The Age of Robotics
FIGURE 3.
American Gothic
by Grant Wood;
modified by
Kenn Brown.
accompanying illustration for the article (shown in
Figure 3) popularly known as American Gothic by
Grant Wood, was modified by Kenn Brown to
exemplify the major impact that robots are making
in our homes, with maybe a slight bit of
exaggeration.
Gates’ article did cover more about the future
of robotics, but the coverage centered mostly on
robots for the home. Some of the artist’s drawings
depicted several home-specific robots such as an
outside mobile security robot, a food and medicine
dispensing robot for an elderly person in the
home, a Roomba for the floors, and a lawn-mowing robot for the lawns.
Another robot that I found to be rather
expensive for the task was a laundry-folding robot
mounted to the wall. The two articulated arms
and end-effectors would require quite a few axes
of motion and a sophisticated vision system well
beyond a CMU cam or similar. However, his article
did address sensor fusion showing a parallel
sensor processor approach versus an approach
with sensors in a single serial loop.
So, just what does it
take to be in the age of
robotics? Is Gates and
company riding this wave of
robotics? Are we truly there
now? Does everyone have to
have their own home robot?
Will we become complacent
in the presence of robots
(much like the early scenes of
the Will Smith movie,
I-Robot) where robots walk
the streets among people?
Will kids in high school soon
have ‘Robotics’ as a required
science course? Will there be
Blade Runners in the future
to track down humanoid replicants that have
strayed from their assigned areas? Will parents
purchase robot babysitters like Robbie from Isaac
Asimov’s short story series, or an Andrew Martin,
like the character portrayed by Robin Williams in
Bicentennial Man At what step in our
technological evolution will we have entered the
age of robotics?
FIGURE 4. A Robot in Every
Home by Mike Higgins.
FIGURE 5.
Androbot Bob.
78 SERVO 06.2010
Stepping Back in Time
in the Robotics Age
Interface Age — a magazine that supposedly
got its start from the Southern California
Computer Society’s SCCS Interface Magazine —
Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, there
was a magazine entitled Robotics Age
(published by Phil Flora) and it was a
departure from the several industrial robotics
magazines available at that time. In 1981, Carl
Helmers became the publisher and in 1983
published a very interesting book entitled
Robotics Age — In the Beginning. It was
basically a compilation of some very
interesting articles from the magazine. It was
divided into three sections: Power and Control;
Interactions: Senses, Vision, and Voice; and
Applications and Development. What I found
