Shopping robots come into their own in locked-down English town

MILTON KEYNES, England - A fleet of robots on wheels that deliver shopping in the English town of Milton Keynes have seen their popularity surge as residents are stuck indoors due to the coronavirus lockdown.

The robots, which come up roughly to an adult's knee height and look like smooth white plastic boxes mounted on six black wheels, are a familiar sight in the town, where they have been delivering groceries for over two years.

But since the government imposed strict social distancing measures on March 23, the devices have been busier than ever, delivering for free to National Health Service (NHS) staff and facing increased demand from the general public.

“Right now, we are offering free delivery to all NHS workers within the community. We want to make life a little bit easier for these people in these very, very stressful times,” said Henry Harris-Burland, of Starship, the company that makes the robots.

"Lots of them are doing... 80-hour weeks and they don’t have time to go to the local grocery store, so they use our robots for their shopping," he said. "We’re honored that we can be part of that solution."

The robots have what looks like an antenna, topped with a small red flag to make it easier to spot them as they do their rounds. They are big enough to hold several bags of shopping as well as a pack of bottles.

Starship has doubled its fleet of delivery robots in Milton Keynes to 70 in the past three weeks. Harris-Burland said they had completed 100,000 autonomous deliveries in the town.

"Lots of the residents have been reaching out to us online asking us to deliver into their neighborhood," he said.

"We’re doing everything we can as quickly as possible to expand to offer this service to more people, especially at this really important time."

-reuters-

Amazon, Microsoft, may be putting world at risk of killer AI, says report

WASHINGTON -- Amazon, Microsoft and Intel are among leading tech companies that could spearhead a global AI arms race, according to a report that surveyed major players from the sector about their stance on lethal autonomous weapons.

Dutch NGO Pax ranked 50 companies by three criteria: whether they were developing technology that could be relevant to killer robots, whether they were working on related military projects, and if they had committed to abstaining from contributing in the future.

The use of AI to allow weapon systems to autonomously select and attack targets has sparked ethical debates in recent years, with critics warning they would jeopardize international security and herald a third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and the atomic bomb.

"Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they're currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?" said Frank Slijper, lead author of the report published Monday.

Google, which last year published guiding principles eschewing AI for use in weapons systems, was among seven companies found to be engaging in "best practice" in the analysis that spanned 12 countries, as was Japan's Softbank, best known for its humanoid Pepper robot.

Twenty-two companies were of "medium concern," while 21 fell into a "high concern" category, notably Amazon and Microsoft who are both bidding for a $10 billion Pentagon contract to provide the cloud infrastructure for the US military.

"Autonomous weapons will inevitably become scalable weapons of mass destruction, because if the human is not in the loop, then a single person can launch a million weapons or a hundred million weapons," Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley told AFP on Wednesday.

"The fact is that autonomous weapons are going to be developed by corporations, and in terms of a campaign to prevent autonomous weapons from becoming widespread, they can play a very big role," he added.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Robots’ ways rub off on humans: Inside an Amazon warehouse

NEW YORK — The last person to touch an item at an Amazon fulfillment center is the packer, whose job is to stick each order in a box and tape it shut.

As with most jobs, being a packer is more complicated than it looks. Michael Waterman, a packer at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, told me that when he started, he would grab each piece of tape too quickly, and it would invariably stick to his gloves. He ruined two pairs in his first two days.

Later, he overcompensated by waiting too long, at which point the tape had lost its stickiness. Only after some experimentation did he find the sweet spot.

And yet, being a packer isn’t that complicated. When I asked Waterman whether he had run into similar problems in other aspects of his job — like figuring out how long a piece of tape to use — he demurred. “The right amount of tape will always come out,” Waterman said, referring to the automatic tape dispenser at his side.

My trip to Amazon’s Staten Island center had its origins two months earlier. I was writing about a former worker named Justin Rashad Long, who contended that he had been fired for speaking out about working conditions there. Beyond the claim of retaliation, Long said laboring at Amazon had been a tremendous slog: Employees worked long shifts with few breaks. Managers held them to unreasonable goals. The time they spent waiting in line at metal detectors — to discourage theft — lengthened their day.

The company disputed these allegations, in some cases with extensive data. It invited me to come see the place for myself. (Amazon gives public tours at certain fulfillment centers, but not on Staten Island.) So, in mid-May, I spent a few hours observing workers and asking them about their jobs, with a press chaperone in tow. By the end, I had concluded that both sides had a point.

The workplace, with more than 2,500 full-time employees, seemed more humane than the picture Long painted. The general manager, Chris Colvin, knew many of his employees’ names and bantered with them amiably. The workers, in turn, seemed invested in the company. The center had recently held a contest for their children to illustrate job safety practices, like bending at the knees and wearing gloves. A few dozen drawings were still on the wall.

But underlying Long’s charge was the idea that Amazon treats workers as if they were something less than people — that its obsession with optimizing fulfillment centers for a world of one-day delivery requires a system of stifling routines, rules and metrics. That system can make workers feel patronized and spied on. It can crowd out personal initiative.

There seemed to be something to the picture Long painted, though the problem may be less with Amazon than with technology itself.

SOFTWARE LOOKS OVER YOUR SHOULDER

Every day, about 50 truckloads of merchandise turn up at the warehouse’s receiving dock. One group of workers unloads the goods, and another group — known as “water spiders” — distributes them to work stations. There, a third group, known as stowers, transfers the items onto what are called pods. These are large shelving units that hold several dozen bins, which are attached to robots that move through the building.

Of the entry-level jobs at Amazon, the stowers arguably provides the most room for decision-making. Stowers choose the bin where they want to place each item, keeping in mind that they should make the task as easy as possible for the worker, known as a picker, who will have to grab items out of the bin. Stowers should, for example, avoid obscuring one item with another. “Our customers are the pickers,” a stower named Jing Zhang told me.

Zhang seemed like a state-of-the-art Amazon employee — someone who saw the world through the eyes of a manager. “I try to find ways to make me more efficient,” he said. He figured out how to reduce wasted movement by unpacking the box closest to the shelving unit first, then replacing it with the next-closest box, rather than wandering to and from other boxes.

Still, even Zhang and his fellow stowers must work with Amazon’s software looking over their shoulder. If a stower attempts to stick, say, a bottle of sunscreen in a bin next to one that already has such a bottle of sunscreen in it, the bin will light up to signal that this is not allowed. Adjacent bins with identical items can confuse the pickers. The same thing happens if a stower tries to put heavy items too high on the pod, or too much weight on either side.

After the pods are full, the robots move them across a large caged area. If an item falls down along the way, or a robot stalls, a worker on what’s known as the amnesty team will venture into the cage to sort it out. The worker wears a special vest that allows the robot to detect his or her location and stop before it gets too close.

This turned out to be relevant in Long’s case. The company said he had once reached too far into the robot area, in violation of safety protocol. Long said this was a pretext for his firing.

It’s hard to know who’s right. On the one hand, the safety rules can seem excessive. But from inside a fulfillment center, you begin to appreciate the rules’ urgency.

Watching an amnesty worker walk among the robots can feel a bit like watching a zookeeper mingle with lions. You know this is a trained professional who will probably walk in and out of the cage without incident. Yet you can’t help wondering: What are the chances that this person gets mauled?

A GENTLE GAME OF WHAC-A-MOLE

Picking inventory off shelves to fill customer orders is usually the most common job at an Amazon warehouse, and the company has worked for years to make its pickers more productive.

At many warehouses, pickers walk miles each day in search of items, but algorithms provide them with the optimal route.

In the so-called robotics fulfillment centers like the one on Staten Island, the pickers are stationary and the robots deliver items to them. The company says these warehouses account for “more than 50” of its roughly 175 centers worldwide.

The robots have raised the average picker’s productivity from around 100 items per hour to what Long and others have said is a target of around 300 or 400, though the numbers vary across teams and facilities. The robots help explain why Amazon managed to ship more items than ever during last year’s holiday season with about 20 percent fewer seasonal workers than the year before. (Amazon said another reason was that it was focused more on permanent hiring in 2018.)

Robots have also made the job far more repetitive. Unlike pickers in manual warehouses, the pickers on Staten Island have almost no relief from plucking goods off shelves, other than their breaks. A picker named Shawn Chase said he motivated himself by competing with a friend in a different part of the warehouse to see who could earn the higher productivity ranking.

“Last week I was 41st in the building,” he said. “This week I’m trying to be top 10.” The company has taken this logic even further in a handful of warehouses, The Washington Post has reported, creating video-game interfaces that allow workers to accumulate points and badges for completing these tasks.

Amazon has periodically fueled rumors that it plans to fully automate picking in the near future, even sponsoring a contest for engineers who develop robotic picking arms. But the truth is that human pickers will be around for years.

According to Russ Meller, who runs a group that designs warehouses at the engineering consulting firm Fortna, it would be hard for a robotic picking arm to navigate the shelving units that carry goods around Amazon’s warehouse. The shelves are too large a target, and the bins may be too cramped or too deep. “They really complicated it for the robot,” said Meller, whose firm has not designed warehouses for Amazon.

In effect, Amazon calculated that there was so much productivity to be gained from reducing the millions of miles its workers walk each year that it was better off finding robots well suited to moving goods all those miles, not worrying whether the system would later be compatible with robotic pickers.

The difficulty of automating pickers puts pressure on the humans to become more productive. “We try to eliminate any wasted movement,” LeVar Kellogg, a picker who trains other pickers at an Amazon facility near Chicago, told me. “If you have one second that’s adding to the process, it doesn’t seem like a lot. But if you do that 1,000 times a day, that’s when it starts adding up.”

Sometimes these are strictly physical movements whose elimination almost no one would mourn. In other cases, the steps being removed involve thinking, too. Pickers at robotics facilities consult a monitor displaying a picture of the next screwdriver or watch or bottle of vitamins they’re supposed to grab, as well as its location on the shelving unit’s grid of bins. Some pickers have developed techniques for remembering this location, like yelling it out loud — 3F! 4H! — so they don’t have to glance back at the monitor multiple times.

But at the Amazon center on Staten Island, there is no need to remember the bin location. The bin holding the needed screwdriver or watch or bottle of vitamins simply lights up, turning the exercise into a gentle game of Whac-A-Mole.

This steady stripping of human judgment from work is one of the most widespread consequences of automation — not so much replacing people with robots as making them resemble robots. “The next pod comes, and a pod comes after that, and after that,” Long told me. “All day till you get off.”

At Walmart, The Washington Post recently reported, machines are deciding when produce has become overripe, then summoning humans to replace it.

Or consider trucking. For generations, the typical trucker took pride in serving as the captain of the ship: deciding when to start and stop each day, the best way to reach a destination, how to deal with maintenance.

Today, trucking companies have removed much of this decision-making from truckers, relying instead on algorithms that monitor fuel efficiency, idling time, location, braking and acceleration, and maintenance needs.

As with picking, trucking may be fully automated one day. In the meantime, said Karen Levy, a sociologist at Cornell University who has studied the trucking industry, “what you end up doing is making people better cogs.”

UPSIDES AND ACTS OF RESISTANCE

Few of the workers said they were nostalgic for their old employers. Chase, the picker with top-10 ambitions, said that his previous job, sorting mail for the Postal Service, had been “very tedious” and that his current work was fun by comparison.

Among the others I met that day were a former Uber driver, a former tollbooth cleaner and a former assistant deli manager at a supermarket. All said they had better health benefits at Amazon and made more money. Entry-level workers on Staten Island start at $17.50 per hour or more and get a raise every six months.

Waterman, the packer, previously worked in the frozen-food department of a grocery store. He said that in addition to earning better wages and benefits at Amazon, he appreciated having a more predictable schedule, and the way managers try to train struggling workers.

When I asked whether he could see any benefit to a union, Waterman told me, “The biggest benefit is job security.” He quickly added, “The managers here, they don’t want to fire people — they just want people to work hard.”

Levy said workers facing employers preoccupied with efficiency often found ways to resist. She recalled a trucker who had figured out how to play solitaire on the computer that the company installed in his cab. “It was a super meaningful way for him to preserve a little bit of decisional autonomy,” she said.

Amazon workers, too, have resorted to small acts of rebellion. Near the entrance of the Staten Island center was a wooden cart with a big pile of bananas. A sign announced that the bananas were free (“Yes, Free!”), but with a caveat: “Please, take just one at a time,” the sign said. “Don’t go Bananas.”

I was standing about 15 feet away when I saw it: A woman walked by and grabbed two.


2019 New York Times News Service

source: news.abs-cbn.com

5G future on display with robots, AI at China tech fair

SHANGHAI -- The near future where robots take charge of mundane tasks like grocery shopping to helping doctors save lives was on display in this Chinese financial hub on Wednesday, all powered by the upcoming 5G standard that promises to transform the way people interact with technology.

This year's Mobile World Congress was a display of practical applications of 5G, which Chinese tech titans are selling to the world, despite opposition from the US.

The biggest exhibitors include Huawei, the world’s largest manufacturer of telecom infrastructure and number two smartphone maker that was blacklisted by Washington, compatriots Vivo and Oppo, chipmaker Qualcomm and carriers China Telecom and China Unicom.

Compared to 4G or LTE, 5G promises faster data transfers and at larger volumes at a time. In the home, it can help power smart devices such as virtual assistants housed in speakers and ultra high definition television and gaming.

It can be used by autonomous vehicles to carry both people and cargo, automating both transportation and logistics.

Big data can harness 5G speeds to aid doctors in diagnosis and treatment. Another application allows users to pay for their groceries without passing through the check out counter since the computing is done on the cloud.

One 5G-powered robot was controlled using a glove with sensors, reminiscent of the big robot cartoon "Daimos" that was popular in the 1980s.

Another robot, its body shaped like that of a woman, interacted with visitors as it danced.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

FedEx to test 'SameDay Bot' for local deliveries

SAN FRANCISCO -- Global courier service FedEx on Wednesday announced plans to test a "SameDay Bot" autonomous delivery device designed to carry purchases from retail shops to local customers.

FedEx said its robotic delivery carts, reminiscent of a large canister with wheels, would be tried out in its home city of Memphis, Tennessee later this year, provided it gets final approval from officials there.

"The bot represents a milestone in our ongoing mission to solve the complexities and expense of same-day, last-mile delivery for the growing e-commerce market in a manner that is safe and environmentally friendly," FedEx executive vice president Brie Carere said in a statement.

FedEx enlisted DEKA Development & Research to help develop the delivery bot, which is designed to travel along sidewalks or roadsides carrying small shipments to homes or businesses.

"The bot has unique capabilities that make it unlike other autonomous vehicles," said DEKA founder Dean Kamen, an engineer whose creations include the Segway.

Battery-powered FedEx bots have sensors to avoid pedestrians and other potential obstacles, and can even climb steps or curbs, according to the companies. The bot's top speed was reported to be 10 miles per hour (16 kilometers per hour).

The initial test will involve deliveries between selected FedEx offices.

FedEx said that it was exploring the potential of using the bots to meet short-range delivery needs of retailers including Walmart, Target and Pizza Hut.

It is common for people to live within three miles of retail shops where they are customers, creating an opportunity to serve them with "hyper-local," on-demand deliveries, according to FedEx.

An array of startups have been working on efficient, autonomous robots to carry purchases that "last mile" from restaurants, shops, or warehouses.

E-commerce giant Amazon in January began putting cooler-sized robots to work delivering packages to customers in a neighborhood outside Seattle.

Electric-powered, wheeled delivery vehicles named "Scout" were created by Amazon and guide themselves along sidewalks at a walking pace, according to Sean Scott, the vice president heading the project.

Results of the Scout experiment will determine whether the system is expanded.

Amazon has developed an extensive logistics network as it works to efficiently delivery goods to customers while controlling costs.

Chinese retail giant JD.com uses delivery robots, as do a number of startups operating in the United States and Europe.

Starship Technologies, based in Estonia, has tested operation in the US capital city of Washington, and another startup, KiwiBot, handles deliveries to US university students.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

At Alibaba's futuristic hotel, robots deliver towels and mix cocktails

HANGZHOU -- Gliding silently through Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's futuristic "FlyZoo" hotel, black disc-shaped robots about a meter in height deliver food and drop off fresh towels.

The robots are part of a suite of high-tech tools that Alibaba says drastically cuts the hotel's cost of human labor and eliminates the need for guests to interact with other people.

Formally opened to the public last month, the 290-room FlyZoo is an incubator for technology Alibaba wants to sell to the hotel industry in the future and an opportunity to showcase its prowess in artificial intelligence.

It is also an experiment that tests consumer comfort levels with unmanned commerce in China - a country where intrusive data-sharing technology is readily tolerated and often met with enthusiasm.

"It's all about the efficiency of the service and the consistency of service, because the robots are not disturbed by human moods. Sometimes, we say we are not in the mood, but the system and the robot will always be in the mood," said Andy Wang, CEO of Alibaba Future Hotel Management, the unit that oversees the hotel project.

Inside the hotel, softly-lit white paneled walls bring to mind the interiors of Hollywood spaceships. Guests check in at podiums that scan their faces, as well as passports or other ID. Visitors with a Chinese national ID can scan their faces using their smartphones to check in ahead of time.

Elevators scan guests' faces again to verify which floor they can access and hotel room doors are opened with another face scan.

"It's very quick and safe. I haven't used it for a long time yet, but basically, I can be in my room in one minute," said guest Tracy Li. Li added that safety was one of her priorities and she was pleased her room could only be entered with a scan of her face.

In the rooms, Alibaba's voice command technology is used to change the temperature, close the curtains, adjust the lighting and order room service.

At the hotel's restaurant, taller capsule-shaped robots deliver food that guests have ordered via the FlyZoo app while at a separate bar, a large robotic arm can mix more than 20 different types of cocktails. Facial recognition cameras add charges to the room rate automatically.

To check out, guests press a button on the app after which the room locks and they are automatically charged through Alibaba's online wallet. Once this is done, the guests' facial scan data is immediately erased from Alibaba's systems, said Wang.

CELEBRATING 'THE EMPTY'

FlyZoo - whose name derives from a pun in Chinese for 'it's a must to stay here' - is located in the city of Hangzhou, 170 km southwest of Shanghai, and is within walking distance of Alibaba's headquarters. Room fees start from 1,390 yuan ($205) a night.

It does employ humans, though Alibaba declined to specify how many. This includes chefs and cleaners as well as reception staff, who will assist with conventional check-in procedures for guests unwilling to have their faces scanned and want to use electronic key cards.

But advanced technology involving personal data - including facial recognition - has become increasingly common in China, where regulation is minimal and the government has rolled out public surveillance projects that use biometric data.

"For Chinese consumers, there's this real glee in having exposure to things that seem like futuristic technology developments, and then beyond that, I think there's a much greater comfort level with data sharing," said Mark Natkin, managing director at Beijing-based technology consulting firm, Marbridge Consulting.

Alibaba has launched other highly automated projects for book stores and grocery stores.

Though most projects are not necessarily intended to be springboards to big forays in those industries, its grocery stores called Hema have been well received and now number about 100 nationwide.

The aim of such projects is twofold - develop AI and other high-tech expertise which will propel Alibaba's e-commerce offerings forward, as well as develop new areas of business at a time when e-commerce revenue growth rates are slowing, in part due to the U.S.-China trade war.

Alibaba intends to build some other hotels but they will primarily be used by company staff on business trips to head offices in Beijing and Shanghai.

Wang also acknowledged that FlyZoo still had plenty of issues that needed upgrading. Some of its services, for example, only worked for guests with a Chinese national ID.

But he said the initial reception from guests was encouraging.

"When they experience the robot and the voice butlers, they say 'Wow!'. When they enter into the lobby they say 'Wow!'," said Wang. "It's such a different lobby. It's empty - but maybe it's the kind of empty of the future."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Breadmaking robot startup eyes fresh connections

LAS VEGAS -- The robot breadmaker came to Las Vegas this week, aiming to bring some freshness to a sector that may be ready for disruption.

Wilkinson Baking Company unveiled its BreadBot at the Consumer Electronics Show, a machine that mixes and bakes up to 235 loaves a day.

BreadBot can lower costs and produce fresher breads than are available in most American supermarkets, chief executive Randall Wilkinson said.

"Consumers want the freshest thing possible, but when they go into the store they don't know when that bread was baked," said Wilkinson, a member of the family-owned firm in Walla Walla, Washington.

Wilkinson said the machine, which takes up as much room as a mid-sized car, has more automation technology than bread factories, and can produce at a far lower cost.

He noted that using in-store robotic machines could eliminate the need for truck delivery, which accounts for as much as 45 percent of the cost of most bread.

This means profits could get a rise.

The company is in talks with major supermarket chains and also plans to deliver the robots to the US military for making buns on carrier fleets, Wilkinson said.

The bread robot -- which was at a startup showcase Sunday and will be on the show floor from Tuesday -- joins a line of devices aimed at disrupting the food industry, including pizza-making robots and robotic baristas.

The current generation of BreadBot is designed for standard kinds of loaves but Wilkinson said the robots can be adapted for customized breads, even French baguettes.

"At some point you will be able to order a special loaf on your phone -- you can add sunflower seeds, use less salt or whatever -- and pick it up in an hour," he said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Programmable humanoid robots to hit toy stores

Robots have been transforming over the years from science fiction fixtures into the next must-have gadgets.

UBTech, a 5-year old China-based company that has become a global name in humanoid robotics, recently introduced to the Philippines its line of educational robots.

The humanoid robots, which can be controlled via iOS and Android devices, can be made to do a variety of movements.

Banbros, which distributes the robots in the country, told ANC's Future Perfect Tech Shorts that even kids as young as 8 can learn how to program the Alpha 1 Pro robots on a desktop PC.

As a special treat for Star Wars fans, the robots will soon also be available in Storm Trooper form.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Tesla, Google chiefs warn against 'killer robots'

SAN FRANCISCO - More than 100 robotics and artificial intelligence leaders including billionaire Elon Musk are urging the United Nations to take action against the dangers of autonomous weapons, known as "killer robots."

"Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare," warned the letter signed by 116 tech luminaries, including Musk, the chief of Tesla, and Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of Google's DeepMind.

"Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at times scales faster than humans can comprehend," the letter read.

"These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways."

They added: "We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close."

A UN group focused on these types of weapons was set to meet Monday, but it was canceled and postponed until November, according to the international body's website.

In 2015, thousands of researchers and personalities launched an appeal to ban "autonomous weapons."

Both Musk and well-known British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking regularly warn of the "dangers" of artificial intelligence, citing in particular "robot killers."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

LOOK: Restaurant in China employs robots as servers

Robots have invaded a restaurant in China replacing some of its human servers.

The bots bring dishes to customers' tables according to pre-defined orders and move along fixed paths.

But it seems technology is not ready to replace the human touch.

Managers said though the robots do the work of two people, they cannot respond to customers' requests which are still left for humans to do -- for now.

-Mornings @ ANC, April 19, 2016

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Here come the robots: Davos bosses brace for big tech shocks

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND - Implantable mobile phones. 3D-printed organs for transplant. Clothes and reading-glasses connected to the Internet.

Such things may be science fiction today but they will be scientific fact by 2025 as the world enters an era of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and gene editing, according to executives surveyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Nearly half of those questioned also expect an artificial intelligence machine to be sitting on a corporate board of directors within the next decade.

Welcome to the next industrial revolution.

After steam, mass production and information technology, the so-called "fourth industrial revolution" will bring ever faster cycles of innovation, posing huge challenges to companies, workers, governments and societies alike.

The promise is cheaper goods and services, driving a new wave of economic growth. The threat is mass unemployment and a further breakdown of already strained trust between corporations and populations.

"There is an economic surplus that is going to be created as a result of this fourth industrial revolution," Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, told the WEF's annual meeting in Davos on Wednesday.

"The question is how evenly will it be spread between countries, between people in different economic strata and also different parts of the economy."

Robots are already on the march, moving from factories into homes, hospitals, shops, restaurants and even war zones, while advances in areas like artificial neural networks are starting to blur the barriers between man and machine.

One of the most in-demand participants in Davos this year is not a central banker, CEO or politician but a prize-winning South Korean robot called HUBO, which is strutting its stuff amid a crowd of smartphone-clicking delegates.

But there are deep worries, as well as awe, at what technology can do.

A new report from UBS released in Davos predicts that extreme levels of automation and connectivity will worsen already deepening inequalities by widening the wealth gap between developed and developing economies.

“The fourth industrial revolution has potentially inverted the competitive advantage that emerging markets have had in the form of low-cost labor,” said Lutfey Siddiqi, global head of emerging markets for FX, rates and credit at UBS.

“It is likely, I would think, that it will exacerbate inequality if policy measures are not taken.”

An analysis of major economies by the Swiss bank concludes that Switzerland is the country best-placed to adapt to the new robot world, while Argentina ranks bottom.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

There will be winners and losers among companies, too, as new players move into established industries with disruptive new technologies.

That is something uppermost in the minds of Davos attendees such as General Motors CEO Mary Barra, who is confronting the threat of driverless cars - another science fiction that has become science fact - or bank boss Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, facing competition from digital "fintech" start-ups.

Such innovations, coupled with the rise of robots in both the manufacturing and service sectors, could automate vast numbers of jobs. Oxford University researchers predicted in 2013, for example, that 47 percent of U.S. jobs were at risk.

Such fears about technology destroying jobs are not new. The economist John Maynard Keynes famously cried wolf in 1931, by issuing a warning of widespread "technological unemployment".

The question is whether this time will be different, given the speed to change and the fact that machines now offer brain as well as brawn, threatening professions previously seen as immune, such as entry-level journalism or routine financial analysis.

Pessimists fear this will hollow out middle-income, middle-class jobs on an unprecedented scale, with the WEF itself predicting that more than 5 million jobs could be lost in 15 major economies by 2020.

But ManpowerGroup CEO Jonas Prising is more upbeat for the long term. "If history is any indicator, we'll have more jobs being created in the end than are going to be destroyed," he said.

However, beyond the Davos talking-shop there are doubts about how well business leaders will actually plan for the future.

"When you have these very big levels of disruptive change you need some pretty serious thinking and action," said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at Oxford University.

"But the CEO who really looks years ahead and looks at broader social issues is rare, even in Davos."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Self-healing robots take step towards disaster relief

PARIS, France - Scientists on Wednesday said they had created a small robot that can recover from damage, in a step towards machines that mimic the remarkable adaptive powers of humans and animals.

The feat could one day lead to first-responder robots which can cope with dangers that today would put them out of operation, they said.

"The idea is to have robots that can survive in hostile environments such as a Fukushima-type nuclear disaster," said Jean-Baptiste Mouret of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.

"If we send in robots, they have to be able to pursue their mission even if they are damaged, and not just come to a halt in the middle of a reactor," he told AFP.

The research, published in the journal Nature, is inspired by the learning abilities of the natural world.

If a dog hurts its paw, for instance, it will seek to move differently to avoid putting pressure on the painful wound.

The adaptive skill comes from experience -- from knowing how the body moves and exploring the options that are available.

This is what Mouret's team sought to replicate in a powerful computer programme to guide a six-legged 50-centimetre (20-inch) walking robot.

The core of the programme is to build a knowledge base for the robot of how it moves, and to assign to each of these movements a "value" as to how useful they could be in a crisis.

The "values" are rather like intuition.

In the case of the injured dog, the animal knows that to walk again, it has to learn how to shift its weight around. Behaviours such as sniffing or wagging its tail are rejected at this time because they will not help.

The "values" are then used to guide a learning algorithm, called Intelligent Trial and Error, that conducts experiments to see if compensatory behaviour will help the robot to continue its mission even when damaged.

Using it, the prototype robot found a way to keep walking after just a couple of minutes, even when two of its legs had been broken.

"If one behaviour doesn't work, the robot is smart enough to rule out that entire type of behaviour and try a new type," said Mouret's colleague, Antoine Cully.

"For example, if walking mostly on its hind legs does not work well, it will next try waking mostly on its front legs.

"What's surprising is how quickly it can learn a new way to walk. It's amazing to watch a robot go from crippled and flailing around to efficiently limping away in about two minutes."

The team also used the programme on a flexible robotic arm which was tasked with dropping a ball into a bin.

The limb swiftly learned ways of carrying on with its mission, even when several of its "joints" were broken.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

This robot sells coffee machines in Japan

TOKYO - Move over George Clooney -- Nestle has employed a fleet of chirpy robots to sell its coffee machines in Japanese stores. The Hollywood heart-throb, who has become the global face of the Nespresso brand, has been given the elbow in favour of Pepper, a cheeky and chatty android, which its makers claim can answer customers' questions. "How do you enjoy coffee? Number one: An eye-opener coffee; Number two: A post-meal cup of coffee," Pepper asked a TV personality at a promotion event Monday. The 120-centimetre (four-foot) tall robot has a human-like face perched on top of a white plastic body, with rollers and what looks like a tablet computer on its chest. The gimmick will eventually see 1,000 stores across Japan with their own Pepper, which makers say can understand up to 80 percent of conversations. The robots will "help us discover consumer needs through conversations between our customers and Pepper," said a joint statement from Nestle and SoftBank, whose French arm Aldebaran developed the technology. Pepper, which was unveiled in June by SoftBank president Masayoshi Son, already sells mobile phones at SoftBank's 74 Japanese stores, where it has been used to collect customers' opinions. Engineers claim the robot's artificial intelligence has allowed it to expand its conversational ability by listening to what customers say. The robot will go on sale to the public in February, with a price tag of 198,000 yen ($1,670) plus monthly fees. George Clooney, meanwhile, will not. © 1994-2014 Agence France-Presse

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Robot cheerleaders showcase sensor technology

TOKYO -- A team of cheerleading robots made their dancing debut in Tokyo on Thursday as creator Murata Manufacturing demonstrated its cutting-edge sensor technology.

With curtains pulled back and Japanese pop music pulsing in the background, 10 doll-like robot girls with illuminated pom-poms rolled out onto a stage to perform their choreographed routine.

The cheerleaders stand just 10-inches tall with matching bob hairstyles that hide the complicated machinery inside their heads.

The team's advanced gyro sensors, which are usually found in cars and digital cameras, keep them from falling off the balls that they wobble on during their routine, Murata said.

The cute creations have LED eyes that shine in different colors as they maneuver into various formations including a heart shape, diagonal lines and a moving figure of eight.

"Of course they cannot jump like true cheerleaders," said Koichi Yoshikawa, a Murata engineer involved developing the technology. "But the idea is that they are doing their best to stay stable on their little ball, as if they were telling the team, 'hang on, do your best!'"

Group-control technology, developed in collaboration with Kyoto University, makes sure that the robots move in a synchronized way and don't crash into each other.

That promise got off to a shaky start, however, as several dolls collided and fell over during the first take in front of assembled media -- prompting assistants to remove clumsy members of the squad.

Despite the hiccup, Murata, a major electronics manufacturer, said the technology has big potential, such as helping cars stabilize on slippery or damaged roads.

The company currently makes sensors that are used to monitor tire pressure and in engine control units.

Its next-generation technology could also be used as an anti-collision device in self-driving cars being developed by companies such as Google and Tesla.

Also it "could be used in rescue robots that perform group tasks at disaster sites," said Yoshikawa.

While Murata is not planning to mass produce the cheerleaders, it's hoping they'll help draw kids into the engineering field, he said.

The pom-pom squad follows on from the firm's "Murata Boy," a small child-like robot who rides a bicycle, first launched in 1991 and then updated in 2005, as well as unicycle-riding "Murata Girl," released in 2008.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Japan androids take us closer to 'Blade Runner' future

TOKYO -- A future in which it is difficult to tell man and machine apart could soon become reality, scientists say, after recent robotic breakthroughs in Japan.

But as the once-fantastical idea of wise-cracking android sidekicks takes form in laboratories -- and the gap between humans and robots narrows -- society faces ethical and legal complications as yet undreamed of, they warn.

"Already computers have surpassed human ability," leading Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro told AFP. "Robots will be very clever soon."

Science fiction's rapid slide towards science fact owes much to the likes of Ishiguro, who has an android copy of himself that he sends on overseas business trips in his place.

"It saves me time," he smiled. "The upper torso and lower torso you can pack in two big suitcases. The head is very fragile -- it goes as carry-on baggage."

Robots already perform a wide variety of tasks in Japan: they cook noodles, help patients undergo physiotherapy and have been used in the clean-up after the 2011 nuclear meltdown at Fukushima.

South Korea deploys jellyfish-terminating robots, while a robot with artificial intelligence able to analyse market trends has become a company director in Hong Kong.

One day, predict future-gazers, robots will perform all kinds of household chores, monitor the sick, and even serve up cappuccinos.

Replicants

But will they look like us?

Ishiguro created his doppelgänger from powerful electronics, complex moving parts, silicone rubber and hair from his own scalp.

"If we have enough knowledge about humans, we can create more human-like robots," he said after unveiling last month what he claimed was the world's first news-reading android in Tokyo. "That knowledge usually comes from neuroscience or cognitive science.

"More important is robots and androids as a mirror to reflect humanity. Once we become friends, the boundary between human and robot disappears," added Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University.

The blurring of that line has long been a source of worry for humanity, as often depicted in popular culture.

The 1982 Hollywood cult film "Blade Runner," which is set in 2019, features genetically engineered robots called 'replicants' which are visually indistinguishable from humans, but physically superior and able to withstand pain.

The film's protagonist, played by Harrison Ford, is given the task of tracking down and killing replicants that have escaped and are living among us. His problem is knowing the difference.

More recently, Hollywood broached the possibility of falling in love with technology in the critically acclaimed movie "Her." Released in 2013 and set in the not too distant future, the film tells the story of an introverted loner, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who falls for an intelligent operating system that exists only as a female voice on his computer and mobile devices.

Today robots are still discernably robots, with many designed deliberately to look artificial -- Honda's ASIMO was introduced to much fanfare in 2000 as a multi-functional mobile assistant which resembles a shrunken spaceman.

A chatty humanoid called Pepper was unveiled recently by Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank, which claims it can understand people's emotions and "70-80 percent of spontaneous conversations."

Pepper, which will go on sale to the general public in February for $2,000, has humanoid features -- like a head and two arms -- but its white plastic body deliberately points up its artificiality.

Uncanny valley

Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori suggested that the more robots look like people, the more we find them creepy, a phenomenon he called the "uncanny valley."

Ishiguro's initial human android, based on his own daughter, reduced her to tears, but he insisted Mori's phenomenon no longer applied after perfecting the template.

"The first android's movement was jerky, like a zombie," said Ishiguro. "But we have overcome the uncanny valley."

Research by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) bears that out. They tested reactions to androids in hospitals with largely positive results.

"We used androids in sessions with children suffering from ASD (autism spectrum disorder)," said Yoshio Matsumoto, research leader in service robots at AIST. "Of 85 subjects, four said they thought the robots were scary."

Ishiguro foresees that just as younger people today are attached to their mobile phones -- in reality powerful computers that mediate much of their lives -- androids will one day become an indivisible part of our landscape.

"Everyone is going to have an android," he predicted. "Handicapped people need another body. We are going to have more choices."

He also believes the floodgates to deepening relationships with robots will open once Pepper goes on sale and people take 'him' into their hearts.

But, he says, that is where the moral problems will arise.

"As we become closer to androids, we could hesitate to pull the switch," he said. "Suppose you lost your daughter in a traffic accident, and I create her android. You will probably love the android, and accept it as a human.

"Suppose someone burgles your house and you kill them to protect the robot. What kind of discussion will the lawyers have in court?"

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

LOOK: Pole-dancing robots wow at high-tech fair

HANOVER -- A "toddler" robot that sees red, a digital master chef and a suitcase that never gets lost -- new technology at the world's biggest high-tech fair has the potential to change lives.

The gadgetry ranged from time-saving to life-saving in the buzzing CeBIT halls in the northern German city of Hanover.

Robots never fail to pull in the crowds, and they set the scene at the official opening of the five-day showcase of what's new and ueber-hot in the IT and high-tech world.

RoboThespian, a life-sized humanoid robot, delivered an articulate welcome address to guests, among them Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Both leaders went on to shake the bionic i-limb hand that has 24 different grips, produced by prosthetics company Touch Bionics, on a joint tour of the stands from CeBIT's 2014 partner country, Britain.

While pole-dancing robots "Lexy" and "Tess" were on hand for pure entertainment, two others, including one-year-old "Roboy," which has bones and muscles, pave the way for possible future developments in medicine or even Moon exploration.

"I can be happy," says Roboy, pulling the appropriate facial expression. "I can be angry," it says, its face turning red.

Resembling a small child, Roboy can move its limbs thanks to its 48 muscles, which are being further developed by the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence of the University of Zurich and the EU research project Myorobotics.

"It was built in nine months like a human baby," project manager Rafael Hostettler said.

The goal is to simply better understand how we work and use the lesson to improve industrial production, he said.

"There might be applications in prosthetics," Hostettler said, saying simulating illnesses could help to bring down the cost of teaching doctors.

'Back in 10'

Meanwhile "Charlie," an ape-like robot with an flexible spine and feet that "feel," can crawl and balance on a tilting surface.

Developed by the German Center for Artificial Intelligence with Bremen University, it raises hopes that Charlie's descendants will one day explore craters on the Moon.

Back down to earth and "Kochbot" (German for "cook-bot") not only selects a recipe from among its library of 30,000 to suit whatever ingredients the cook has at home, but also reads it aloud and monitors the cooking time.

The Kochbot app means that sticky fingerprints on the pages of recipe books are a thing of the past and it will even repeat quantities or detailed prepping notes.

Further hands-free gadgetry at CeBIT gave new hope for frequent travellers.

At a mock-up of an Airbus cabin, there was a close-up look at "Bag2Go," a suitcase that is equipped with a SIM card, transmission module and display, to ensure it never gets lost.

"You always know where the bag is because you have an app, you can control it by GPS," said Torsten Chudobba, account executive for Airbus group, which together with T-Systems and luggage company Rimowa, is behind "Bag2Go."

Good news perhaps for skiers comes in the form of "Airwriting," developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which will mean not having to take off your gloves to write a short message via a mobile phone.

"Home in 10 minutes" for example can simply be spelled out on the palm of the user's hand and a sensor attached to the wrist records the hand movements for a computer to write out the message.

And with the soccer World Cup on the horizon, software giant SAP has the ultimate in analyzing the beautiful game.

It has teamed up with the German national football squad to produce a touchscreen tool with a panoramic view of past matches that digitally analyses team and individual performances, such as distances between players, passing frequency or possession of the ball.

"Here you can see the tactic, whether it works, how the opponent reacts," explained project manager Christoph Jungkind.

"So this is the basis for a good performance evaluation."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Toyota unveils robot helper

TOKYO —Toyota on Wednesday unveiled a robotic best friend that can offer a helping hand around the house fetching and carrying for the elderly or immobile.

The human support robot, a compact cylinder-shaped machine 37 centimeters in diameter and up to 130 centimeters tall, can be remotely controlled by a tablet computer to recognise items it is sent to fetch.

Taking their cue from dogs that are trained to retrieve things, Toyota engineers designed the robot to perform simple tasks on command, using an arm equipped with a small suction pad.

“The robot still has challenges such as selecting items from a drawer containing all sorts of things, for example,” said Takashi Yamamoto, general manager at Toyota’s advanced technology engineering department.

“Finding an item by itself before getting it to the person controlling it is the most difficult challenge,” he said.

Toyota, one of the world’s biggest automakers, has applied technology developed for its cars, such as precise control of motors at high speeds, in the design of the robots.

Products catering to the elderly are big business in Japan, where a declining birthrate and lengthening life-expectancy is creating a greying society.

source: japantoday.com