Page 27 - Sensing, Intelligence, Motion : How Robots and Humans Move in an Unstructured World

2 MOTION PLANNING—INTRODUCTION

professional will likely give up when hearing from friends or school audiences
that the best robots are found in Disneyworld. (“What do you mean? Last week
I myself talked to one in Disneyworld in Orlando.” Don’t try to tell him he
actually spoke to an operator in the nearby building.)
It would not be fair to blame Karel Capek, or Disney, or Hollywood for
the one-dimensional view of robotics. The notion of a robotic machine goes far
back in time. People have always dreamt of robots, seeing them as human-like
machines that can serve, fascinate, protect, or scare them. In Egyptian temples,
large figurines moved when touched by the morning sun rays. In medieval Euro-
pean cities, bronze figures in large tower clocks moved (and some still move) on
the hour, with bells ringing.
Calling on human imagination has been even easier and more effective than
relying on physical impersonation. Jewish mysticism, with its Cabbala teachings
and literary imagery, has also favored robots. Hence the image of Golem in
Cabbala, a form that is given life through magic. In the Hebrew Bible (Psalms
139:16) and in the Talmud, Golem is a substance without form. Later in the
Middle Ages the idea took the form; it was said that a wise man can instill life
in an effigy, thus creating a Golem with legs and arms and a head and mighty
muscles. A “typical” Golem became a human-like automaton, a robot.
Perhaps the best-known such story is of Rabbi Loew of sixteenth-century
Prague, in Czechia. (The Rabbi’s somewhat scary gravestone still greets the
visitor in the Jewish cemetery at Prague’s center.) Rabbi Loew created his Golem
from clay, to serve as his servant and to help protect the Jews of Prague. Though
the creature was doing just that, saving Jews of Prague from many calamities by
using its great strength and other supernatural skills, with time it became clear
that it was getting out of hand and becoming dangerous to its creator and to other
Jews. Rabbi Loew thus decided to return the Golem back to its clay immobility,
which he achieved using a secret Cabbalistic formula. He then exiled the figure to
the attic of his Prague synagogue, where it presumably still is, within two blocks
from Loew’s grave. This story became popular through the well-written 1915
novel called Der Golem, by a German writer Gustav Meyrink, and the 1920 movie
under the same title by the German director Paul Wegener (one can still find it
in some video shops). The Golem, played by Wegener himself, is an impressive
figure complete with stiff “robotic” movement and scary square-cut hairdo.
We still want the helpful version of that robot—in fact, we never wanted
it more. The last 40 years have seen billions of dollars, poured by the United
States, European, Japanese, and other governments, universities, and giant com-
panies into development of robots. As it often happens with new technologies,
slow progress would breed frustration and gaps in funding; companies would
lose faith in quick return and switch loyalties to other technologies. Overall,
however, since 1960 the amount of resources poured by the international com-
munity into robotics has been steadily going up. For what it’s worth, even the
dream of an anthropomorphic likeness is well and alive, even among professionals
and not only for toy robots. Justifications given—like “people feel comfortable
with a human-looking robot,” as if people would feel less comfortable with a