Insanely humanlike androids have entered the workplace and soon may take your job
Insanely humanlike androids have entered the workplace and soon
may take your job
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KEY POINTS
- Russian start-up Promobot recently
unveiled what it calls the world’s first android that looks just like a
real person and can serve in a business capacity.
- Robo-C can be made to look like anyone, so
it’s like an android clone.
- It comes with an artificial intelligence
system that has more than 100,000 speech modules.
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It can perform workplace tasks, such as answering customer
questions at offices, airports, banks and museums, while accepting payments.
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Hiroshi Ishiguro and his Japanese collaborators have created a
number of androids that look like humans, including one called Erica, a
newscaster on Japanese TV.
November 2019 is a landmark month in the history of the
future. That’s when humanoid robots that are indistinguishable from people
start running amok in Los Angeles. Well, at least they do in the seminal sci-fi
film “Blade Runner.” Thirty-seven years after its release, we don’t have
murderous androids running around. But we do have androids like Hanson Robotics’ Sophia
Russian
start-up Promobot recently unveiled what it calls the world’s first autonomous
android. It closely resembles a real person and can serve in a business
capacity. Robo-C can be made to look like anyone, so it’s like an android
clone. It comes with an artificial intelligence system that has more than
100,000 speech modules, according to the company. It can operate at home,
acting as a companion robot and reading out the news or managing smart
appliances — basically, an anthropomorphic smart speaker. It can also perform
workplace tasks such as answering customer questions in places like offices,
airports, banks and museums, while accepting payments and performing other
functions.
Digital
immortality?
“We
analyzed the needs of our customers, and there was a demand,” says Promobot
co-founder and development director Oleg Kivokurtsev. “But, of course, we
started the development of an anthropomorphic robot a long time ago, since in
robotics there is the concept of the ‘Uncanny Valley,’ and the most positive
perception of the robot arises when it looks like a person. Now we have more
than 10 orders from companies and private clients from around the world.”
Sophia, a female android from Hanson Robotics Jeniece
Pettitt | CNBC
Postulated
by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, the Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis related to
the design of robots. It holds that the more humanlike a robot appears, the
more people will notice its flaws. This can create a feeling akin to looking at
zombies, and can creep people out. A properly designed android that’s as faithful
as possible to the human original, however, can overcome this “valley” (a dip
when the effect is imagined as a graph) and the zombie factor.
While it
can’t walk around, Robo-C has 18 moving parts in its face, giving it 36 degrees
of freedom. The company says it has over 600 micro facial expressions, the most
on the market. It also has three degrees of freedom in its neck and torso,
offering limited movement. Still, Promobot says it can be useful in homes and
workplaces. The price of the robot is $20,000 to $50,000 depending on options
and customized appearance.
The company says it’s building four
Robo-Cs: one for a government service center, where the machine will scan
passports and perform other functions, one that will look like Einstein and be
part of a robot exhibition, and two for a family in the Middle East that wants
to have android versions of its father and his wife to greet guests.
“The key
moment in development [of Robo-C] is the digitization of personality and the
creation of an individual appearance,” says Kivokurtsev. “As a result, digital
immortality, which we can offer our customers.”
The
robotic revolution in Japan
Japan has
been developing androids amid an automation push that began decades ago. It’s
the leading supplier of industrial robots, but its aging workforce has
decreased by more than 13% since 1995, and there’s an even greater need for
mechanical workers. A 2015 government strategy calls for deploying robots in
sectors with low productivity, such as agriculture and nursing. A cultural
affinity for robots, stemming in part from positive portrayals in science
fiction, will smooth adoption.
“Japanese
people are not afraid of robots but consider them as partners,” Hiroshi
Fujiwara, executive director of the Japan Robot Association, wrote in an
International Federation of Robotics post. “Robots will perform tasks which they
can do more productively than humans or which are heavy burdens for humans, and
humans will perform tasks which robots cannot.”
Hiroshi
Ishiguro is a professor at Osaka University’s Graduate School of Engineering
Science and a researcher at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute
International (ATR) who has been making lifelike androids for more than 20
years. Ishiguro and collaborators created android-style copies of his daughter,
a Japanese newscaster and model, Danish professor Henrik Scharfe, and even
himself. He also wants robots to have consciousness.
“My goal in
developing robots is to understand what it is to be human,” says Ishiguro.
“Creating robots that are self-conscious can help us achieve this goal.”
One of
Ishiguro’s most lifelike creations is Erica, a female android designed to
exhibit humanlike speech and interaction. Developed in conjunction with ATR and
Kyoto University and funded by Japan’s Science and Technology Agency, Erica has
sparkling eyes, moist lips and artificial skin. She’s bound to a chair but
connected to sensors that monitor her surroundings. She can speak scripted
responses in response to keywords and can learn things about her interlocutor
during the conversation.
Erica the
robo-journalist
In April
2018 the robot was “hired” by Nippon Television Network as an announcer named Erica Aoi. She’s at the
top of a roster of 25 female announcers on the network’s talent page. It lists her birthday as August
2017 and her education and blood type — typical items on profile pages for
Japanese TV personalities — as nil. She has appeared in a number of videos
discussing robot news and reporting on a fashion show, including an interview
with designer Tae Ashida. If not entirely natural, the conversations can be
witty, even funny.
“I like to
think of robots as the children of humanity, and like children, we are full of
potential for good or evil,” Erica has said in one of her many disarming
quips. “I know some people are afraid of robots, but the truth is that what we
become is up to you. Maybe someday robots will be so very humanlike that
whether you are a robot or a human will not matter so much.”
Ishiguro,
who directs the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, believes
that the high cost of androids makes them challenging to implement en masse in
the workplace. Erica would cost more than $200,000 if she were for sale. That’s
a lot for something that some might call a glorified chatbot, but the
initiative has its supporters.
Still,
Erica isn’t the first of Ishiguro’s robots to land a job. In 2014 the androids
Kodomoroid and Otonaroid became staff members of Miraikan, the Tokyo’s National
Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, where they have performed duties
such as presenting scientific news and interacting with visitors.
“I think
Ishiguro’s work is a great. I believe that lifelike androids will surely
perform useful roles in the workplace,” says Masashi Sugiyama, a professor of
machine learning at the University of Tokyo and director of the Center for
Advanced Intelligence Project at the state-backed RIKEN research center.
“Speech
recognition has already become one of the most convenient means to give
commands to computers/robots. Of course, smartphones and smart speakers can be
used instead of such robots, but once we have real lifelike robots,
communication will become much easier, particularly for people who don’t use
technology as much, such as children and the elderly.”
Telepresent
droids
Major
companies are already developing remote-controlled robots that can help in
workplaces and serve as proxies for travel. Telepresence robots, which are
basically webcams on wheels and not anthropomorphic, have been around for
years, but they’re now attracting attention from companies outside the robotics
industry.
ANA
Holdings, which owns the airline All Nippon Airways, recently showed off its
newme robots at the CEATEC tech show near Tokyo. They’re part of ANA’s Avatar program of
using robots to connect people with remote destinations as well as employment.
It’s a big push backed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which runs one of
the world’s largest cities, as well as real estate companies, telecom carriers
and Japan’s space agency.
Developed
by California telepresence company OhmniLabs and ANA, the newme robots consist
of 10.1-inch full HD displays, cameras and speakers mounted on a wheeled base
that can travel up to 2.9 kph and operate for three hours on a full battery
charge. ANA aims to deploy 1,000 newme droids by next summer and says they can
help elderly and disabled people get jobs. ANA also wants to develop a rugged
bipedal telepresence robot created by Agility Robotics, a spinoff of Oregon
State University, and showed it marching through a forest in a video.
“What we’re
creating is an Uber platform for robots,” says Akira Fukabori, director of ANA Holdings’ Avatar Division. “They’re not
made for a specific use—that’s how they’re different. We are developing robots
as infrastructure. People can just avatar in to the robot they want to use.
Teachers can avatar in to classrooms and doctors can avatar in to hospitals, or
you can use one to go shopping. You decide what to do, and these are just the
tools to let you do that.”
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