The daily tour around the blogsphere demonstrates the concerns of the present are adequately analyzed so it’s a good evening to search for “the problems of tomorrow”. I don’t mean stuff like global warming which is a fictional horror story fronting a political agenda. I’m more interested in issues which will become common and complex enough to get future politicians to going “Howard Dean” on each other. Today’s candidate has great potential to be controversial by mid-century: Robot Skin.
Vladimir Lumelsky apparently picked up shop and left the UW Madison’s Robotics Laboratory for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to continue his mission to provide robots a way to feel their environment. As robots become increasing common and begin working in ever close proximity to humans, the thinking goes that you may want them to notice your presence and move to avoid a collision.
Vladimir Lumelsky apparently picked up shop and left the UW Madison’s Robotics Laboratory for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to continue his mission to provide robots a way to feel their environment. As robots become increasing common and begin working in ever close proximity to humans, the thinking goes that you may want them to notice your presence and move to avoid a collision.
"Robots move well on their own, especially when nothing is in the way," Lumelsky explained. However, change the environment and a different picture emerges. "Robots should be able to react, but today's robots can't," he said. "That's the difference and that's got to change for exploration."In other words, if you want automatons to reach out and touch something they need feeling. Therein lays the embryo of a developing mid-century ethical crisis. Once you have feelings you open the door for hurt feelings and the trial lawyers start lining up. George Lucas got it wrong when he gave R2D2 and C3P0 Jules Verne era bodies. When the global corporations gain control and perfect this technology all the robots will be ……… sensual?
