News Articles

1. Robotics: A Route to the Survival of Advanced Societies?

   Murphey, Dwight D
   Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies
   12-01-2007

   The world's more advanced economies and their societies are facing crises posed by the competition of vast pools of low-wage foreign labor and by the aging of their populations. Globalization has caused low-wage foreign labor, some of it of excellent quality, to come into direct competition with the firms and workers within the advanced economies through imports, offshore production, outsourcing and immigration. The result for many individuals and firms within the developed societies is growing economic displacement, a struggle for economic survival, and downward pressure on salaries, wages and living standards. At the same time, the populations in the developed societies are growing older, raising the question of how an evergrowing number of the elderly are to get by in a time, soon to come, when there will be relatively few working-age adults. Further, the West faces demographic swamping by the waves of immigration, both legal and illegal. Solutions for all of these problems are hard to come by, but one that is receiving increasing attention is for the advanced economies to turn their reliance primarily to their capital. They can do this by accelerating their development of non-labor-intensive technologies and business processes. The growth of robotics looms large as perhaps the preeminent future form of such a technology - one with far-reaching social implications.

   In Thomas Friedman's phrase, the world has "become flat." The advance of modern communications and transportation and the international flow of capital have put the world's enormous pools of low-pay workers right "on the doorstep," so to speak, of the advanced economies. Imported goods made cheaply, the use of outsourcing and offshore production, and a long-continuing flood of immigrants from throughout the world have made it difficult for firms to survive if they don't themselves join the rush toward low-cost labor. For their part, individual workers are pressed into increasing competition with that labor, which commands neither the salaries nor benefits that workers in the advanced economies have so long received. During all of this, an important palliative is that the low-cost goods keep inflation in check for items they include and provide a boon to consumers, even as the central bank's policy of increasing the quantity of money stimulates the stock market. The most salient fact about it is that it is no longer labor that receives significant remuneration, but capital, since it is capital that is able to harness the global pool of low-cost labor.

   At the same time, the populations of the advanced societies are growing older and are shrinking (if immigration is not counted) because of below-replacement birth rates. Unless a society allows the entrance of large numbers of immigrants, there is the looming question of "who will do the work that will support a largely elderly population?" In the absence of an alternative, this would point toward even further immigration. . . .

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2. Nothing to lose but their chains - Robots

   Anonymous
   The Economist
   06-21-2008

   Robots are getting cleverer and more dextrous. Their time has almost come.

   TITAN is a bit of a hulk. It can lift a BMW into the air with just one arm, swing it around and then set it down again in exactly the same spot with barely a quiver. Moving cars is a piece of cake for the world's strongest robot. Built by KUKA, a large German robot-maker, Titan lifts 1,000kg and with its arm extended is as tall as a giraffe. It works out by moving huge concrete structures, steel-castings and pallets loaded with glass.

   At just 1.4 metres in height, Partner Robot is a wimp--but its talent is versatility, not strength. Made by Toyota, Partner Robot is humanoid. Rather than being bolted to the floor like Titan, it can walk on two articulated legs. One version can even run a little. Instead of a single giant limb, it has two arms each with four delicate fingers and a thumb. With a violin tucked under its chin, Partner Robot can make a decent fist of the tune to "Land of Hope and Glory". If you give Partner Robot a shove, its sense of balance is good enough to stop it from falling flat on its expressionless face.

   As different as these two machines are, they share a common ancestor: the industrial robot. The first factory robots appeared in the 1960s. They could do only simple, monotonous and mundane things, like moving objects from one production line to another--they were drudges, like the slaves Karel Capek described in 1920 in the play that coined the term from the Czech word robota, or "forced labour". By the 1990s factory robots had become adept at cutting, milling, welding, assembling and operating warehouses. The cost of industrial robots has also fallen sharply against the cost of people (see chart), which has helped to boost their numbers to more than 1m worldwide. Most of them are built in Europe and Japan, with about half at work in Asia.

   Today, thanks to the relentless increase in the power of computing, the latest robots are being fitted with sophisticated systems that enable them to see, feel, move and work together. . . .

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3. The Japanese Robot Revolution

   Behreandt, Dennis
   The New American
   11-13-2006

   With an aging population and a looming labor shortage, Japanese scientists are pushing hard to develop advanced androids and integrate them into human society.

   Star Wars was - and remains - a cultural phenomenon for many reasons, but one of its most striking aspects in 1977 was its depiction of a human society permeated by robots. And not just any robots, but humanoid robots. In the original Star Wars movie, filmmaker George Lucas envisioned robots, or "droids," many of them bipedal and looking in a general sense like humans, as being of vital importance in helping maintain the material infrastructure of society.

   Science fiction was far from reality in 1977. But in the last few years, robotics has finally begun to take visible steps toward realizing Lucas' vision. Today several Japanese firms, including such recognizable companies as Honda, Toyota, and Mitsubishi, are introducing prototype personal robots that look the part of C3PO, Lucas' "protocol droid." . . .

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1. Scientist Sees War Fought by Robots; Humans Won't Be Needed as Machines Act More Efficiently

   Los Angeles Times. Feb 5, 1950. pg. 35

   Abstract (Summary) Robots will replace the fighting men in a future war, Canada's top military scientist, Dr. O. M. Solandt, predicts.

   Original Newspaper Image (PDF)

2. Robots quit clanking around and report to work; Unions reassured Quick learner 'Credibility' assist

   By Frederick H. Guidry. The Christian Science Monitor. May 8, 1971. pg. 12

   Abstract (Summary) Whenever the subject of robots comes up, attention usually divides in two directions: What astonishing things can they do? And what threat do they pose to mankind?

   Original Newspaper Image (PDF)

3. The Hartford Courant. Oct 15, 1980. pg. C18

   Abstract (Summary) HINO, Japan -- To the layman, the scene on Fujitsu Fanuc Ltd.'s shop floor in this industrial suburb offers a baffling glimpse into Japan's new age of industrial technology.

   Original Newspaper Image (PDF)

Dissertations

1. A study of human-robot interaction with an assistive robot to help people with severe motor impairments

   by Choi, Young Sang, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009 , 196 pages

   Abstract (Summary)
   We developed and evaluated a semi-autonomous mobile healthcare service robot named EL-E. I conducted four human studies involving patients with ALS with the following objectives: (1) to investigate and better understand the practical, everyday needs and limitations of people with severe motor impairments; (2) to translate these needs into pragmatic tasks or goals to be achieved through an assistive robot and reflect these needs and limitations into the robot's design; (3) to develop practical, usable, and effective interaction mechanisms by which the impaired users can control the robot; and (4) to evaluate the performance of the robot and improve its usability.

   In the initial user needs assessment, I identified the needs and wants of the target users (recruited from the ALS Center of the Emory Clinic) through user interviews and field studies involving the documentation of occurrences of object retrieval difficulty. The results help to inform the design and development of the robot system, with respect to common objects to be retrieved, preferable methods of object return/delivery, and the acceptance of potential control interface, as well as to direct the planned evaluation activities to test the assistive robot's abilities to meet the users' needs. This needs assessment also led to the development and validation of a list of common objects ranked according to their relative importance in terms of user needs for activities of everyday living and, thus, potential targets for robotic-assisted retrieval.

   To this end, an initial series of human evaluation studies were conducted to study two pragmatic issues--the design of a usable user control interface for users with varying motor limitations and the object delivery method of handing off a retrieved object to the human user. In the first study, three distinct user control interfaces were developed: (1) a modified, hand-held laser pointer; (2) a modified, ear-mounted laser pointer; and (3) a touch screen, graphic user interface on a portabe computing device. Users were asked to utilize these control interfaces to direct the robot to the three-dimensional coordinates of a target object for the purposes of object retrieval. The empirical results illustrated a high success rate of object retrieval (94.8%) and a very high level of user satisfaction. Perhaps not surprisingly, user preferences for the control interface were highly correlated with users' quantitatively measured motor capabilities, with upper limb mobility an important determinant of interface preference. More importantly, however, three viable control interfaces were developed to accommodate the variability in ALS patients' motor capabilities. Additionally, the study illustrated that the general paradigm of conveying 3D object location information to the assistive robot, regardless of the interface mechanism used, can successfully result in task completion without any required changes to the actual robot design and functionality.

   The second user evaluation study examined two delivery mechanisms--direct delivery to a user's hand and indirect delivery to a nearby surface--to determine the limitations with robot-assisted object delivery. Overall, the robot successfully delivered objects with a success rate of 98% for indirect delivery and 78% for direct delivery (with an overall success rate of 88% or 126 out of 144 trials across all conditions). The results indicate that indirect object delivery, the preferred method for some users, provides a robust and reliable (albeit slightly inefficient) object delivery method. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

   For full-text documents see ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses Database

2. How to teach a new robot new tricks - an interactive learning framework applied to service robotics

   by Remy, Sekou L., Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009 , 138 pages

   Abstract (Summary)
   The applications of robotics are changing. Just as computers evolved from the realm of research and extreme novelty tools to now becoming essential components of modern life, robotics is also making a similar transition. With the changes in applications come changes in the user base of robotics. These users will span a broad range of society, but there are some key properties that can be used to characterize them. First, they more often than not will not be the designers of the robots. Second, they will not have robot control as their primary task while operating the robot. Third, they will not have the resources or the desire to provide all the training that the robot will require, yet they will have the need to fine tune robot performance to their specific needs. Fourth, they will want to use multiple modes of interaction to make the robot accomplish the primary task. Fifth, they will expect and demand that the robot remain safe at all times (safe to humans, pets, or personal property) and expect the robot to be a readily replaceable appliance (cheap). Sixth, they will expect that the robot will be intelligent, at least in the confines of the task at hand.

   These are some of the key properties that will exist for the new user base. To address some of the needs that will arise because of these properties, we propose work that enables behavior transfer from teacher to robotic student that is facilitated through observation and interaction. Many users in the projected user base will not have exposure to the technologies that enable robotic operation. These users will however have some degree of understanding of how they would like the robot to provide assistance in accomplishing the task. The goal of this work is specifically to enable the user to transfer this understanding to the robot, and have the robot acquire this understanding via interactive learning.

   To make interactive learning possible via interaction we believe that the robot will have to be able to perform some degree of self regulation. Further, since it is assumed that the user will not have access to the robot's internal mechanisms, the robot will also have to be able to properly manage the knowledge it acquires over time and to verify and validate its understanding periodically. Scaffolding, a method in which teachers provide support while the student learns to master portions of a task, is likely to be the primary method to facilitate this process.

   This research will undertake study of coherence and its relevance to learning by observation. It will also implement the components that would enable a robot to learn to perform a small set of tasks and demonstrate them in various settings. For this work a robot will be defined as a hardware platform upon which a software agent operates. It is our desire that this software agent will be equipped to operate on any platform and learn any task that a human could perform with the same resources.

   Demonstrations of this research will highlight service robotics, with emphasis on assistive applications.

   For full-text documents see ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses Database

3. Aging in Japan: Importance of social integration

   by Tanaka, Kimiko, Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2008 , 194 pages

   Abstract (Summary)
   Intergenerational mutual care in Japan developed in the context of various factors, including cultural ideals, centralization of the civil state, and the family unit called the ie. Prior to the Meiji period, there were regional and class diversity in family life and no cultural ideal for women to take care of the dependent elderly. However, many scholars start with this patriarchal ie system (the system of primogeniture legally recognized in the Meiji Civil Code in 1898) as the benchmark against which to gauge the continuity, uniqueness, and change of eldercare during the twentieth century. This has resulted in many scholars assuming that the cultural underpinnings of the ie defined the care of 'frail elderly' as 'women's work' undertaken to preserve 'women's morality.' Since care has been pessimistically perceived as a caregiver's obligation, the elderly have too often been stereotyped as frail and dependent.

   Owing to longevity and reduced disability among the elderly after the Second World War, more elderly have challenged these stereotypes. Now perhaps Social Gerontologists should start to view the Japanese elderly as proactively choosing their opportunities to care and be cared for by important people beyond the family. This new view has broadened studies of aging beyond just the maintenance of physical and mental vitality to the social integration of older people with family, friends, and communities.

   In examining the relationship between social integration and the well-being of the elderly, previous studies supported the role-enhancement perspective. For the elderly who went through various life events, holding diverse roles is more likely to benefit their well-being through enhancing individual resources and social connections.

   The current study examines the importance of social integration on the well-being of the Japanese elderly using two waves of the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Survey of Aging. The findings support the role-enhancement perspective. Especially, residence showed complex effects. The rural elderly had greater odds than the urban elderly of having a disability. However, the rural elderly had lower odds than their urban peers of feeling depressed. The advantage of ruralites over urbanites in escaping from depression may arise from a greater integration of rural people into social networks of mutual care.

   For full-text documents see ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses Database