The future of robotic technology is as interesting as robots are bound to be boring; eventually. Sounds contradictory? Think again.
Today, the latest robotic technology is well covered in the news to the point of overdoing it. A huge buzz is generated every time someone comes up with a robot that, say, can fetch you a drink, shake your hand, be your pet, or what have you. And what’s so exciting about robots, in fact or in fiction?
The Media Buzz Over Robotic Technology Developments
Well, first of all, they’re unfamiliar enough for most people that robot fiction can get away with just about everything, no matter how absurd. And that brings us to the other thing: robotic technology is still very young. Like a young toddler receives attention for everything it does the first time: speaking, walking, running, trying to trip the person who taught it to walk, and so on, so it is with the latest robotic technology. So, with every new development and emerging possibility, robots are becoming more and more a part of everyday life, till one day robots become as commonplace as the household telephone. Come to think of it, maybe your friendly household telephone ITSELF would be a robot. After all, the world of robotic technology as we know it today is undergoing not just a vertical evolution but a lateral one as well. Not only are robots being invented and reinvented to perform various daily tasks, there are several devices that are fast approaching a level where it would not be wrong to call them robots.
Harking Back to the Past: The Acceptance of Technological Evolution
Coming back to the topic, take any technology that has emerged within the past 100 years and changed the way we live as an analogous reference point. At the turn of the 20th Century, air travel was still only slightly better than hot air balloons (the first Zeppelin took off in 1900) and the television still about half a century away. Although long distance communication through the telegraph was pretty much ubiquitous, what used to pass for tech press in the day were very excited about something called radio communication. Cut to today, none of these technologies even merits major coverage: flying once inspired epics and innumerable flights of fancy (forgive the pun) but even round-the-world flights are no longer press fodder, and while nobody could even imagine seeing images on a screen being broadcast from thousands of miles away, the television is such an essential part of the household that it is more a source background noise now. And that, ladies and gentlemen reading this robotics blog, is how the robotic technology of the future ought to look like: unremarkable, barely notice-worthy and boring.
Robotic Technology in Popular Culture Its Real-World Perceptions
Granted, robots have captured imaginations quite differently, in the sense that the notion of man creating a being in his image has long being an element of fantastical literature (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for one), along with the potentially disastrous consequences. Robotic technology, in both fact and fiction, has been a culmination of this long-standing fascination. As such, most laypersons have a concept of robots as androids or humanoids capable of making decisions. No wonder then, that humanoid robots becoming a part of society (Bicentennial Man, AI) is a common tech-related motif in popular culture. And that is second only to the long-enduring paranoid notion of robotic technology becoming intelligent enough to take autonomous decisions in contradiction of standing orders, turning against its creators and even trying to eliminate humanity (Terminator franchise and I, Robot being examples). For lack of a better term, we could call this fear an extension of what Asimov called ‘the Frankenstein complex’.
What Lies Ahead
As robots become more and more commonplace, the common man would come to see how robots aren’t just walking man-like contraptions but that the term can be applied device that can be programmed to go about mechanical tasks in a way that gives it reasonable decision freedom within a specific frame. Already, homes are welcoming robotic vacuum cleaners, pets and the like.
A car’s cruise control, or aircraft’s auto pilot system can equally well be regarded as products of robotic technology if they’re capable of not only maintaining speed (and altitude in planes) but also capable of taking contingency decisions. Already, inroads are being made in that direction. The military is funding research in robotic technology towards invention of armed robotic vehicles, both aerial and ground-based, which could act and engage (or not) based on situational awareness independently, with the scope for remote human intervention.
All that, however, would not serve to make the presence of robotic technology in our daily lives felt as profoundly as robotic gadgets specifically designed for the home. The true revolution in the world of robotics would be for robots to become mundane everyday devices that we’d be as familiar with as we are with. Till that time comes, its going to be a fun ride. The future in boring. The future is interesting. We’ll leave you with that thought, but stay tuned because we’ll be back soon enough with more on the marvels of robotic technology.
