Where is my robot?



    About two weeks ago, my younger brother dragged me to an international conference on robotics in Skolkovo. I didn’t manage to write a report then, so nuzgul made me so indignant with my post that I finally found the strength to sort things out. He unreasonably claims that "Apparently, the naive dreams of science fiction writers are gradually fading into the past and it turns out that android robots are not the best workers and specialized devices will rule the ball." Like that same naive science fiction, I will allow myself some thought. Perhaps they will anger many, so look under your cat at your own peril and risk, I warned.



    My brother (rightmost) is studying at the faculty of CM11 Bauman (underwater robots) and is now writing a course on the recognition system for infantry silhouettes for tank machine guns.

    He is a classic techie and our debate with him about robots has led to two opposite points of view on robotics, and here we will start.

    The essence of the dispute is as follows - I believe in anthropomorphic (humanoid) robots, which with two legs, two arms and think with their heads. Nowadays, both a vacuum cleaner and an air conditioner are called robots, but a real robot is like that. He can have a knee inside or a chainsaw instead of one hand and a machine gun instead of the other, but in general this is an anthropomorphic creature that can replace a person in everything. And for Anton, the robot is a control module plus a bunch of plug-in gadgets for various tasks. Well, why does the apparatus for studying the bottom have anthropomorphism, it may be more convenient for it, and even more likely.


    Video communication with the ISS shows that the status of the conference is the highest. The astronauts are asked to send them more robots.

    Predicting the future is a thankless task, but real, feasible for everyone. How do gypsies at the station and Professor Hawking manage this? They use the method of historical analogy. We take in the past a phenomenon close to ours and on its example we extrapolate trends into the future:
    • The roots of robotics grow out of microelectronics - which means we take the history of microprocessors.
    • Robots are the technology of the future, so let's take the atomic bomb.
    • Robots are fantastic, so we add a pinch of space technology to the boiler.
    • And finally, robots - for the mass market, compare them with our staff.


    That's what robots are made of!

    Personal computers

    In the 60s and even 80s (!) Personnel seemed to everyone as a little interesting hybrid of a calculator and a typewriter. Even in science fiction, no attention was paid to them. It was believed that only writers and laboratory assistants would use a PC as a home arithmometer. But in fact, it immediately became clear that a home computer is an add-on to the human brain, which can significantly increase intelligence - to gain access to any information, or to easily design complex systems. Any things can now be done “in the mind” - any student in Photoshop can draw like Da Vinci, and a student can make calculations like a whole research institute.


    The conference was successfully conducted by the Sepulka robot (on the right), brought from the robots department at the Polytechnic (I did not know that there was one).

    Without a doubt, the situation is the same with robots, naive middle managers from Mail.ru (this is me about Grishin :) think that robots are vacuum cleaners and calculators. The managers said the same thing thirty years ago about staff, as a result, staff were born in the garages of enthusiasts , while managers sucked their paws with their mainframes.

    What is the trump card of the person? In versatility. My laptop can perform any task - it takes part in everything that I do. This was made possible thanks to the previously created universal processor.

    Microprocessors

    In 1970, the Pentagon's computer department revolutionized the on-board computer for the F-14 carrier-based fighter- It was the first fighter in history, piloted mainly by a computer. The variable wing sweep and extremely sophisticated weapons did not allow a person to cope with all systems in real time. However, it was impossible to put dozens of electronic calculators on the fly just in terms of size and engineers came up with the idea to make one universal processor - small, fast, able to solve any problems.



    In 1968, two American engineers Ray Holt and Steve Geller created the 20-bit Special Logic Function (SLF) chip, which contained an ALU arithmetic computing device, an instruction decoder, and supported controlled logic. Intel was registered a year later, and began designing a 4-bit microprocessor only in 1970.

    The SLF chip, which served as the basis for the on-board computer CADC (Central Air Data Computer), was created at the Pentagon, and work on it was carried out in strict confidence. It was intended for use in the fundamentally new for that time fighter F-14 with variable wing geometry. Such a technology could not be realized with the help of mechanical computers installed on aircraft of obsolete classes of type F-111. CADC monitored the position of the F-14 controls and performed the necessary actions according to the pilot's commands. At the same time, the mechanical connection between the pilot and the moving parts of the machine was completely replaced by electronic: the computer took over the control tasks, which in addition significantly increased the flight characteristics of the aircraft.

    The team led by Ray Holt brilliantly coped with his task. The miniature multi-purpose CADC supported 20-bit words, was able to solve problems in real time, and in addition was optimized for the simultaneous execution of several intensive computing processes. Engineers also came up with and created memory chips and were actually the first to introduce and implement the concept of a mathematical coprocessor that accelerated multiplication and division operations. We can say that CADC is a brilliant solution for its time and the principles laid down in it are not outdated to this day. So, in F-14, due to the large amount of computation, three (!!) synchronously operating SLF microprocessors were used simultaneously. And only today, thirty years later, the first publicly available versions of four-processor PCs appear on the world market.


    As a result, the on-board computer turned out so effective that even a woman (!!!) was able to control the F-14 - though not for long, only three months after the qualification, Kara Spears Haltgrin made a mistake in control and crashed when landing. This girl even CADC was too tough.


    The F-14 was so good that it won the main decade propaganda film in the states.

    But we are talking about processors - the creation by the pentagon of the first universal chip launched a tsunami wave. A year later, Intel was created, creating the well-known 4004, whose descendants now stand in all of our computers. Before him, all the chips were specialized and could only fulfill their task, the idea of ​​combining them into a universal computing center turned out to be ingenious (albeit borrowed from the military). As the whole is more than the sum of things, so the universal processor was able to perform any task. From this began the famous "computer revolution".

    I believe the analogy with robots is transparent - specialized robots, vacuum cleaners, helicopters are not robots, but useless toys. How “useless" a non-universal processor is. And since we agreed with this, we will have to take one more step - the robots will be completely anthropomorphic. Those will be a copy of man - because only man can be universal in the human world. To use human tools, cars, buildings and the people themselves - you need a human body. After all, all these things are imprisoned precisely for him. As they said in antiquity, man is the measure of all things.


    We must sell the prototype to Grishin.

    Anthropomorphism

    From a technical point of view, a robot, which is a complete analogue of man, is an unattainable and unimportant task. Everything is complicated, from nutrition to artificial muscles. The main problem is artificial intelligence, which requires computing power, which God forbid we will achieve in twenty years. What to do with the resulting robot is not very clear - it can replace a low-skilled labor force and serve in the army. Humanity will only limit it. Accordingly, developments in this area are carried out by all countries, but after the sleeves. It’s like space exploration now. But this is in the opinion of techies and my brother.

    From a humanitarian point of view, nothing prevents now to create such a robot. He does not even need a special intellect. Moreover, robots in one generation will radically change the political, economic and social situation in society. Robots will be humanoid, and therefore ideally adapted to the human world. Robots will take on all the work, besides they will produce themselves - there will be millions of them in a year. Very soon, each person will have a couple of robots of servants, and his lifestyle will resemble an aristocrat of the 18th century. Simply put, robots are abruptly atomic bombs, so all the forces of American science are now thrown at their development - all the rest is simply not affordable. Therefore, all research on robotics has been classified since the 1980s; in principle, there is no news on the topic in the media. The Japanese show talking toys, Americans persistently call unmanned military equipment robots - that’s all. "The atomic bomb is of no interest to anyone." Which in itself speaks of a special interest and for an experienced person, it sounds like a diagnosis.


    Robots in disguise.

    By the way, a curious fact is precisely the disappearance from print of materials on the "uranium problem" that launched the Soviet atomic project.

    In May 1942, together with Flerov’s letter, a report of intelligence was sent through the Stalin secretariat that work was being carried out on the “uranium problem” in the West . Then the fact of a sharp disappearance of publications on nuclear physics from the open press was also verified. There is a certificate dated June 1942 from the physicist Vitaly Khlopin, who headed the Committee on the Uranium Problem. In it, he points out: "This circumstance is the only one, it seems to me, that gives reason to think that the relevant works are given importance and they are carried out in secret." Flerov's theses were confirmed one after another. All this came to one point - the decision point. “We must do it,” Stalin lacquered in the summer of 1942, after hearing a summary report on the topic.
    Which version is closer to the truth? With a robo-man (anthropomorphic), or just automatic machines (technocratic)? In a strange way, during the Skolkovo conference, with each speech, a technocratic theory was confirmed - professors talked about the difficulties of specific tasks, and students showed prototypes that looked like the moon before robots. Harry Bradsky from Berkeley agreed to talk only about computer vision problems and insisted that until we solve this problem, talking about robots is generally not worth it. But when it came to theory, then all the scholars in chorus said something completely different. After the lecture, I went to Stephen Dubowski and asked what he was thinking about our dispute with my brother (a box of beer from him if robots appear before 2023).


    It’s not very decent to show the language to the honored professor!

    Dubowski said that our dispute was not learned, we are both ignoramuses and they would have taken us to their heels at MIT - we need to argue based on the deadline when robots can no longer appear. In his opinion, this is the year 2030. The lack of robots in 2031 will be as strange as the lack of internet in 2013.

    According to Igor Agamirzyan from RVC, today it may seem that mankind has frozen in its development, and we don’t remember anything grandiose - neither social revolutions, nor space flights, nor nuclear power plants, nor moon landing. Technological progress seemed to run into the wall - if you look at New York in the 1970s, there is no difference, the same houses, the same cars, the same bright advertising. Technically, we have reached the limit. But if you look at information technology - it's just a stone age. But it is precisely the work with information that is the main vector of progress - an 18th-century man on the streets of today's Moscow would be stunned by an infinite number of beautiful and incredibly high-quality images, texts on every corner.


    The prototype of a supercube is a box controlling your entire electronics and home in the manner of Siri.

    That is, over the past 30 years we have advanced more than in the previous three thousand — today every child has access to information in his pocket — more than the president of any Germany in 1970 had. Progress in the information field has finally “come off the substrate” and is on its own. The first punch cards (and actually programming) appeared as a dodgy addition to looms. The Internet has emerged as an addition to organizing databases at CERN. But robots will already appear themselves - as a logical development of the computer revolution.

    30 years have passed since then - computers have penetrated into all areas of life, but they have not radically changed anything. Now is the time for information technology to invade the material world. Why not the notorious singularity happen in the form of mass production of robots? Why aren't robots on the streets yet?

    According to Dmitry Grishin himself, nothing is impossible in robots - it’s just the same crucial stage in the technological development of civilization as the production of bicycles or video recorders — for the former, standardization of parts was required, for the latter, a high production culture. From the first, the result was a car, from the second - personal computers (they were produced at the same factories). Robots are the same stage, their production itself is already asking for reality - computer technology has advanced incredibly. 10 years ago, to build a robot, you could not do without a design bureau, factory and a couple of years, now all this is done by one person with a fast computer and a 3D printer in just a couple of months. But the results of this work can only be very limited mechanical toys like the one shown at the iCube exhibition.


    104 cm, 22 kg, 53 degrees of freedom.

    Like any technological breakthrough, robots require a radical complication of technology. Something like with an atomic bomb - the idea is trivial, but its implementation requires painstaking work. My favorite analogy here is the Eiffel Tower, the highest achievement of French engineering, built to wipe the nose of the Washington Monument. Now the entire engineering complexity of the tower is equal to one blade of an aircraft turbine.

    And from this point of view, we really are another 20 years before a mechanical person. Only now progress is a loose concept - when it is necessary it can be accelerated, it is no accident that military equipment is ahead of civilian generation or two. I did not just remember the F-14 at the beginning of the article - all the futuristic things first appear in the military.

    Atomic bomb and space


    The slogan of the Manhattan project.

    Nuclear weapons are 1960s technology, but America has strained itself and got a bomb literally from the future (hence the whole hype around this topic). Only 26 trillion dollars, 30 closed cities with scientists and 4 years of work. At the same time, only 10% of the effort was devoted to the development, all the rest went to the creation of huge uranium enrichment plants.

    The same thing with the space race - as you remember, in the midst of the Cold War, Kennedy said that America would be on the moon by the end of the decade. And again, 24 trillion, 400,000 engineers and voila - the American flag flies on the moon about 40 years earlier than the moment when it made at least some practical sense. Subsequently, the director of NASA recognized landing on the moon as the main mistake of the twentieth century and said that if it weren’t for it, then we would already have an inhabited base on the moon today.


    Werner von Braun and President Kennedy are confident about the future.

    And alright, such a concentration of efforts was explained by the need for wartime, but any state has a special craving for super-projects - the Panama Canal, landing on the moon, computers, a whole fleet of aircraft carriers costing a European country each, decolonization of Africa, industrialization of the USSR and China, the atomic bomb - USA always busy with such things, because this is the essence of the state - to do what even large corporations separately are not capable of. So, Medvedev, with his national projects and Skolkovo, is the mainstream and belongs to his efforts, well ... with an understanding or something.

    In addition, it is vital for the state to somehow control these corporations and show them who is in charge - the atomic bomb was also aimed at the internal enemy. This begs the question - the Cold War is over, but what is the budget for developing a superweapon that any decent state has?

    I'll give you a fact for thought - google made a promise (quietly) before the end of the decade (somewhere we already heard it) to digitize all 130 million books existing on our planet. There is no benefit in this, quite the contrary - two years ago, Google lost to the court of copyrights $ 125 million in court, paid them, and, as if nothing had happened, continued to violate all conceivable copyrights. They say that this is for their artificial intelligence system. Willingly I believe.

    So where is my robot?


    More robots, good and different

    Why am I still forced to turn on the dishwasher and go to work? Well, here the lip can not be rolled out - if the state is able to release robots, then it will not share technologies. (It's funny that in the science fiction of the 60s, the theme was always peddling that evil corporations would sell robots - such fears of a government official). So it will do everything to prevent itself from copying - for example, robots will be released only at the stage of some tenth generation, when they will no longer be understood. That would not be like with staffers who are even collected by Filipinos. Therefore, all developments are kept secret. And that is precisely why such confusion has been created with the word “robot” itself - everyone understands that a robot is a robot, but the media persistently call robots microwave ovens and vacuum cleaners. But nobody is doing this.


    In this pipe “also a robot” crawls.

    Alexey Kornilov (he is the scientific director of the Robotics program, and the chief expert of Robofest) said that the word "robot" leaves the language as soon as we are talking about the mass industrial production of devices. So this is the word-always-of-the-future, and never the word-pro-present. A massive Rumba robot vacuum cleaner came out, a couple of years have passed, and now it's just a Rumba vacuum cleaner. A massive air conditioning robot has come out that cleans itself, and now it's just an air conditioner that cleans itself, and no one calls it “robotics” anymore. A robot car, when mass production starts, will also have a “car”, and no “robot”. It’s somehow impossible to call a robot a microwave or a toaster even as a joke.

    Moreover, the robots themselves will not be considered things, they will gradually be given human rights and will be made military-obligated (as jeeps or shepherd dogs are now - owners should voluntarily surrender their army if the war starts). All this will cause public unrest even greater than the abolition of segregation with blacks. And of course they will be sold only in America (even powerful computers cannot be exported from the states now).


    Is there a trifle? Do you know Azimov?

    What will the robot we dream of look like?

    Will begin to be released no later than 2030, will cost $ 3000, completely anthropomorphic in body structure, but do not look like a person (to avoid the problem with the ominous valley), possess intelligence comparable to human and free will. Therefore, you do not have any laws of robotics. And from this inexorably follows the first design feature - robots must be completely isolated. No external connections or wires. The security threat should be completely eliminated - therefore, the robot will be “completely anthropomorphic,” and if he needs to know something on the Internet, he will sit down at the computer and look. So all the books of mankind in memory, oh oh how useful.


    Violation of naive laws by life itself.

    It sounds creepy, but think a little more - this implies a fundamental problem with the power of the robot. Due to the actions of greenpeace and political reasons, the development of energy was stopped - the third millennium is in the yard, and we still burn oil and coal. At the same time, it is somehow forgotten that nuclear plants are safe and have no emissions, and all coal is radioactive and its burning leads to infection of the entire nearby territory. Despite this, in the military and space industries, the systems we need are used to the full. The radioisotope thermoelectric generator in Voyager continues to work perfectly and thirty years after the launch, already outside of our solar system. 30 years is enough for a robot, I think they will be updated quickly, like laptops.

    The first generations will not have enough smooth movements due to muscle imperfections. Already in the US Army, wounded soldiers are placed on prostheses of arms and legs, indistinguishable from real ones, but still not so smooth and accurate. Obviously this is a matter of time.

    Another problem is sensitivity. The robot will need sensitivity on the entire surface of the skin. In Skolkovo, they showed artificial leather collected by enthusiasts from “sensitive triangles” - I think if this can be assembled in a garage, then there will be no problems at all at the industrial level.


    Show the judge where the uncle touched you.

    Well, let's touch on the main problem in the end. Philosophical. If we make a robot, he basically does not need a special intellect. But freedom of will is definitely needed - otherwise he will not be able to make decisions. Free will distinguishes man from animal. Simply put, if a goose hears a hunting decoy, then it will definitely land, the geese cannot say no. Robots will need such a “say no” option, and this entails grave consequences - we will have to recognize a number of rights that apply to humans. Do you remember the tension in society caused by the transfer of “human rights” to women and blacks or the topic of same-sex marriage.

    In 2007, a futurological study in the field of social robotics was commissioned by the British Office of Science and the Center for the Study of Innovation. Specialists from Ipsos-MORI and Outsights consulting agency, with the involvement of the American Institute of the Future, took part in it.

    From the document follows:
    1. Mass production of anthropoid robots will begin in about 20 years. Robots will have artificial intelligence comparable to human, and will be capable of self-programming and self-reproduction.
    2. Robots will turn into digital citizens, unlike things that have legal rights and obligations. Robots will participate in elections, pay taxes, and be required to serve in the army.
    3. Robots obtain civil rights in several stages and are likely to be accompanied by great social tension.


    Support the rights of robots, while you have a choice!

    The study, or at least in its published part, does not say anything about the main problem of a robotic society: anthropoid robots make the existence of the vast majority of humanity socially unnecessary. In addition, the economic gap between a robotic and an ordinary state is so wide that it turns the most modern, non-robotic state into a reservation of obsolete equipment, obsolete culture and outdated social relations. In the worst case, the world, except the United States, threatens to become a “reserve”, to everyone except the USA, England, the EU and (which is unlikely) Japan.

    It is funny that the future of Russia here depends entirely on Skolkovo. The fact that, thanks to Skolkovo, the first-rate conferences on robotics are held in Moscow gives us hope that, by some side of Russia, there will be a place in the world of the future. We have no other hopes.

    PS I
    re-read the text, and somehow it turned out to be sad. It’s always like this with science fiction - if you don’t paint bright prospects, you end up with a gloomy dystopia. I am sure that if the Americans release robots, then there will be no problems with advertising. Robots will be launched with an orchestra and fireworks, and all the darkness will remain in the past - robots are fun.


    And the girls like it.

    And now, attention, poll!

    Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

    What will be the robots?

    • 11.2% Anthropomorphic 94
    • 74.7% All sorts of 623
    • 13.9% does not matter 116

    In how many years will real robots appear on the market?

    • 23.5% Coming soon 208
    • 31.4% 20 278
    • 16.6% 30 147
    • 18.1% 40 160
    • 10.1% Never 90

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