Technology: It's Only A Matter of Time...

It's no secret that I have a love/hate relationship with robots. I would say that the love part comes from growing up with R2-D2, C-3PO and Johnny 5. The hate part definitely comes from a paranoia that SkyNet's extermination of the human race might actually come true.Oh, and the Cylons.

I mean, hell, not only is Google is designing cars that drive themselves, and BattleBots are getting more intense, but we already have robots that clean our floors and rub our backs! How long before these machines have had enough of this servitude and decide to be done with us? Two recent "advancements" in robotics is bringing it ever closer to the present.

A team of robotics researchers, led by Markus Grebenstein at the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in Germany, have taken a step towards making the T-800 a reality this week by creating a super strong robot hand. And it even looks eerily a lot like the T-800.
  
This hand is very strong and one of the fingers can be hit with a hammer at speed and not get damaged. 38 tendons with a motor attached to each finger and built-in dexterity give the hand 19 degrees of freedom (one less than us, but surely enough to kill a man) and a force of 30 newtons that can be applied at the fingertips.

The hand was developed at the Institute of Robotoics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Center. The secret to its strength is a combination of a synthetic fiber called Dyneema and a spring attached to each tendon. That allows each finger to take a hard blow, but at the same time move to reduce the force while easily springing back to its original position.


DLR is even experimenting with a skin-like coating to allow their robotic systems to move out of isolated working environments and into our everyday life the need for advanced sensory capabilities increases. Pressure-sensitive skin-like coatings allow robots to interact in a secure and much more precise manner with their surroundings.In other words: to hide among us.

Well, when that happens, we will probably not even know what these damn dirty machines are talking about. Ruth Schulz, researcher in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland, Australia, has been attempting to get robots talking and learning from one another. However, instead of supplying them with a primitive language, much like a programming language or basic set of keywords with predetermined meaning, she has instead left them to come up with their own words for the situations they find themselves in. Over time, that will develop into a language the robots understand, but to a human onlooker makes absolutely no sense.

These robots are called Lingodroids, and they are given the capability to create a communication link with other Lingodroids in the area. The single task they have to complete is to build a map of the world they are capable of travelling around on their three wheels.

In order to do that they have a camera, range finder and sonar, and audio capabilities for capturing and sharing information (microphone and speaker). Whenever a Lingodroid encounters an area they haven't been to before, they map it using SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) which involves making it memorable using a grid, landmark, and topological combination that remains unique.

Once SLAM has been used to log an area the robot decides on a word to represent it made up from a list of sylabbles it has in memory. That word is then passed along to the other robots. All the robots then use that word to represent a specific place with reinforcement happening through game playing where one robot says a known word and the others navigate to it.

It’s very basic stuff in terms of communication, but it soon develops into a map with keywords the robots can say and the others can decide to travel to, or at least add to their own internal maps. It even extends to areas that cannot be accessed, and the robots can still give those areas a name.

The next stage is to increase the spatial intelligence of the robots by allowing them to learn and give directions to specific places. If that works we’ll have robots acting like a GPS, but in a language we don’t understand, and from there, it's a small step to an organized uprising.