Personal robots are designed to help people. They come with batteries and not a soldering iron, meaning that they are easy to put to work straight out-of-the box. There is no programming required and you do not have to build anything.
But do you understand what a robot is? One example robot definition is pretty simple, ‘a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically’. However it is a broad word with many meanings. “I can’t define a robot, but I know one when I see one.” said Joseph Engelberger a leading roboticist.
Reasons We Need Personal Robots
Demographic trends tell us that although the world’s population is continuing to grow, thanks to improvements in healthcare and sanitation, many countries will soon start to experience a decline in their working age populations. We are all living longer lives than ever before. Japan already has more people leaving their workforce through retirement than there are joining it and the USA and countries in Europe are not far behind. By 2050, the percentage of the population over retirement age in Europe will be 36% and in the USA it will be 31%, China will be slightly higher at 33%. This is discussed in a video by a leading roboticist Rodney Brooks ‘Why we will rely on robots’.
This is not going to be true for every country around the world (India for example, with a third of its population under the age of 15) but it will mean that those living in ageing populations will start to feel the effects on their lives. Countries with less people of working age to care for their older relatives will need to find ways to cope.
If you look at some of the products on sale on the Japanese market, like the docomo/Fujitsu Raku-Raku smartphone designed specifically for the elderly, it is clear that manufacturers are starting to address the needs that come with this trend. The numbers of these types of products will only grow from here, with the potential market for personal robots to growing in the same way.
Those of us who are still of working age as the changes start to take effect will notice more calls on our time as we struggle to balance caring responsibilities with our daily work schedules. We are going to need help to deal with this and improvements in technology can and will provide this help. You may feel that many of the improvements you start to see are not necessarily what you would call ‘robots’, but autonomous robots that perform tasks for us are already starting to make their way into our homes.
What Personal Robots Can Do For Us
They help us. In terms of the types of tasks that they complete, there are all sorts of things they can do for us. Tasks which save us time, improve the quality of our lives or that can be completed more effectively by a machine than a person. And sometimes we might work together to achieve more than we might have achieved by ourselves. You could think of a robot as a smartphone with wheels or legs! We can live without them but life is easier and richer with them.
You may not have one yet, but robot vacuum cleaners like the iRobot Roomba are here, designed to remove one chore from your week. I for one am tempted and I have a friend who would not like to live without hers.
It may help to have a robot to share the care burden for elderly relatives, or to help them perform tasks they are less able to – like the cleaning, lifting heavy objects or keeping their medication schedule up to date. A companion robot could help here, like the Toyota Human Support Robot. In future, these may be more social in nature, able to remind people to do things, prompting a response from a human who is more forgetful through old age.
Keeping in touch with loved ones in a more emotive and personal way can be aided by telepresence products like the MeBot. MeBot helps to enrich the experience of keeping in touch with your loved ones by animating your mobile telephone or tablet, that you use to communicate over video – making it seem more like the other person is with you.
They help us make get more out of our leisure and work time. Robots that can play sports (robot football and robot air hockey for example) are creating new hobbies, but also are paving the way for robot companions to become more commonplace and interesting in the future.
Current Development of Personal Robots
There are personal robot products out there on the market, as I mentioned above that are able to take the daily drudge away from our lives. There are also others that help enhance our general experience of life. Take small personal robots that fly called drones or quadcopters. If you enjoy extreme sports and want to record and share the fun, then a small drone following you down the ski slope, or mountain bike trail could be filming your every move for you to show to your friends.
Companion robots are one of the areas that we are likely to discuss in more detail in a future editorial, but suffice to say, it looks like they could be used to help share the care burden. A companion robot could help support a frail relative to retain their independence, giving piece of mind to their relatives, dignity to their user and support to an increasingly overworked social care network. They could be used by care systems to support their routine tasks, not replacing but enhancing the care delivered by humans.
Personal Robots will ‘fill the gaps’ between the formal social care system and relatives’ visits. They are unable to perform complex tasks like changing the bed, or doing the laundry, but they will complete simple tasks, like finding and bringing required objects or providing simple communication tools for distant friends and relatives or companionship through entertainment. Anyone who has cared for an elderly relative will know that allowing them to retain dignity and control over their own situation, will be dearly valued, these types of robots can do just that.
Timeline of Personal Robots
As a child of the 1970′s I expected to have a robot by now (I know, I was sucked in by the sci-fi of the time!), but it took until the mid 1990s for the field of probabilistic robot ‘thinking’ to emerge, which has spurred the development needed to make personal robots a reality. The conditions in society have also not quite converged to create the real market need for personal robots until recently.
Several other things have converged in their development to create the right environment for the development of personal robots, now:
- better actuators like motors and improved sensing technologies
- the creation of the internet
- the development of smart phones
- the collaboration of designers, thinkers, makers, entrepreneurs, encouraged by these technologies
- the development of maker culture
- the advent of crowdfunding
All of these things have disrupted and reset the traditional methods of getting new robots researched, tested, developed, made and to market.
There are now increasing numbers of businesses researching and developing personal robots for home use, both global players in the home appliance market and small startups tackling specific niches.
The scientific research community around the world that can support these commercial ventures has been there for a number of years. And while some of them do seem to support this commercial activity, it is apparent that there are those that feel less comfortable to work towards real application for their work in society and prefer to maintain that knowledge within the academic community.
They now risk being overtaken by development work being carried out by new startups in order to take advantage of market trends.
Trusting a Personal Robot for Help
Robots are machines created by humans to help perform specific tasks. They are autonomous in nature, but at this point in their development, they do not have the ability to rival a human in their versatility, common sense and application of their intelligence to their environment in order to figure out how to operate in every single complex situation that we as humans deal with every day.
However, they can and do help us to perform tasks in limited situations. As the technology improves, they will undoubtedly become more flexible to solve the problems we have. The key here is that we continue to ask the questions:
“how are we better than robots?”
“what can robots do better than us?”
“what can we do better with robots?”
And then work to develop robots to help us with the areas we identify. It is clear that in future, we will sometimes work more synergistically together with robots to achieve more than we could have done as a mere human team. There is already a robot called Robonaut on the International Space Station, that has been designed with just this in mind.
We are going to become more used to having them in our lives. It is interesting to note human reactions to the robots that are starting to appear in our homes. I saw a review post about the iRobot robot vacuum cleaner while researching this article where the writer revealed that they have named their robot “Robby”.
This writer clearly sees their robot as a partner and is displaying fondness often associated with a pet in naming it and with the appreciation shown for the help it brings her in the review she wrote. There is a respect displayed in the language she uses. It shows that clearly she is trusting her robot to help her in the task that it completes in her home.
Human emotional responses are complex, but people do clearly exhibit an emotional response to robots. Take the PARO robots that are being trialled in care homes in North East England with dementia sufferers. They are helping to stimulate a response normally exhibited by humans to animals / pets.
Conclusion
This is a tricky area, with much research being conducted, but as discussed above, it seems like humans do accept and work alongside robots when they respect the help the robot brings as a partner. As we come to use them more in our daily lives, and understand their strengths, limits and the benefits they can bring us, in turn our trust of them will grow.
They won’t be for everyone, and that is fine, but taking the time to understand if they can work for you, will in turn help our knowledge and understanding as a society. So why not have a think about the areas of your life that you need help with, or those that are great anyway, but you could enhance even further with the right time or equipment. Then ask…”could a robot help me here?”. The sky, as they say is the limit.
This is the first part of a four part series on the future with robots. In the next articles we will look at personal robots in use now, robots that will appear in the next few years and finally we will take some guesses at what a future society with robots could look like.
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