Future of Robotics

OBJECTIVE 2020: THESE WILL BE THE ROBOTS OF TOMORROW

They dare to attend to the public in hotels, they watch and they guard commercial centers and lend a hand - or rather, a pair of precise tweezers - to the surgeons in certain operations.

More and more are the spaces in which we discovered a robot and a human interacting with each other and it seems that in the near future it will not be uncommon to find a machine working side by side with a scientist or a chef accompanying the chef of a restaurant.

Less predicted by the US consultancy Merrill Lynch, which estimates that by 2020 the sector of robotics and artificial intelligence will reach a value of 153,000 million dollars (146,000 million euros). Gartner analysts, meanwhile, say that for that same year robotics will be among the main concerns of the CIO of any company. But, what will be the robots of tomorrow? What relationship will they have with humans? Will they become our co-workers and friends or will they be smart enough to fear them?

The future, today

A few months ago BakerHostetler, a US law firm, signed up for one of its teams to ROSS, a robot with knowledge of bankruptcy legislation that helps lawyers in investigative tasks. ROSS reads the different regulations, gathers evidence and even dares to make inferences and throw answers based on evidence.

For this ROSS uses the artificial intelligence algorithms of Watson, the computer system created by IBM capable of understanding human language and interacting with the same. Algorithms that also allow you to learn from the lawyers who use it. But despite being endowed with artificial intelligence, ROSS is not a robot with physical presence, rather a program. More body presents Da Vinci, a robot composed of four arms that helps surgeons to perform operations such as prostate cancer interventions, a gastrectomy or an endometriosis.

Since it was launched in 2000, Da Vinci has participated in 3 million operations. In some European countries it is already present in most of the hospitals, some of them public, and this is thanks to the benefits for the patient: a faster recovery and less blood loss during the intervention. Both ROSS and Da Vinci are part of the technology that a company has.

Artificial intelligences that, according to Rob Nail, founder of Singularity University, have been possible thanks to the increasingly smaller size of the sensors, the greater processing capacity of the computers, the widespread use of GPS technology and the advance in programming languages, which has cheapened the price of having a robot.

As noted in a report by US asset management firm Piper Jaffray, if once owning an industrial robot cost a company between 100,000 and 500,000 dollars (between 95,000 and 479,000 euros), currently the price of an intelligent machine is between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars (19,000 and 47,000 euros), a cost similar to having a vehicle. However, today there are also robotic solutions for consumers. Of course, not all have the appearance of robots.  According to Joan Oliver, director of the Robotics Institute for Dependency, an example would be Amazon's assistant, Echo.

It is, in particular, "it can be an aid for dependent people, it warns you of the time it takes or you have Be careful with the clothes you wear, and listen and answer questions, "he says. To which he adds that for a little more money we can get a machine with a face capable of interacting more with the user "and without the need for great artificial intelligence". The Robotics Institute for Dependency is part of the Ave Maria Foundation, an association responsible for caring for people with intellectual disabilities, either at home or in the residence of the foundation.

Among its projects under development highlights the Never Alone project, a computer program that allows managing communication between the different organizations and people. They surround the dependent person, in addition to reminding him of certain activities to do when he is at home, such as taking out the trash after turning on a light next to the trash can. They are the simple systems, low cost, little or no intrusive and specific to each person.

Although the solution of the Robotics Institute for Dependency goes through making the dependent person's home intelligent in order to help him, Oliver is clear that in the future this system will coexist with the presence of a robot. When you have to interact with the person, how to perform an activity, a game or try to socialize, and a robot is a personification of this software and an element for interacting more effectively.  To which is added the fact that caregiver robots have sensors that help detect the user's emotions.

Emotions in a Robot

Because in order for a robot and a dependent person to interact, it is necessary for the robot to understand and know how to recreate the emotions of the human being. This is confirmed by Helena Matute, director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology.

"For humans like to interact with the robot, it has to have a fluent and agile conversation and the more we understand and empathize, much better, "he explains. And he gives as an example the moments in which a person feels afflicted. "If he is sad and the robot realizes that he is sad and asks him what is wrong.” Something Ricardo Sanz, a doctor of robotics and electronics, also agrees with artificial intelligence of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. "People are accustomed to interact with people and if we have a humanoid robot that is able to put appropriate faces, better," he says.

For some time the European Commission has invested, together with European companies and academic entities, in several projects on caregiver robots for the elderly or disabled. In all of them, in addition to creating the robot, the researchers in charge of a certain prototype study the relationship they have with an older person installing the machine in their home.

Hence, the optimal level of empathy that a robot should have is also studied. But the fact that a robot is capable of detecting emotions and reproducing them does not mean that the machine understands them and that is something that, according to Sanz, the actors know how to do. "An actor who cries in the theater does not have to be sad and a robot that puts a face or a gesture that we associate with sadness does not mean that the robot is sad".

Something that, however, can be achieved in a distant future. According to Sanz, research in robotic emotion is beginning to take its first steps, although we must first understand how a human being feels emotion. "If you do not know for humans, we can hardly build machines."

Risks of Artificial Intelligence

Despite the fact that many consultants estimate the boom that the robotics sector will experience in 2020, Gartner analysts say that a robot will never be created completely autonomous.

That neither will be possible nor desirable. The consultant recommends that the machines of the nearest future be able to learn the predictable, that they can be directed with precision and in a controlled way and that the human being is ultimately responsible for the consequences of its use. Because the fact that an artificial intelligence is capable of learning on its own - as it happens today - carries risks. Among them, for example, that the machine knows how to act and manipulate following the expression of our emotions.

According to Matute, the robot learns by following the stimulus-response process, so it can learn to react in a certain way to one or another emotion and act according to the objective it pursues. Without forgetting that the same ability to learn as they own the machines of today allows that in a short time said machines surpass us in intelligence. Hence, the psychologist believes it is necessary for public administrations to think of measures to avoid such risks, as has happened in the United States and the United Kingdom, "where they will create a commission to observe continuously how the artificial intelligence algorithms are developing.”