Building robots—and teaching them social skills
Will robots create jobs or kill them? Although robots may be able to take over some jobs now performed by people, the overall expectation is that the robotics industry will create one million new jobs over the next five years, according to research conducted by Metra Martech on behalf of the International Federation of Robotics and cited in IEEE-USA Today's Engineer.
The article doesn't comment on the number of old jobs to be lost over the same period, but the prospects are promising for engineers and perhaps for anyone involved in manufacturing in the U.S.
Henrik Christensen, director of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Institute of Technology, says that as robots continue to be used more in manufacturing, they will actually create jobs. The Today's Engineer article quotes him as saying, “We're going to see more manufacturing come back to the United States, where robots will help us better control quality and intellectual property.”
The article also quotes Jon Bornstein, manager of the Army Research Laboratory's Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance, as saying, “A wide array of skills is necessary to develop these robotics systems. Hardware, software, actuation, mobility in complex environments, mechanical engineering, power, control…all of those will be wrapped up in robotics.” Bornstein adds, “We also employ a large number of psychiatrists. We want a robot to have a mental picture of what people are doing around it,” with the goal of optimizing the way in which people interact with robots.
Optimizing human-robot interactions (HRI) involves disciplines include neuroscience, psychology, and social science, according to the Kavli Fouundation. To discuss the implications of HRI, the foundation brought together three HRI pioneers: Maja Matarić, professor of computer science, neuroscience and pediatrics, and director of the Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, University of Southern California; Ayse Saygin, assistant professor of cognitive sciences and neurosciences, and faculty member of the Kavli Institute of Brain and Mind, University of California San Diego; and Andrea Thomaz, assistant professor of interactive computing and director of the Social Intelligent Machines Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Said Thomaz, “In my lab, we see human social intelligence as being comprised of four key components—the ability to learn from other people, the ability to collaborate with other people, the ability to apply emotional intelligence, and the ability to perceive and respond to another person’s intentions. We try to build this social intelligence in our robots.”
Matarić pointed out, “How we interact with embodied machines is different than how we interact with a computer, cell phone, or other intelligent devices. We need to understand those differences so we can leverage what is important. Features of expression in the face and body of the robot are important, especially the body because body posture, gestures, and how close we get to someone are subtleties we use to manipulate social interactions.”
And Saygin added, “I work primarily on body language from the standpoint of how people understand each other’s movements and actions. We can’t yet build a model of how the human brain does it and then put that into a machine. I think it’s important, but we’re not there yet in terms of fully understanding it.”
Of course, robots could become too social. Said Thomaz, “To make a robot work better in human society it is going to have to be pushing all the right buttons so you interact with it as if it is another human. People already get emotionally attached to their cars, which don’t even push those social buttons, so we have to be worried about the fact that people could get even more attached to a social robot. We need to consider what we can do to make it really transparent that the robot is a machine that can break and might go away or become obsolete.”
An individual robot might go away, but the field of robotics is here to stay. And if you are thinking of getting into the field but don't know which discipline to focus on, the IEEE Today's Engineer article quotes Christensen offering this advice: “Go with your heart. If you do something that you feel motivated to do and you're interested in, you do a better job and you have a better career.”