Running out of excuses

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2005), "Running out of excuses", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932faa.001

Running out of excuses

Running out of excuses

Keywords: Robotics

As we come to the end of another year it is interesting to step back a bit and consider what progress or otherwise we have made in the last 365 days and whether or not we are heading in the right direction. The theme of this issue is “Service Robots” and the year has seen much activity in this sector with major events such as RoboNexus (San Jose, USA, October 2005) and Expo 2005 (Aichi, Japan, March- September 2005) attracting hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of visitors.

The level of interest is very high and there is no doubt that the amount of money being spent is also considerable, but is the money going anywhere useful? It can of course be argued that entertainment is useful, and it certainly has a value. Life would be pretty tedious without it; but are we expending our efforts on five minute wonders at the expense of more beneficial and long lasting endeavours?

I am somewhat bemused by the importance attached to creating machines that resemble humans in appearance and actions. Why is it that when the world population is estimated at 6,446,131,400 that we feel obliged to create more? Considering further that many of these people are unemployed and/or dying of starvation and conflict, and the situation becomes absurd or even obscene.

Of course we cannot all be as attractive as NHK newsreaders (Japanese prototype service robot R&D trends and examples, pp. 460–464), and I do appreciate the commercial merit of humanoid developments and their promotional benefits. I do not even mind the money and effort that has gone in to them, because I can see that what has been developed and learned can be used usefully elsewhere. But I would like to see a major shift in the allocation of resources towards more truly worthwhile activities.

For young robotics engineers to spend their time on such activities is a bit like spending your days reading comics or watching TV soaps. All very well in moderation but hardly a life enhancing activity.

Other developments that sound alarm bells in my head are exoskeletal disability aids. These encase human limbs and provide them with additional strength, a bit like power steering on a car. In this case it is not their development that I object to – I can see great value in them for those who are truly disabled, just as I can for robotic prosthetics. The problem I have is that a major motivation for their development was to allow elderly people to work longer.

Imagine the scenario where a 70 year old man who has worked all his life and is looking forward to retiring and spending his days fishing, gets told “Don't worry Grandpa just put on this PowerSuit and you can keep your job stacking shelves in the supermarket!”. Would not that just make your day?

Fortunately in this issue we also see developments of new electroactive polymer actuators (Robots will be of service with muscles, not motors, pp. 452–455). I consider that these, or similar technologies, will be key to the development of truly useful service robots. We already have more computing power at our fingertips than we know what to do with, we also have very lightweight and high strength composite materials; battery energy density has come on in leaps and bounds, but service robots are still missing two vital ingredients.

The first is high power and light weight actuators and the second is the will and inclination to develop truly useful robots that will enhance our lives.

Our news report on the first robot/human arm wrestling match (News, pp. 438–440) shows that we are as good as there on the actuator front, so we are running out of excuses. Next time you are looking for research funding please think beyond “me too” research and dare to do something really useful. Six billion people will thank you for it.

Clive Loughlin