legitimate fear. Most U.S. auto production, for example, is now performed by robots…but who would’ve thought that news anchors would also fear being replaced by machines? It could happen. Created by Hiroshi Ishiguro and a team at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University in Japan, “Erica” is an android designed to look like a 23-year-old human woman. (She really does look like that, if you ignore her hollow, lifeless eyes.) She’s been programmed to do the two things real news anchors need to be able to do: 1) sit still in a chair, and 2) recite a script at a medium pace. She can even banter with a human co-anchor. Ishiguro says he initially designed Erica to be a receptionist, but then figured news anchor was a better fit.
FEAR BOT
There are certain things that humans almost universally find unsettling—haunted houses, monsters, and death, to name a few. A team of researchers from the MIT Media Lab in Massachusetts and CSIRO’s Data61 in Australia teamed up to build an algorithm that they fed to a robot. The machine, outfitted with artificial intelligence that allows the robot to learn, uses the algorithm to figure out what humans find frightening, and then applies the knowledge to digitally manipulate innocuous photos so they look scarier. The robot makes gleaming towers look like decrepit haunted houses, turns landscapes into polluted and smoldering wastelands, and beloved characters like Kermit the Frog into zombie corpses. Why would anybody build a robot that can push humanity’s buttons? Ironically, the researchers created a robot that makes scary things to explore why people find robots so scary.
CHECK-IN BOT
In Japanese, henn na means “weird,” and that’s also the name of a small and quirky chain of hotels in Asia that wants to be the first in the hospitality industry to be entirely staffed by robots. Its latest entry: a hotel in east Tokyo where a couple of robot dinosaurs work the lobby, checking in arriving guests. Perched behind a desk (and in front of a jungle scene backdrop), the human-sized, velociraptor-like robots snap into motion when they detect an approaching guest. Then they scream “Welcome” (in one of four languages: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or English) and wave their long, clawtopped arms. With the aid of a tablet computer, the dinosaurs will check in guests and help them get settled, but they will not take bags to the guest’s room…even though they’re wearing cute little bellhop hats.
The warty comb jellyfish creates a “temporary anus” every time it needs to poop.
In some larger cities, delivery robots are already a thing. Wheeled, trash can–sized (and shaped) robots are dispatched by restaurants and stores to deliver goods to customers who live within walking (or rolling) distance. In May 2018, Arizona governor Doug Ducey signed a law to allow the emerging army of delivery robots to legally traverse the state’s sidewalks—as opposed to the streets, where they might get run over. The catch: the robots must be programmed to be respectful of human pedestrians and to use crosswalks properly. “It causes them to have to obey the laws,” said state representative Kelly Townsend, who sponsored the bill. “So they can’t just whiz out into the street, they can’t run into somebody, they have to go by our current laws.” While the law requires robot manufacturers to build those safety precautions into the robot’s artifi cial intelligence, Arizona residents aren’t all on board. “The robots on the sidewalk? They could be running into us, or I could be running into one with the stroller,” said Arizona mother Caitlin Erickson.
REEF BOT
Coral reefs look like rocks, but they’re actually massive living things, and like a lot of other sea creatures, they’re endangered. But here comes some weird robot science to the rescue. A team led by Dr. Erik Engeberg of Florida Atlantic University has built “jellybots,” or underwater robots that look like jellyfi sh. Propelled by hydraulic rubber tentacles and a pump in its main body that uses centrifugal force to create propulsion, the jellybots can softly and safely squeeze through narrow gaps in coral without leaving any destruction in their wake. Scientists will direct them to travel over coral reefs and use them to scan and record any damage. “Studying and monitoring fragile environments, such as coral reefs, has always been challenging for marine researchers,” Dr. Engeberg told reporters. “Soft robots have great potential to help with this.” Making this high-tech, futuristic-sounding notion sound ever more high-tech and futuristic: the prototypes were created with the use of a 3-D printer.
Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun helped design Disneyland’s Rocket to the Moon attraction.