Robots are great, but what happens when they start spying on you?
EVER since Karol Capek, a Czech playwright, used the term in the early 1920s
to describe artificial people, robots have usually appeared in popular
culture with human characteristics and made by big companies. There was the
Model B-9 Environmental Control Robot in “Lost in Space”; Rosie, the robot
maid in “The Jetsons”; C-3PO in “Star Wars”; and the future Governor
Schwarzenegger as “The Terminator”.
In the real world, however, things took a different turn. The number of
robots has grown rapidly, but they are not humanoid. After the first Unimate
robot-arm began work on a General Motors assembly line in 1961, industrial
robots of all shapes and sizes invaded the factory floor: there are now
about 1m of them worldwide, around half in Asia. There are also hordes of
service robots, vacuuming floors, trimming the grass on golf courses and
soon—with luck—doing the ironing. Specialist robots can creep inside a
patient's chest cavity to attach electrodes to a pacemaker or along sewer
pipes looking for cracks. Robots have also joined the armed forces: some
4,000 are said to be in action in Iraq and Afghanistan doing things such as
clearing mines or, as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), flying reconnaissance
and even combat missions.
Many of today's robots still have a human controller somewhere, but they are
gaining more and more autonomy. By 2015, America's armed forces want about
half their armed vehicles to be robotised. To further that aim, this weekend
the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is holding a contest for robot
vehicles capable of operating on their own in busy cities (see article).
What is intriguing about this competition is the sort of teams taking part.
They are mostly university groups, small companies and enthusiasts. Big
corporations are acting mainly as sponsors. A similar sort of thing can be
seen in the development of UAVs for civilian use. Indeed, so cheap and so
easily available has the technology become that even hobbyists are making
UAVs (see article). The culture of hacking is spreading from software to
ever more elaborate and capable hardware.
A robot for granny
With luck there will be many more robotic devices to do not just dirty and
dangerous jobs, but also tiresome but necessary ones, such as fetching and
carrying for bedridden people. Robots can do some of these jobs better and
more cheaply than humans can. But the technology's spread also brings
worries.
Aviation officials have rightly expressed safety concerns about the growing
use of civilian UAVs. Some new rules may be required to deal with robots as
they become more widespread and gain more autonomy. UAVs that fly in the
same areas as manned aircraft should have the ability to avoid collisions,
for instance. The bigger worries are to do with privacy: some of these
flying machines will be so small that they will be able to fly inside
buildings, filming everything they see; heaven knows what paparazzi will do
with them.
Any new regulations will need to be considered carefully, in order not to
stifle innovation. But common sense and existing laws may not always be
enough to ensure that robots and people live happily together.
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