I can name many robots, but not examples of how robots are improving my quality of life. One reason for this is that even in 2008 much of my knowledge of robots is based on fiction. The world is full of robots large, small and microscopic; it is just that I am not aware of their importance to me.
I perceive robots to be inherently complex, and of course many of them are. Robots are seen as hand-engineered systems, which are far from being mass-produced. As a result they tend to be exclusive systems created in labs in Japan or the US and their true benefit to society is hard to nail down.
This is why the micro-robots developed by students
at the University of Southampton are potentially so exciting. Based on a prototype built from nothing more complex than old mobile phones, these robots have the potential to be truly mass-produced. The result is a £24 price tag.
These are not robots that will make the tea or mow the lawn; for one thing they are around 3cm square. They are to be used to apply artificial intelligence (AI) in an analysis of the swarming behaviour of bees and ants. Yet it demonstrates how research into robots is developing in ways that may not be that apparent.
A similar process is at work with research into AI. Ten years ago it was a headline-grabbing computing technology, which would soon affect all our lives. But today you only hear about AI at specialist conferences.
It hasn’t gone away. For example, AI technology is used in some of the spam hunters you may use on your PC. That is the true significance of the Southampton robots. Here is a technique that could potentially change the way robotic research is used.
So the goal of robotics research may no longer be simply creating a system with human capabilities. Designers don’t have to give their robots a duster and a pinny; they can now produce them cost-effectively in sufficient numbers to be the basis of a new class of AI research. And no one will know they exist.