Post by Paddy by Grace on Mar 10, 2010 17:04:28 GMT -7
www.newscientist.com/article/dn18631-safety-issues-loom-as-humanoid-invasion-approaches.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Pressure-sensing skins, smarter limbs and even bemused facial expressions. All these features will be needed to make future humanoid robots safe enough to hang out with humans in our homes, a symposium on humanoid robotics at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in London heard this week.
"We want robots to operate in our human world but they need to be safe," says Chris Melhuish of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. "It's no good if they fall over on a 2-year-old or poke someone in the eye."
As robots emerging from research labs get smarter, there are moves to put them in increasingly close contact with humans. Making them safe enough for this to be possible is the next task.
Read my face
Merely making a robot smart enough to know it's being told not to do something is not enough, says Melhuish: "Safe interaction needs a lot more than speech and language processing on the part of the robot."
The Bristol team is developing facial interaction routines that make it clearer what a human is can expect of a robot they are cooperating with. For instance, when someone passes something to a robot, its eyes should lock onto to the object being handed over, so the human knows it is taking an interest in it.
In addition, Melhuish suggests the range of robot facial expressions should include one of "bemusement". That would signal to humans that the robot is unclear about its task, and may be about to perform an unsafe manoeuvre – not grasping a hot cup of drink properly, for example.
Soft touch
Robot skin that can measure contact pressure – providing an additional way to spot danger such as knocking into a human – is being developed as part of the pan-European "iCub" open-source humanoid robot project, led by Giorgio Metta of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa.
Metta says their skin may sense pressure either by monitoring changes in capacitance – the method used by cellphones like the iPhone to detect finger touches – or using piezoelectric materials that generate a current when pressed. He also plans to embed semiconductors in the skin whose output changes with temperature, to track the temperature around a robot and of objects it touches.
The most dangerous part of a humanoid robot is likely to be its legs, says IIT engineer Darwin Caldwell. He is working to make robot legs which impart less energy, by ditching joints containing heavy motors and gearboxes in favour of lightweight brushless motor drives, contact sensors and spring-loaded limbs. This allows the limb to move as required, but respond safely if it swings into an object or person.
"Impacts are really nasty, and a heavy one will probably destroy the robot," Caldwell says. "By introducing compliance we could have robots that interact safely for humans and ensure robots don't break themselves."
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