Where's My Robot?

Image Source: BBC

Danny Wallace really wants a robot. He wants it to walk like him and talk like him. It's what scientists have been promising us for generations but it's a promise so far unfulfilled. So to, it would seem, are the sentiments at DARPA, where the soon-to-be-announced humanoid robotics Grand Challenge is about to captivate the world.

Although a few years old, this episode of BBC's Horizon remains very relevant for the discussion of humanoid robots.  In the video below, Danny circumnavigates the globe searching for robot nirvana and trying to uncover how far away his dream is.

Wallace brings his trademark lightheartedness to an enjoyable tour around the cutting edges of robotics research, though he starts off setting the bar high: the perfect robot should be clever and able to see, walk and talk. Talking, it turns out, was the easy bit for science to bring off. Walking has also been accomplished, though there is a funny moment when the Japanese HRP-3 goes off-message by falling over.

The difficulty comes with seeing; robots need to be able to see things in different contexts and categories, which has been no simple matter. On the other hand, usefulness doesn't necessarily have to equate to cleverness in the conventional sense. In the end, Stanford University's STAIR robot paradoxically gets Wallace's vote as the most effective at decision-making, even though it lacks legs for walking and looks a bit like a Dalek. This is not the occasion for deep analysis of the underlying science, so we have to take STAIR inventor Dr Andrew Ng at his word when he says he's on the brink of a robotics revolution. But robots that can tidy our houses still look a little way off yet (but getting closer all the time).

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