Though many among us still perceive robots as the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, the field of robotics continues to astound.
Last month, US company Knightscope launched its K5 autonomous security robot, a 1.5m-tall flat-bottomed egg that weighs about 180kg and is impervious to rain and vandalism.
Several of these have already been deployed. Two began patrolling the pavements outside the Bank of Hawaii last week. Traffic police have been working overtime to prevent pile-ups and gridlock as curious drivers slam on brakes to look at the Star Wars-like machines. Honolulu magazine reports that they “move at an affable pace” so there's plenty of time to study them. They also provide round-the-clock 360-degree camera surveillance and have a communication button that customers can push to ask the human guards a question. The most common query, incidentally, is: “When does the bank open?”
Should they ever become affordable to countries short on dollars, these robots might provide a viable solution to the state of policing in SA. If equipped with smoke detectors, they could be used to monitor key security points such as parliament. They could protect shopping malls and perhaps even be used to corral crowds of vigilantes.
It’s a nice thought, but probably a long way away from becoming a reality. Also, robots are not necessarily as reliable as one might hope.
According to a report published yesterday by Techradar, there are ways in which good robots might be subverted by bad people.
“Unattended robots require access to the same networks, systems and applications as their human counterparts ... This access makes robot credentials and identities just as vulnerable as those tied to a real-life person, and if they’re not properly secured, can provide hackers with another avenue for stealing data and causing havoc.”
In other words, even the most weatherproof robot could be persuaded (or rather, programmed) to join a marauding gang rather than seeing criminals off the premises. Which in a grim way makes them even more human, I suppose.
In 1950, ill-fated English mathematician Alan Turing said: “A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”
No-one is going to mistake K5 for a human, but some mechanical companions have passed the Turing test. The New York Times, in an essay titled What robots can and can’t do quoted a man who gives water to his realistic animatronic dog, a device made for isolated elderly people by a company called Ageless Innovation.
There are others. “In Canada, a humanoid robot named Ludwig can track the progression of Alzheimer’s by monitoring vocal patterns in conversations over time. In Ireland, a robot named Stevie can engage in small talk with nursing-home residents.”
Israeli company Intuition Robotics has a lamp-shaped robot called ElliQ which gets to know its owner through machine learning and suggests joint activities. Some clients have apparently come to depend so much on ElliQ that they tell her things they refuse to share with their doctors.
Progress is indeed wondrous. I was staggered this week to read about a robot that can do something truly astonishing.
“Robot peels banana in three minutes!” blared the headline.
The article gave further detail in which the scientists involved voiced great excitement at having created a robot that could not only peel a banana cleanly, but could so without squashing the soft fruit inside.
Whatever next? Robot takes four days to crack an egg without breaking the yolk? Robot successfully ties shoelaces in two weeks? Robot gets its residency permit renewed in under a year? Robot finally does the hand washing that has been at the bottom of the basket since time immemorial?
Everyone knows that it takes a hungry human only a few seconds to peel and ingest a banana. Aren’t robots supposed to do things better, faster and more efficiently than human beings ever could?
I’m not trying to take anything away from the admirable field of robotic engineering, but it does give one pause when thinking about robots being used to deflect criminal activity.
If it takes a robot three long minutes to peel a banana, how long will it need to work out how to operate a fire extinguisher?
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