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Файл:Readings in Robotics Engineering. Учебное пособие
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2.13. Learning from nature: check your understanding
81
Sheffield we’re looking at how robots that have human-like features might be
useful as teaching assistants.
2:49 So we’re taking the Zeno robot, which has a human-like face, and
can make facial expressions like smiling, and frowning, and laughing, and see-
ing if that’s useful as a way of encouraging learning in a situation where the
robot is a teaching assistant. And actually, we’re looking at how the robot may
be able to encourage children to learn about healthy living and exercise. Robots
don’t have to be humanoid. So, another kind of robot that could encourage
children to learn would be our Miro robot. It looks like an animal, but it can
interact with children. All of these robots are beginning to be able to interact in
a natural way through language.
3:33 Understanding what children say is still a challenge in our research,
especially in noisy environments, so we look at that, and then making sense of
what they say is even harder. And that’s a big part of the research we have to
do going forward In the future, we might see bioinspiration appearing in all
kinds of areas of robotics. For instance, underwater robots that have the same
kind of manoeuvrability as fish because they use fins and flippers like fish do,
and flying robots that can stabilise themselves, inspired by bird stabilisation.
Robots could be sent out to inspect places where humans cannot go because the
places are just too small, inaccessible like a pipe network where water, oil or
gas is travelling through.
4:19 These otherwise inaccessible spaces are ideal for miniature mobile
robots, because they can sneak in and they can inspect the environment and potentially repair it. In the very long term, you could think about even the robots
going much smaller, and they may even enter your very own body. So think
about all the blood vessels. This is a network of about 100,000 kilometres, the
vascular network, and most of this is currently inaccessible to any technology. So
if the robots would become very small and simple and scale down in size, they
could potentially provide the next generation diagnosis and treatment.
2.13. Learning from nature: check your understanding
Question 1
Biological systems have three attributes which researchers aim to
achieve in robotics.
Part 2. Learning from nature
82
• Adaptability
• Versatility
• Robustness
In the following scenario, which of these three attributes is the robot
demonstrating? A driverless car that has been driving on a normal road surface
begins to sense wheel slip due to ice and recognises that it is driving in new,
unknown conditions. The car then learns to adjust its behaviour to the new road
surface, slowing down and driving more cautiously.
• Adaptability
• Versatility
• Robustness
That’s right. The car has learned to adapt to a change in the road sur-
face. Versatility would describe the ability of the car to drive in different conditions: sun, rain, ice, snow, also fast roads such as motorways and slow roads
such as rough tracks etc. Robustness would describe the ability of the car to
drive to a destination safely and without incident, even in the presence of random events, such as a person stepping out in front of the car, or noise, such as
snow obscuring a sensor.
Question 2
Why are researchers interested in the field of synthetic psychology?
our understanding of the biological system.
• To analyse biological systems by breaking them down into simpler
components.
• To study emergent behaviour in robots generated by models of neural
processes.
• To simulate computational models of neural processes in a computer,
to increase
That’s right. In synthetic psychology, models of the brain are imple-
mented in robots. The emergent behaviour of the robot then demonstrates what
parts of biology are successfully captured and what parts are missing. This
highlights gaps in our understanding.
Question 3
Which of the following is a key feature of bioinspired swarm robots?
2.13. Learning from nature: check your understanding
83
• The ability of many robots to solve problems that one single robot
cannot solve on its own.
• The ability to communicate using pheromones or other non-traditional
forms of communication (such as the ‘waggle dance’ in bees).
• The ability for a single leader, such as a queen bee, to efficiently dis-
tribute tasks amongst the workers.
• The ability to self-organise and solve problems via interaction, in a
bottom up fashion.
That’s right. Swarms solve problems collectively, by the members inter-
acting with each other. There are no leaders to tell the members of the swarm
what to do. This is self-organisation and is a bottom up approach to problemsolving, as opposed to a top down approach, which is a where a leader would
tell the swarm members what to do.
Question 4
Extraction of user intention is one of the key parts of using a brain com-
puter interface for robot control. What method is used to extract user intention?
• Signal processing
• Feature extraction
• Classification
• Feedback
That’s right. Classification uses features extracted from recorded brain
signals to recognise user intention.
Question 5
If you were designing a brain computer interface for a robot, what type
of method would you use to extract the signals from the brain that was noninvasive and portable?
• EEG
• ECoG
• EMG
• ECG
That’s right. EEG (electroencephalography) is a method of recording
brain activity from the surface of the head using electrodes, so it is noninvasive. EEG equipment is also portable.
Part 2. Learning from nature
84
Question 6
The following network graph shows five main communities in biomi-
metic robotics research.
What term best summarises the green community?
• Robotics and Control
• Ethology-based roboticsBiomimetic actuators
• Biomaterials science
• Structural bioengineering
That’s right. Structural bioengineering is associated with terms such as
‘mechanism’, ‘locomotion’ and ‘force’, in the green word cloud.
3.1. Welcome to the next part of our course
85
PART 3. WORKING IN TEAMS
3.1. Welcome to the next part of our course
This time, we’ll learn how robots can cooperate to solve complex prob-
lems in a way that is robust in the face of technical and environmental adversity.
Teamwork has been a hallmark of human endeavor since the pre-historic
period. Communication has enabled the sharing of knowledge and has allowed
us to pass this knowledge on from generation to generation. Communication
has also enabled cooperation and the creation of societies where members specialise and provide a more efficient service to their communities and to society
in general.
We’ll start by exploring and demonstrating some examples of cooperation between robots, and more importantly, cooperation between humans and
robots. We’ll visit The Royal Hallamshire Hospital here in Sheffield to witness
a robot-assisted surgery and we’ll examine the future for more advanced medi-
cal robots.
We’ll discover how principles of cooperative games, where robots receive rewards for contributing to the team’s success, can be applied to robots to
make them naturally cooperative.
We’ll illustrate how relatively simple algorithms can be applied to make
a swarm of robots complete tasks collectively and examine the possibilities of
robotic assistance for factory workers, where sufficient force is needed for robot arms to be useful in practice but safety is paramount.
Our teamwork topic will be concluded by outlining the many opportunities for multi-robot systems in police work, search and rescue, agriculture, infrastructure projects and deep water exploration.
We’ll finish by asking our experts for their informed opinions on a re-
sponsible approach to both robot development and robot use for the future.
Interacting in teams
In this activity, we'll meet different types of robotic teams and discover
some of the ways they work together; from playing games to harnessing the
power of the hive mind.
Part 3. Working in teams
86
3.2. Human-robot team: a robot assisted surgery Video
The Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield is home to one of the
world’s most advanced medical robots: The daVinci Si.
In this video, Urological surgeon David Yates discusses his working relationship with the daVinci Si robot surgeon and we watch them work together
to perform a prostatectomy.
Transcript
0:07 The robot is called the da Vinci Si Robot and it’s based in Theatre
14 at the Hallamshire Hospital. We use it for keyhole operations, essentially, so
minimally invasive surgery. And it’s specifically used to remove organs, or part
of an organ, such as a prostate, or part of somebody’s kidney or a person’s
bladder, for cancer reasons.
0:34 Today we’re going to be doing an operation called a robot-assisted
radical prostatectomy, which is removing a man’s prostate for prostate cancer.
And it was the index operation that the robot was, essentially, designed for.
This was the operation that the company had in mind when they designed the
technology, though it’s now used by many specialties and it does lots of opera-
tions. So, initially, you have to still prep the patient and do the laparoscopic part
to put the ports into the abdomen. And then you attach the robot to those ports,
because there are special ports that come with the robot. So the machine is actually attached to the patient, and that’s all done sterile.
1:16 But once the robot’s attached and the instruments are inside the pa-
tient, then I un-scrub, and I go and sit down at a console, which is where you
control the instruments and the camera from. So, it’s away from the patient’s
side, but still in the operating theatre. You get all the benefits of laparoscopy, or
keyhole surgery, in terms of pain, return to normal activities, discharge from
hospital. But with the robot, you get added advantages for the patient and for
the surgeon. For the patient, you get, essentially - the blood loss is lower. The
complication rate is lower. The length of stay in hospital has been drastically
reduced. The functional outcomes are much better with the robot compared to
laparoscopy.
2:00 So, there’s definite benefits. But you also get benefits for the sur-
geons. It’s a 3D HD magnified view — so the view is much better. It allows
much more precise surgery. The instruments, themselves, are articulated at the
3.2. Human-robot team: a robot assisted surgery Video
87
ends 360 degrees. So it’s just like the human wrist, it’s different to laparoscopic
instruments, that’s why it’s easier to do things like suturing and precise dissec-
tion. There have been studies showing that surgeons get fatigue or musculoskeletal problems as their career advances. So, I think, for the surgeon, there is
definitely a benefit in career longevity. It is a machine, so there are some tech-
nical problems occasionally. But on the whole, it’s an exceptionally reliable
machine. You tend to get that many problems.
2:45 One of the main problems is you don’t get any tactile feedback. So,
in open surgery, you’re able to feel the amount of pressure you’re applying to
tissues and things. You don’t get that with robotic surgery. That is something
they’re trying to develop, but that is one on the main downsides, you don’t get
any tactile feedback. You are heavily reliant on having somebody at the bedside
of the patient who’s actually scrubbed and assisting you, because you still need
to be passed needles, instruments need to be changed. So you do need someone
who’s trained and able to help you. That can be a challenge if that person’s
inexperienced.
3:24 It became quite evident in my training that robotic surgery was going
to be the future of surgery. It’s gone from strength to strength, and it will continue
to improve as the years go by. And I think open surgery - it won’t become obso-
lete - but I think it will be done less and less. I think things are developing all the
time. As you can see, the robot’s actually quite large. The newest development
from Intuitive Surgical is that they’re trying to design a robot that you actually
put inside the abdomen of the patient, so there will only be one tiny incision. The
robot’s inside the abdomen and does the operation inside.
3:59 It’ll still be controlled in a similar way, but I think as the years go
by, I think we’re probably ten years away from that. There will always be the
possibility of operations being done without humans, but I think we’re many
years away from that, to be honest.
Reading: ARE WE READY FOR FRIENDSHIP WITH ANDROIDS?
Hiroshi Ishiguro builds androids. Beautiful, realistic, uncannily
convincing human replicas. Academically, he is using them to understand
the mechanics of person-to-person interaction. But his true quest is to untangle the ineffable nature of connection itself.
by Alex Mar 10.17.17
Part 3. Working in teams
88
It is summer 2002, mid-morning in a
university research lab on the edge of Osaka, Japan. Two girls–both dressed in pale
yellow, with child-puffy cheeks, black
shoulder-length hair, and bangs–stand opposite each other under fluorescent lights.
More precisely: One is a girl, 5 years old;
the other is her copy, her android replica. They are the same size, one modeled on
the other, and they are meeting for the first time. The girl stares hard into the eyes
of her counterpart; its expression is stern and stiff. It seems to return her gaze. A
man is videotaping the pair–he is the father of one, creator of the other–and from
off-camera he asks, “Would you like to say something?” The girl turns to him,
disoriented. She turns back to the android. ¶ “Talk to her!” he says. “Hello.” The
girl repeats the word, quietly, to her robot-self. It nods. Her father feeds her another line: “Let’s play.”
The android wiggles its head. Her father chuckles behind the camera.
But the girl does not budge. She simply stares at her double, the look on her
face one of focus and perhaps concern.
Each member of this pair continues making the barely there gestures that
serve, through reflex or ruse, as signs of life: Each blinks at regular intervals;
each tilts her head from side to side. One is processing, in the raw, sensoryoverload manner of a human child; the other is performing a series of simple
movements made possible by the servomotors installed inside the silicone casing that is its skin.
“Is it difficult to play with her?” the father asks. His daughter looks to
him, then back at the android. Its mouth begins to open and close slightly, like a
dying fish. He laughs. “Is she eating something?”
The girl does not respond. She is patient and obedient and listens closely. But something inside is telling her to resist.
“Do you feel strange?” her father asks. Even he must admit that the ro-
bot is not entirely believable.
Eventually, after a few long minutes, the girl’s breathing grows heavier,
and she announces, “I am so tired.” Then she bursts into tears.
That night, in a house in the suburbs, her father uploads the footage to
his laptop for posterity. His name is Hiroshi Ishiguro, and he believes this is the
first record of a modern-day android.
3.2. Human-robot team: a robot assisted surgery Video
89
In the 15 years since, Ishiguro has produced some 30 androids, most of
them female. They have included replicas of a newscaster, an actress, and a
fashion model. These androids have made numerous public appearances–in
cafés and department stores, singing in malls, performing in a play. Mostly,
though, Ishiguro’s brood of pretty “women” is used for his academic experi-
ments, many of which are conducted at two locations in Japan: the Advanced
Telecommunications Research Institute International in Nara and the Intelligent
Robotics Laboratory on the campus of Osaka University.
https://www.wired.com/2017/10/hiroshi-ishiguro-when-robots-act-justlike-humans/
Reading: ROBOTS: FRIEND OR FOE?
What is the future of artificial intelligence (AI)?
Will robots become as intelligent as humans? Or more intelligent?
Match the words with the definitions.
Autonomous an algorithm a foe a drone
AI a robot an enemy
1. a computer-controlled machine which can perform jobs without hu-
man input.
2. It may have a human-like body
3. mathematical instructions which help a computer calculate an answer
to a problem
4. the field of science concerned with producing machines with qualities
of the human mind, e.g. the ability to understand language
5. independent, with the power to make your own decisions
6. an aircraft without a pilot which is controlled by a human on the
ground
What is the future of artificial intelligence (AI)? Will it be possible
for robots to be autonomous? If so, when will that happen and will it be a
good thing? We asked four experts what they think.
A
I would say that we are quite a long way off developing the computing
power or the algorithms for fully autonomous AI, though I do think it will hap-
Part 3. Working in teams
90
pen within the next thirty or forty years. We will probably remain in control of
technology and it will help us solve many of the world’s problems. However,
no one really knows what will happen if machines become more intelligent
than humans. They may help us, ignore us or destroy us. I tend to believe AI
will have a positive influence on our future lives, but whether that is true will
be partly up to us.
B
I have to admit that the potential consequences of creating something that can match or
surpass human intelligence frighten me. Even now,
scientists are teaching computers how to learn on
their own. At some point in the near future, their
intelligence may well take off and develop at an
ever-increasing speed. Human beings evolve biologically very slowly and we
would be quickly superseded. In the short term, there is the danger that robots
will take over millions of human jobs, creating a large underclass of unemployed
people. This could mean large-scale poverty and social unrest. In the long term,
machines might decide the world would be better without humans.
C
Personally, I think it’s fascinating to consider how we’ll speed up our
evolution as a species by augmenting our bodies. Imagine if you could implant
a computer inside our brain! Soon we’ll be able to do just that and enhance our
mathematical ability, audiovisual perception and our memory, and this idea is
only going to become more and more commonplace. AI is also popping up in
the world around us. Recent developments include self-driving cars and drones
carrying life-saving equipment to people at sea. Granted, there have been a few
teething problems: one woman who was asleep on the floor had her hair eaten
by her robot vacuum cleaner and there have been fatal accidents with selfdriving cars. But progress always comes at a cost, and for me the advantages
far outweigh the disadvantages.
D
I’m a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Forget the movie
image of a terrifying Terminator stamping on human skulls and think of what’s
happening right now: military machines like drones, gun turrets and sentry ro-
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