Page 19 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

INTRODUCTION xix

Rodney Brooks (also at MIT) looked to insects as their inspiration
for walking robots.
The coming of the Space Age and the desire to explore the solar
system beyond the reach of human astronauts led to the development
of robot space probes. At MIT and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California, researchers developed robots that could travel
millions of miles to gather data from Mars and other planets. Viking
landers sampled the soil of Mars in 1976. By the end of the century,
thanks to the work of robotics researchers and engineer-managers
such as Donna Shirley, mobile robots had become planetary rov-
ers that could drive around Mars looking for interesting rocks and
formations.

From Helpers to Companions

Back on Earth, mobile robots have started to become useful in
everyday life. In some hospitals, HelpMate robots (developed by the
same Joseph Engelberger of Unimate fame) can be found delivering
medicine and records without human supervision. Robots are even
starting to become household appliances. The robot vacuum cleaner
Roomba (created by Colin Angle, Helen Greiner, and Rodney
Brooks) can do a decent job of keeping the floor clean. Tomorrow
robots may help the elderly get around, fetch things for them, and
monitor their medical condition.
The ultimate robots—the ones first seen in myth and later in sci-
ence fiction—are the ones that look and act like people. Honda’s
Asimo robot (developed by a team led by Hirose Masato) looks
like a tall child and walks and jogs sure-footedly. But the essence of
humanoid robots also includes the possibility that they might think,
learn, and even feel the way we do. Rodney Brooks’s and Cynthia
Breazeal’s work during the 1990s with the robots Cog and Kismet
expressed a much more organic approach to robot development.
These robots generated their actions out of the complex interaction
of sense perceptions, movement, and the cues they observed in the
humans around them. The hope of these researchers is that robots
can become social beings.