November 2012 ascent Thought leadership from Atos white paper Connected Robots Your business technologists. Powering progress This white paper provides a vision of how robots will develop, increasingly interact with their environment and, through the adoption of new technologies, collaborate, cooperate and evolve. This paper also shows how IT services providers will play a role in enabling the further development of robotics and how robots will progress beyond the current state-of-the-art into what Atos refers to as the ‘3i Robot’ that embodies information, intelligence and integration. © Atos, 2012, all rights reserved. The contents of this white paper is owned by Atos. You may not use or reproduce it in any type of media, unless you have been granted prior written consent thereto by a competent person authorized to represent Atos for such purpose. 2 Ascent / Connected Robots Connected Robots Contents 04 08 Definition of a Robot Will the Future Robot mimic How the term robot has been traditionally described, human behavior? how it has already evolved as a result of advances in A look at how robots could call on social networks similar technology, and a look at what it could become based on to those used by humans to connect and communicate the current and potential scope of interaction with the with one another and even with humans in the virtual physical and virtual worlds. world. 05 09 Insight into the Futuristic Robot Business Opportunities How the potential to off-load computational aspects to The expected exponential growth of the robot population the Cloud could alter the way robots are constructed and offers immense opportunities in many markets. operate. 10 06 Issues and Challenges Where is the Mind of the Future The implications of enabling robotic-based services and Robot? their potential impact on society must not be overlooked. A consideration of how a robot’s short-term memory could be located within the robot, but its context and 11 long-term memory could be provided by the Cloud, significantly increasing processing capabilities and Conclusion offering other potential benefits. A summary of issues and ideas covered in the paper. About the Authors About the Atos Scientific Community This white paper was developed by members of Mike Smith, Chief Technology Officer, UK and The Atos Scientific Community is a network of the Atos Scientific Community: Ireland Managed Services, [email protected] some 100 top scientists, representing a mix of Simon Elliott, Business Innovation Director. Paritosh Wechalekar, Principal Architect – all skills and backgrounds, and coming from Media, product design and marketing, architecture. Application Development, Cloud and Mobility all geographies where Atos operates. Publicly HTTS Atos UK, [email protected] solutions, Atos India, [email protected] launched by Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO of Atos, the establishment of this community John Hall, UK Head of Portfolio and GKO, highlights the importance of innovation in the [email protected] dynamic IT services market and the need for a proactive approach to identify and anticipate game changing technologies. © Atos, 2012, all rights reserved. The contents of this white paper is owned by Atos. You may not use or reproduce it in any type of media, unless you have been granted prior written consent thereto by a competent person authorized to represent Atos for such purpose. Ascent / Connected Robots 3 Definition and scope A simple definition of a robot is: ‘any machine underlying information technologies as a Whilst these ‘laws’ originated within a work programmed to do work’. However, basic conduit for eventual real-world interaction (e.g. of fiction, they nevertheless lay down some machine automation is now so commonplace communicate contextual information to remote potentially important principles to be addressed that this classic definition is being replaced with observers). A robot can also have perception; as robots become more self-aware and are able a more apt phrase – ‘a machine with intelligence’. i.e. it has an ability to assimilate real-world to act more autonomously, as they will in the But even this fails to really capture the full inputs, make ‘contextual sense’ of them and act future. Fictional writers and moviemakers seem essence of what a robot has the potential to according to its programming and what it has to frequently fuel our vision of the technological be, particularly since the modes of interaction learned. future. between robots and their physical or virtual environments can be so diverse. The individual This view of perception, control and interaction and cultural connotations conjured up by the serves well, but misses one point that can often Artificial intelligence and word robot could be much, much broader. be found in the world of science fiction; whether miniaturization or not a robot can be truly sentient. In the mid-1900s, laboratories in MIT and Figure 1 outlines the scope of robotic interaction Stanford developed various fields of research with both the physical and virtual worlds. It In the 1940s, the word robot caught the world’s associated with robotics, including mobility, considers a range of inputs (both active control attention when Isaac Asimov coined the Three vision sensing, artificial intelligence and 1 and perception driven) and shows examples of Laws of Robotics : artificial neural networks (machine learning). the numerous possible outputs, actions or roles ``Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being, Technological advances since the first industrial that can arise. Using this kind of model, the role or through inaction allow a human being to implementations have improved the capability, of IT services as an enabling and necessary part come to harm. accuracy and performance of robots, with of the robotic interaction ecosystem begins to Law 2: A robot must obey orders given to it multiple forms of power actuation now emerge. `` by human beings, except where such orders available to suit all environments and functions. conflict with the first law. Miniaturization has developed to an almost A robot may have a direct physical unbelievable level through microprocessor Law 3: A robot must protect its own manifestation that allows it to mechanically `` technologies and nanobots can already be built existence, as long as such protection does act and react in the real world, but it may at the atomic scale – potentially powered by not conflict the first or second law. also operate in the virtual world using electric motors no bigger than a single molecule. Ambient Intelligence RFID Sensor Arrays Smart Mobility Video Feeds Big Data Social Networks GPS Complex Event Processing Dimensional Mapping Smart Metering Movement Friendship and interaction Construction Perception Mapping Hazardous work Reduce Human error Cleaning Web Agents The Entertaining REAL world work Robot VIRTUAL world work Expressions of emotion Use Body Language Providing advice Act without Morals Being a toy Control Enhancing human activity Organising Using information, Removal of human error intelligence and Securing information integration Internet of Things Machine Learning Big Data Distributed computing Business Process Connected Car Engine Management SOA Driverless car OS Figure 1 – The scope of robot interactions. 1 The Asimov rules are introduced in his 1942 short story “Runaround” March 1942, Astounding Science © Atos, 2012, all rights reserved. The contents of this white paper is owned by Atos. You may not use or reproduce it in any type of media, unless you have been granted prior written consent thereto by a competent person authorized to represent Atos for such purpose. 4 Ascent / Connected Robots Insight into the Futuristic Robot For the most part, robots’ ‘brains’ and control mechanisms currently sit ‘on-board’ the robots The physics of the robot With advances in IT, themselves. With advances in IT, especially in The following scenario is based on a flying wireless communications and virtualization, robot that might be used for carrying a camera especially in wireless there is no longer a need for the robotic mind to perform three-dimensional (3D) mapping to be confined within its physical body; instead tasks in a hazardous environment, perhaps communications and the computational aspects of perception and during warfare. One solution is the quadrotor control can be off-loaded to the Cloud. This which has four separate rotors arranged evenly virtualization, there is could radically alter the way that robots are on a geometric plane. Applying a common constructed and operate, and remove some of change in rotational speed to all rotors no longer a need for the constraints they currently face. allows the quadrotor to rise or fall. Applying combinations of lift and differing rotational Using remote compute resources, the robot will speeds to opposing pairs of rotors allows the the robotic mind to be able to efficiently process and make sense of quadrotor to pitch, yaw and move freely in all massive amounts of data within the context of three dimensions. However, there is a balance to be confined within its an even wider spectrum of stored knowledge. be struck between agility, size and payload. It will be able to take advantage of acquired physical body. learning from other robots, perhaps working In simple terms, the smaller the quadrotor, within teams or communities. No longer will the lighter and more agile it is, but the less the robot have to be constructed to protect load carrying ability