 Robot specialist watches I, Robot
The Robot with a Mind of His Own
by Peter Vlam
In the film I, Robot robot Sonny is one of the key characters. Sonny has his own identity, his own emotions, and he runs up and down the stairs just as fast as the film's hero, Will Smith. Sonny is half robot, half human being. Would that ever be possible?
Chigago, the year 2035. U.S. Robotics – the largest company in the world – is about to launch the NS-5. NS-5 is the latest robot design. U.S. Robotics' goal is to sell a machine to one in every five world citizen. The robots do the housekeeping, collect refuse, walk the dog. Nobody has problems with this, except our hero, inspector Del Spooner, aka Will Smith. He does not want anything to do with these modern pranks. Robots cannot be trusted, he thinks: they will once assume a life of their own. Guess what is going to happen in I, Robot.
dangerous robots
To protect people against robots, the film makers bring out the three laws invented by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Robots programmed according to these laws will never become a threat to humans.
The three laws are: 1) A robot shall not harm a human being, or allow humans to be harmed. 2) A robot shall obey a human being, as long as it does not conflict with law nr 1. 3) A robot shall take care of itself, as long it does not conflict with laws nrs 1 and 2.
 In I, Robot it is Dr. Alfred Lanning who invented these laws. When Alfred commits suicide under suspicious circumstances in the U.S. Robotics building, Del Spooner/Will Smith is commisioned to investigate the case. Del suspects that Lanning's death is caused by a defected robot. His supicion turns out right when he comes face to face with Sonny, the robot who can dream, has emotions and, as it turns out, is capable of ignoring the three laws. It soon becomes clear that Sonny is not the only robot with a character of his own: a true robot rebellion is about to start. Serious work for our inspector. Humankind must be saved from an army of self-confident, agressive robots. Something he succeeds in with (we lift a tip of the veil) a lot of spectacular stunting.
2050: Robocup
Robots with emotions and a will of their own. How are things these days? Is that totally unfounded nonsense? 'Not at all', says Marco Wiering, lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Information & Computing Sciences in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He investigates self-learning machines. Copernicus invited Marco to watch I, Robot.
 Robot researcher Marco Wiering
'In time, a robot may control a whole set of fixed responses to situations. But he does not really feel these emotions. It is just acting. It all depends on what you as a human being want to believe. Now, my question is, if we ascribe emotions to robots, are they real emotions? It depends on the subjective interpretation of the observer.'
These days, scientists do much research on robot emotions and according to Marco this could lead to interesting results. 'A computer can already recognise emotions in photos of human faces. In the future these techniques will obviously be developed further. A robot does not need Nature for its survival, like humans do. But you could build some feeling for Nature into them. Or, love. But how real would these feelings be? And does it make a difference whether these feelings are human?'
 In the film robots jump over cars, fight with each other and the leading man. How's that? Will robots ever be able to fight and jump?
Marco Wiering: 'Robots still are very slow, they move at something like half a metre per second. They can walk up stairs, that's about it. In 2050, a Robocup world championship will take place in Japan. In this championship the world's best football players will compete with the world's best robots. By that time, robots should be able to do what they do in I, Robot. I think one day, they will succeed. But, to make rapid progress, major mechanical breakthroughs will be necessary.'
Marco specialises in ‘Reinforcement Learning’. He invents systems in his lab by which computers learn from their environment and from new information. Nowadays, the most advanced robots learn to move on the basis of information they collect themselves, for instance with sensors.
Marco Wiering: 'We can now teach robots how to walk. Only, that takes as much as half a year of research. When the study is finished, you can use the data for the next project. There are now spider robots that can walk very fast and search for light. It's a bit like newly born antelopes in the savanna. Those animals can walk within half an hour and follow their mothers.'
Robot slaves?
Mechanically perfect robots are hard to make, but it will be possible, thinks Marco Wiering. But if we will ever have robots looking like Sonny in the film depends on many other things. And before robots will have emotions, much money needs to be invested in research. Who will pay for this? Do we want to spend money befor we are sure we will get something in return?
There is something else that is very difficult to teach to robots: understanding daily life. How do you teach a robot about our complex world? How do you teach a robot that a red traffic light means that you must stop. Or, that a mobile phone can have several ringtones? And that all those different sounds mean that you must answer the phone, or may read an sms? Many meanings in daily life are very delicate and depend also on culture: they do not mean the same in every country or culture. It remains to be seen whether robots will ever be able to make out these different meanings.
Marco Wiering: ‘There still are many questions that need to be answered before we will have robots like we have seen in the film. For example: will we turn robots into slaves? Does a robot have rights? Do we want to build human intelligence into robots? Can you clone humans and then convert them into robots? Do we allow robots to become stronger than humans? Is it terrible for robots not to have a feeling for Nature, or love? Do we have to find something for this? All these questions need to be answered.'
 Will Lemur ever walk on Mars?
What do you think? Will in 2035 robots be around that look a lot like humans? Will these be our little helpers? Would that be possible?
 Click to watch film
Experiment
Start building your own robots and maybe participate in the Robocup Junior contest (see links below).
You can find instructions on how to build your own simple robot here. This site may inspire you to use Lego for your projects.
Links
Homepage of I, Robot, the film
Department of Information and Computing Sciences (Marco's institute)
The Isaac Asimov Home Page
Asimov's Science Fiction
A BBC website with lots of information about robots in films and much more
A BBC interview with Will Smith about his role in I, Robot
Robot building kits
The international robot football competition Robocup
Robocup Junior: International | Netherlands | Germany
Robocup Junior videos
Here is a film of an Austrian spider robot
Robots designed by the European Space Agency , with films of the robots performing under weightless conditions
Robots designed by NASA/JPL to explore the surface of planets
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