Friday, July 10, 2020

3 Consternations Developing at the Front Lines of Robotics


Every business modeler understands that defining, strengths weaknesses, threats and opportunities are central to clear and comprehensive strategic planning. Unless the three long game strategic concerns outlined below find their rightful place in that strategic planning model for physical robots, physical robots are headed for a not so pretty inflection point and at the minimum they will face major constraints on long term deployment, viability and use.

Imagine the “robot jam”

Let’s be practical. There is only so much space inside buildings, hospitals, nursing homes, transportation centers, on sidewalks, in retail establishment and yes, particularly in restaurants and homes. If even half the forecasts of ‘future robots to be deployed’ are realized, robots will be crowding out people and running into one another. Simply said, the current model of physical/ mobile robot utilizations is simply not scalable. Worse yet, such large scale deployments will create social-space chaos, bringing in the regulators, licensors, and taxation. Let alone unleash the liability lawyers seeking compensation for robots obstructing and crashing into people and things or standing still to avoid collisions.

Who is Going to Service These Bots, effectively?

Let’s be even more practical. No one can expect that every deployed robot will function over time without failure or damaging incident. Such ‘failures’ as they will assuredly arise may be as simple as needing a battery replacement or more dramatic like retrieving a robot from the bottom of a swimming pool, or collecting one at the bottom of a set of stairs or one stuck stranded and immobile on a sidewalk or in a doorway. How about when some malicious person douses a robot in public with foam or glue spray? Or, when someone just picks it up and steals away with it? No matter, the point is that I have yet to learn of any robot manufacturer’s nationwide model for national on-site monitoring, pickup and repair service. The current model espoused by robot developers and manufacturers places the onus on the customer to monitor, retrieve, diagnose, package and ship for repair. Who is going to take care of and how for all the robot physical/mechanical issues generated by these thousands of forecasted robot deployments and their inherent failure rates?

“Amusing at best”.

The third issue is the human interface expectations established by the physical style of mechanical robots. Most robot design implementations thus far seek to convey a human like motif, a set of attributes that seemingly are designed to convey comfort and familiarity to the interfacing human. They usually have heads, blinking eyes, arms, some have legs. The problem is that in following this path the engagement and response expectations of the robot are set beyond what is proto-typically possible today. Most humans, interfacing with a mechanical robot, soon drift away somewhat amused, maybe, but typically underwhelmed. Truthfully, there are two factors at work. First, most robots when deployed are ‘one horse pony’ demonstrators. I’ve watched people (i.e. customers) walk right past a robot in a public environment and when asked about doing so they state “Oh yeah, I spoke to that robot the other day.  It has nothing new to say.” This is not the robot’s fault as much as the content is usually woefully weak if not silly. Secondly, there is hardly ever a sense that you are actually connecting individually with the robot and being engaged as a unique person in a useful or rewarding conversation. Left as is, robots will remain to be seen as not much more than a gimmick that does dances and takes selfie photo.

This is why smart, AI-powered robots that can engage individuals (detect) emotional conditions and conduct a ‘pathway’ of a logical, in-depth conversation are needed. In summary, my belief is that we need to move away from the mechanical, fixed structural/mechanical robot models so popular today and move to or at least create a new class of what I foresee as ‘soft robots’. Having seen the emerging screen based ‘animated, AI-powered KIOSK creatures’ that can convey engagement and be much more ‘alive’ without the scalability constraints of physical, mechanical platforms I am heartened that it is possible. These soft robots, these ‘artificial creatures’ I predict will be the new interface.

Smart robot developers would be wise to move to these ‘artificial creature’ style interfaces.

These three industry impacting considerations need to be crafted and integrated into a new era solution that creates a future robot world that is much more scalable, manageable, resilient and yes, more satisfying to humans.

Mike Radice is Chairman of the Technology Advisory for ChartaCloud Robotics, https://CHARTACLOUDROBOTICS.com and https://www.ROBOTTECA.com info@chartacloud.com