The Coming Tipping Point in Robotics

1. The Coming Tipping Point in Robotics Mark W. Spong Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair and Dean Excellence in Education Chair Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX 75080

2. The Coming Tipping Point in Robotics How many of you interact with a computer at least once a day? How many of you interact with a robot at least once a day? Over the next 25 years robots will be as common as computers are today.

3. What is a Tipping Point? A Tipping Point refers to a threshold, a moment of attainment of a critical mass resulting in an irreversible and unstoppable change. A Tipping Point in Robotics will result from the impact of Moore’s Law on Communication, Computation, Sensing, and Control.

4. What is Moore’s Law? Moore’s Law refers to the exponential increase of computational power and exponential decrease of cost of computers over time. Number of Transistors Logarithmic scale cost time 2011 1971

5. The Tipping Point in Computers • In 1971 computers were rare, large, slow, and expensive. • People generally had to be isolated from computers. • In 2011 computers are ubiquitous, small, fast, and cheap. • Computers share the same space with people.

6. The momentum started to build in the 1970’s and early 1980’s (TI, Apple, IBM) • The Tipping Point occurred in the 1990s (Internet, Mosaic, Netscape, smartphones) In effect, the computer industry capitalized on the exponential changes in cost and performance resulting from Moore’s Law. The same thing will happen in Robotics over the next 25 years.

7. Let’s Start with a Seemingly Simple Question What is a Robot? Unimation `Unimate’ Robot Cincinnati Milacron T3 Robot The original notion of a robot was the manipulator arm used in factory automation.

8. What is a broader notion of a robot? Certainly, everyone would say that Gort is a robot. Is this a robot? Remotely-Piloted Plane

9. What about this? Autonomous Rover What about these? Roomba Vacuum Cleaner DaVinci Surgical System

10. The Notion of What Qualifies as a Robot has Changed Greatly Over the Years

11. What are the Attributes of a Robot? Environment • A Robot • Gathers Information about its Environment - Sensing • Processes that Information to Make Decisions - Thinking • Performs Work on the Environment – Acting Acting Sensing Thinking

12. Mechanics Electronics Controls Sensors Software A Robot is a Mechatronic System at the heart of which is Feedback Control. • Feedback Control allows: • Autonomy • Performance in Unstructured Environments • Learning So, to be called a robot, an entity must • be a machine, i.e. a physical entity capable of `doing real work’ • operate in a closed-loop fashion under computer control transforming sensing into action

13. The Humanoid Robot is the ultimate Mechatronic System and the most like us: • It has mechanics (hands, arms, legs) • It has sensors (cameras, force, touch) • It has a brain (computer) • It incorporates feedback control (actions are based on sensed quantities)

14. But is the Humanoid the future of Robotics? In other words, will the future be Rosie? or Roomba?

15. I would argue that a tipping point in robotics will occur at the confluence of three areas: Networked Robots Human-Robot Interaction Telepresence

16. Networked Robotics By Networked Robots we mean a group of independent robots that can function as a single coordinated entity by communication and cooperation. • Applications include: • Surveillance • Environmental Monitoring • Health Monitoring • Cooperative Manipulation • Formations of Vehicles • Agricultural robotics

17. The problem of coordination of networked robots is inspired by natural systems. Examples from nature include: Schooling of Fish Flocking of Birds

18. Attitude Synchronization of Networked Robots M. Fujita, Tokyo Institute of Technology M.W. Spong, University of Texas at Dallas This work was begun in CSL and ITI at UIUC, supported by Boeing, NSF, and ONR.

19. Human-Robot Interaction The biggest change in robotics over the past 25 years has been the nature of human-robot interaction. In the past, robots were big, dumb, and dangerous. Humans and robots had to be physically separated by cages, pressure-sensitive mats, light curtains, and emergency stop switches.

20. Human-Robot Interaction Today robots are designed to work closely with people in the same space

21. Human-Robot Interaction • Applications include: • Assistive robots for the elderly • Rehabilitation robots • Exercise trainer robots • Robot servants in the home • Military robots

22. Human-Robot Interaction Gretzky – The First Air Hockey Playing Robot Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1996-1999

23. The Results Spong, M.W. and Bishop, B.E., “Development of a Three Degree of Freedom Air Hockey Playing Robot,” IEEE Intl Conference on Robotics and Automation, Video Proceedings, Segment 19, Leuven, Belgium, May 1998. [recipient of the conference best video award] Recall that this is 1990’s technology. In particular, computation and computer vision have made significant improvements thanks, in large part, to Moore’s Law.

24. Human-Robot Interaction • Brain-Computer Interface Technology is also being developed for • Control of Prosthetics • Control of Assistive Devices • Control of Robots, Airplanes and Automobiles • Gaming UT-Dallas/ CINVESTAV project on BCI for assistive devices

25. Telepresence • From the Greek root tele – from afar: • Television • Telecommuting • Teleconferencing • Teleoperation • Telepresence

26. Teleoperation Teleoperation refers to controlling robots at a distance and was one of the first applications of robotics. The problem of semi-autonomous teleoperation combines networking, human-robot interaction, and telepresence.

27. Teleoperation of a Robot Formation LARS – The Laboratory for Autonomous and Robotic Systems The University of Texas at Dallas

28. Telepresence In the future,Telerobots such as this will be your personal Avatar. They will be widely distributed around the world and ready for hire. Instead of traveling to that conference in Detroit, you will log into AvatarsRUs.com and attend the conference without leaving home.

29. Telepresence This will be a disruptive technology impacting transportation, hotels, restaurants and entertainment industries. It will also greatly increase productivity. People can attend more conferences and meetings without having to travel.

30. Telepresence

31. Summary • Robots will soon be • inexpensive and widely available • networked together, remotely accessible, and remotely controllable • working with people, extending the capabilities of people, entertaining people • working in hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, shops and private homes • monitoring our health, our environment, our infrastructure, our security

32. Research Needs • Object Recognition • Manual Dexterity including Haptics • Improved Brain Interfaces • Natural Language and Gesture Interfaces • Social Understanding • Cyber Security and Privacy Awareness • Modeling and Control Algorithm Development • Formal Methods of Verification

33. Thank You! Questions?