Page 20 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

xx Modern Robotics

Serious robotics research inevitably brings one to basic philosoph-
ical questions. As robots become more sophisticated, they become
mirrors in which we see something similar to ourselves in some
ways yet alien in others. Researchers draw different conclusions
about how robots may challenge or transform us. Hans Moravec
believes that robots will reach and then surpass human intelligence
around the middle of this century. Kevin Warwick, creator of the
first human neural implant, believes that as robots become more
like us, we should become more like them—“cyborgs” who can use
robotic technology to extend the capabilities of the human body
and mind.
What will the future interactions of people and robots be like?
Rodney Brooks sounded a hopeful note on the BBC news program
Hardtalk on August 19, 2002: “Every technology, every science that
tells us more about ourselves is scary at the time. We’ve so far man-
aged to transcend all of that and come to a better understanding of
ourselves.”
On a practical level, this understanding is creating a new hybrid
science of biology and robotics. Mitsuo Kawato, director of the
ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan,
explained new developments in the January 2005 issue of MIT’s
Technology Review. Kawato’s laboratory is using detailed scans
of human brains to help design a robot that has neural and brain
structures similar to those of a human child. Kawato explained
that “Only when we try to reproduce brain functions in artificial
machines can we understand the information processing of the
brain.”