Technically Incorrect

In the future, we will need robots to do our dirty work.

In the future, we will need robots to do our clean work, too.

So in the future, we will need our robots to live, like farmers in centuries gone by, off the fat of the land.

One contractor to the Pentagon, Robotic Technology Inc., is already forging ahead with creating foraging robots.

According to its Web site, the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot--or EATR--is "an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling."

We have all resorted to unconventional re-fueling once or twice in our lives. However, I would very much like to use Robotic Technology's precise terminology so as not to affect your edification.

Will Corpse-eating robots really one day be sent out along battlefields?

(Credit: CC Army Mil/Flickr)

"The system obtains its energy by foraging--engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating," says the Web site.

Now I am not a scientist, and I'm concerned that the EATR will be steam-powered, but thankfully there are people at Fox News who seem to understand these things.

May I therefore pass on their speculation that this creation will be able to gorge on corpses?

According to Robotic Technology, EATR "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources)".

Ergo, Fox News tells us, it could dine on dead bodies. Our carcasses and those of other animals are, apparently, full of energy.

And given that EATR is being created for some military purposes, there should be plenty of battlefield corpses for it to feed on.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a little queasy about this.

When soldiers die on the battlefield, don't their loved ones want their bodies returned to home soil? Is Fox's suggestion, therefore, that EATR will only feed on human roadkill from the road team?

It all seems a little odd to me, but I know there will be many of you out there who will be able to bring some objective and clinical science to this difficult moral area.

I know Wii remotes have already been used to control coil guns and extremely unsettling black widow spiders, but now you can actually have fun mowing the lawn.

A group of highly domesticated scientists at the University of Southern Denmark decided the world needed to be spared from the pain of shortening grass until the next unseasonal downpour. So they created a lawn mower controlled by a Wii remote.

An early prototype designed to make mowing easier.

(Credit: CC Vespar Avenue/Flickr)

They've called it Casmobot. And just when I thought this name might have an allusion to something vaguely Viking, I was disabused by the explanation that the "Casmo" part stands for Computer Assisted Slope Mowing.

The design is quite simple. The Wiimote is connected by a little Bluetooth to a computer and a bunch of robotics in the machine.

Depending on how much fun you want to have, you can either keep tilting your Wiimote to direct the mower or you can just guide it around the perimeter of an area and it will automatically cut all the grass inside.

About 5.5 million robots were sold this year.

This figure doesn't refer to the sort of robots that build cars, refuse to live in Detroit, and rarely lose their jobs. There are only about 1 million of those. Rather, it refers to the sales of so-called professional and personal-services robots.

You know, the sort that play games with your kids, scare your cats as they scrub your floors, and feed and bathe your doddering granny. You don't have a personal-services robot yet? Well, recession does have it uses.

However, professor Noel Sharkey believes now is the time for a robotic ethical code.

Professor Sharkey, a really intelligent artificial-intelligence expert from the United Kingdom's University of Sheffield, is concerned that robots are being put into deeply sensitive situations that might result in the young and the elderly being divorced from contact with real humans.

The young and the elderly? Well, a considerable growth area in robot sales stems from metalheads' talent in covering for all that stuff that middle-aged wealthy folks don't enjoy. Like amusing their kids and looking after those drifting in the direction of celestial rest.

Writing in the current issue of Science magazine, the professor sounds a seemingly heartfelt alert: "Because of the physical safety that robot minders provide, children could be left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps for several days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation on development is unknown."

And neither is the possible psychological impact of 15 hours a day of World of Warcraft.

Henry and Chloe, meet your new babysitter.

(Credit: CC Crystl)

As for caring for those of more advanced years, if not sense, the professor opens one's eyes wider than Yoda's wisdom. He describes the vast range of robot specialists for the elderly:

Examples include the Secom "My Spoon" automatic feeding robot, the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses, and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot for monitoring, delivering messages, and reminding about medicine.

My granny, always large-eared but now deceased, wouldn't have been seen dead being fed, washed, or reminded by a robot. Professor Sharkey doesn't see this as a bold new future for the old, either. The increased presence of robots "could lead to the risk of leaving the elderly in the exclusive care of machines," he writes.

In case you think I am being a little harsh by placing this difficult potentiality in the neo-Georgian doorway of the self-centered wealthy, perhaps you should consider Professor Sharkey's other main robot usage issue.

As well as children being reduced to accessory level and the elderly to dribbling nuisancehood, what is the one other aspect of life that many of means mean to avoid?

Yes, war. And this is another battlefield of robotic involvement that Professor Sharkey believes should be regulated.

Apparently, 5,000 mobile robots are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's one thing I want to know. Do they know how to throw a shoe?

If you were going to design a robot to look like a real human being, which famous face would be your model?

Would you go for an Angelina Jolie because, well, she's already been Lara Croft and somehow the distance from video game character on your telly to robot in your living room is shorter than the walk to your garage?

Or might you prefer a warm-hearted intellectual such as Kanye West, the Marquis de Sade, or Ann Coulter?

Well, the University of West of England and the University of Bristol, as part of a project called Human-Robot Interaction, have been working to perfect an (allegedly) human-looking robot.

You know, one that can manage a few facial expressions, move its lips, and criticize you day after day.

Jules, as the robot is named, has a camera in his head that is connected to little electronic motors in his skin, and he copies the expressions his camera captures on an actual human's face. In a sense, he's like a ventriloquist's dummy. Without the ventriloquist in sight.

Yet if you watch the video above, you may think the same strange thoughts that passed through my mind: First, "Oh look, they've cloned Keanu Reeves." And second, "Why is he talking about destroying humanity?"

Jules, or Neo Keanu, seems keen on destroying three parts of the United Kingdom: Weston, Gloucester and Wales. Gloucester is quite nice in a twee English kind of way. Weston is a rather sad seaside resort. And Wales, well, it is the center of Britain's drug trade, so perhaps this is a robot on some kind of moral quest.

However, the more you watch him, the more you question whether he is real and whether Keanu Reeves isn't.

Jules' head looks something like this.

(Credit: CC SG Glickman)

It is all just slightly disturbing. Surely there were several moments during The Matrix when you wondered whether Keanu was one of them rather than one of us. Perhaps you have felt that about some of his other movies too. Well, that is what it's like having Jules around.

It makes me fear for the future. Or, at least, raise a stiff eyebrow in mild concern.

Human life as we know it is over. The way things have been going for us around here lately, that may not be such a bad thing.

Scientists at England's University of Reading (Reading is the sort of place where scientists are really cool) have created a robot which is controlled by cultured rat neurons.

In short, a robot with a rat's brain. Or, as some might call it, a politician.

Curiously, these scientists are very clear about what they are trying to achieve. They want to know how memories are stored in a brain made out of live matter.

I will not pretend to explain to you how this is all done. For I am a normal human being. (Here's a link to some intelligent people on the subject.) However, as I understand it, they separate the rat neurons out in an enzyme bath (a little like Epsom salts, I suppose, to rest the traumatized rat brain parts) and then they lay the enzymes on some electrodes.

That sparky little connection is the link between the brain and the machine.

One day, I will control you.

(Credit: CC Asplosh)

Here is a part I do understand- the rat brain communicates with the robot body via Bluetooth. Yes, just like drivers in California.

Apparently, the brain starts functioning within 24 hours, sending out impulses, presumably such as "can you crawl along that subway track and get to the cheese sandwich that the senior vice-president just dropped?"

The biggest issue for the scientists is keeping the brain alive. The biggest issue for me is that each rat brain has its own personality.

"It's quite funny, you get differences between the brains," said Kevin Warwick, one of the brains behind the Rat Brain Robot. "This one is a bit boisterous and active, while we know another is not going to do what we want it to."

You might be wondering just how similar rat brains are to human brains. Well, apparently, we simply have more brain stuff, rather than a lot of different brain stuff. (One rat brain=1 million neurons. One human brain=100 million neurons. It's amazing there isn't a Fox TV show called Are You 100 Times Smarter Than A Rat?)

Our gray-mattered similarity to rats I find simultaneously both reassuring and frightening.

However, I am still suspicious that the researchers really want to make a political point here.

You see, Britain's most unpopular politician just at the moment is the somewhat uncertain Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Your 100 million neurons will be shocked to discover that the Rat Brain Robot is called Gordon.

Bill's friend, the one with whom he was going on a motorbike holiday in Tasmania, suddenly died. Bill, being upset and Australian, went out and got drunk.

A cab dropped him off back at his house. But he collapsed before he could get to his front door.

So along came a friendly Google StreetView camera car. The Australian version of the service was to be launched August 4. So the Googler had a lot of filming to do.

He shot the prostrate Bill who was lying on his back, his feet sticking out into the road.

This was a click and run.

(Credit: CC re-ality)

The driver didn't stop to see whether Bill was all right. He didn't even get out of his camera car to move Bill's feet away from the curb. Like a TMZ.com paparazzo, his deadline seemed to be more important than something that could have been a dead body.

Did his shot of the beFostered Bill make the first edition of Google StreetView Australia? Too right, mate.

Bill (he doesn't want his last name plastered all over the place as well as his drunken pose) was as sanguine as the Australian Prime Minister, who, when he was seen getting drunk in an New York strip club, remarked: "I think any bloke who's honest about their lives can point to times in their lives when they've got it wrong."

Speaking of his dead friend, Bill said: "'I know what he would have done if I left --he would have partied, too. That's what I would've wanted him to do, so that's what I did with some friends."

However, he added: "I wasn't really thinking there would be someone driving by with a video camera on the roof filming me, either."

Who was the anti-Samaritan driving that Google camera car? Are his parents made of metal? What sort of instructions did he have? Why didn't he get out to help? And why didn't anyone at Google Australia notice that there was, well, a body lying in the street? (Google only removed the image after Bill's story came to light)

I know that people make jokes about Google being the quintessential engineering company. And that is something this blog will never stoop to (being an engineering company, that is).

But I hope you, too, would like to know how the company reacted to one of its drivers leaving a man lying in the street while he filmed him.

Or could it be that this driver was, in fact, yet another robot with vision problems?

Science decided to recreate the perfect film star. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Currently on display at the London Science Museum is a thing, no, a person, no, a perthing called Heart Robot.

Like the finest human diva, Heart Robot responds instantly to coddling, cuddling and the attentions of an ever-loving agent.

Heart Robot has a heart that breathes, a belly that beats and skin that responds to every movement, touch and shriek.

Its visible signs of happiness include limp limbs, lowered eyelids, a slowed heartbeat and relaxed breathing.

(Those of you who think these are somehow post-coital signs should immediately volunteer for community service.)

This robot has no feelings. It does, however, predict the future.

(Credit: CC Paul Keller)

This perthing does, however, have bad feelings too.

If you offer it cross words, if you give it a shove, a shake or a contract at Screen Actors Guild minimum rates, HR will flinch.

Its hands will twist into fists of hurt, its eyes will widen in stunned horror and its heart and breathing will reach rates only known to ritual cocaine snorters.

It might even use curse words on the phone to its representatives.

I am sad, therefore, to report that a significant proportion of visitors to the museum have been teenage boys who have delighted in making the perthing unhappy.

Should we be surprised?

The Museum, naturally, is defending this gratuitous robot-baiting by saying it is merely capitalizing on the success of Wall-E, a movie that has already enjoyed its share of fat-bashing accusations.

What can the scientists and marketers have been thinking when they allowed this poor, defenseless perthing to be left emotionally naked before the underdeveloped teenage male emotional spectrum?

Could they not have at least carded every male who looked under-25? Exposure to constant pain can be a lasting blight on development. This was like Will Smith being tossed to the ministrations of thousands of Louis Farrakhans.

I mean, this is our future we're talking about. We must protect it. We must nurture it. We must educate it.

I'm talking about the robot, not the children.

Robert Rauschenberg died this year.

Worry not.

For now we have Robot Rauschenberg.

Well, technically speaking (which we try not to here), his name is Viktor.

Just one name, like only the finest artists, Viktor is a drawing and painting machine. He's made from bits taken from other machines, ones that were made for entirely different purposes. (I suppose he will one day describe them as his muses.)

Viktor is really an amalgam of ordinary design software and industrial motors of various kinds.

Instead of drawing graphs for presentations, Viktor creates art for the world. Or, at least, what his creator, Jurg Lehni, a Swiss engineer, believes is art.

(Credit: Jurg Lehni and Alex Rich)

Jurg, everything is art. Rubbish, unmade beds, you name it.

Yes, but Jurg is deadly serious about this: "We are all being sold proprietary software all the time and being told how to use it in a prescriptive way," he told the London precursor to the New York Times. "But it is possible, if we know how, to bend it to our own will and to use it in a different way. The capacity of this software is not anticipated by us and it often has poetic potential."

If only some great software company had secured the tagline "software with poetic potential", I believe the world would be a far more beautiful place.

And now visitors to London's Institute of Contemporary Art will be able to enjoy Viktor's poetic potential as if they were in the artist's studio.

During the run of A Recent History of Writing and Drawing, Viktor will collaborate with architects, designers, artists, and a shopkeeper, to create moving imagery.

Tuomas Toivonen, a Finnish electronic composer and architect (there are not many Finns who embrace both these disciplines), will play the Hyalonium, a glass electronic harp, while Viktor will blast paint at a black wall behind him.

As for the shopkeeper, well, her name is Leila McAllister and she will be up on stage with two sustainable materials and construction experts- and Viktor- to propose new ways of distributing locally-produced food.

I think you will have to just be there to fully appreciate Leila.

However, perhaps the most stellar night, might turn out to be July 17, when Viktor will debut with Paul Elliman, a graphic designer. Together, they will reinterpret Elliman's recent whispering gallery podcast.

Strangely, it's not so easy to get hold of Viktor's collected works, and the one I display here may or may not be one of his best.

Still, you will surely agree with me that art in action, art that brings the spontaneous joy out of mundane technologies, beats the morbidity of still life or the arbitrary Hammer Horror otherworld of Surrealism any day.

One day, they'll be giving art awards for paintings created using Vista (well, maybe Vista and a Ford Edsel engine), mark my words.