New robots giving the disabled independence

(CBS News) There's a group of scientists who want you to forget the big clunky robots in the science fiction movies of old. Instead, say hello to the updated model: A robot designed to help people who need help the most.

In a lab deep in the Silicon Valley, robots are being programmed to do household chores like folding laundry, sorting socks and acting a little more human.

"I think robotic technology is awesome!" exclaimed Leila Takayama, who works at Willow Garage, a company that designs and tests personal robots, making them less intimidating.

They're also making them more practical, but it's not housework that's placing these robots on the cutting edge. It's what they've done for people like Henry Evans, who at the age of 40 suffered a severe stroke. It left him a quadriplegic, able to understand, unable to speak.

"I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know. He was literally trapped in his body," said Henry's wife, Jane Evans.

Evans recently became one of the first to test a personal robot, named "Jake", donated by Willow Garage to a team of scientists at Georgia Tech.

With eye movements and his limited use of one finger, Henry Evans can now program the robot to help him shave, help him scratch, and to get a towel. It all takes a lot of work, and time for Henry's clunky, 400-pound machine.

Charlie Kemp of Georgia Tech says there are important reasons why a robot is preferable to some disabled people than hiring a helper.

"It's the difference between asking someone to do it for you, versus doing it for yourself. People really want to do things for themselves. They want that independence," Kemp said.

For Henry, doing anything independently was once unthinkable.

"When you see the sense of satisfaction in his face, I mean, there's no words to describe it. It's amazing," Jane Evans said. "I love the robot! The robot has helped my husband emerge into this person that i never dreamed possible."

It's a technology opening up a world of endless possibilities.

[ROBOToni]

CLOUD ROBOTICS for cheap and popular cloud-robots with an intelligence indistiguishable from human, or beyond human.
A strong and generalist intelligence is possible using high number of specialized AI bricks or tools.

In 1989 was "invented" the WWW which is the high level layer of applicaction for humans over low level layer protocols TCP/IP created in 60's years of last century for military purposes. Now it's time to create the new high level layer aplication for robots with thousands (milions?) of specialized tools which I call "AI bricks". Will be used standards protocols in communications for structure mission information, as XML, uploading media & sensor magnitudes, etc. to the cloud and obtaining a response "on demand".

The big oportunity as important as WWW is now because:

1) Mobile new technologies (Smartphones) are mature and growing exponentially in features, delay times and bandwith with wifi (indor robots) or 3G, 4G, 5G outside home. Smartphones are already produced in big scale and are commodities, so prices will decrease. (Client side=cheap robot = AI robots become popular)

2) Cloud Computing technologies are mature and growing exponentially (server side = millions of expert, learning, NLP, etc. AI tools or "bricks" for hard process and quick calculations and access to data, correlations of patterns for Artificial vision, voice recognition, etc)

The big oportunity is for everybody:

- Key players for image, video and voice recognition: Google, Apple, Microsoft...
- Startups and entrepeneurs with a high knowhow of specific field of knowledge and human behavior.
- Middle companies.
- Open Source community
- AI institutes and departments (exists from 1956, and they have had varying success in so many years in a lot of specific fields)

Examples of thousands (milions?) of AI bricks very intelligent in their specialization and silly in other tasks:

- RTS (Robot Tools Server) for redirecting each machine or robot to the optime specialized tool (like DNS in WWW) for complete a mission.

- Expert tools: chess (Deep Blue machine won the human world champion Kasparov on 1997), psicology, emotional intelligence, lawyer, languages, empathy, medical, history, mycology, weather, etc...

- Prediction tools.

- Technic tools: Artificial vision for recogition of thousands of objects with milions of patterns hosted in the Cloud. Voice recognition, etc

- Downloading specilized programs and firmware "on demand" tools for robots

- Learning tools: the robots can learn from their own past experience depending on if a past mission failed or successed, memory, knowhow, etc. A human from his born is always learning from it's own experience and delays 18 years in adquiring a bit of maturity, and more than 30 years in working professionally with solvency and experience... lets give the same time to strong and generalist AI cloud robots!

The way to integrate these bricks for not being a "large number of airplane parts flying in formation" is key. So I introduce the concept of RTS (Robotics Tools Server) than in human high level layer of aplication WWW is something concepually similar as simple DNS (Domain Name Server), thinked for humans because humans we don't remember IP numbers, but we remember alphanumeric names and words and domains. In worldwide DNS, thousands of machines, are automically updated when only one DNS is updated with a new domain name in less than 24h, and this extraordinary network of machines doesn't belongs to nobody or any company.

RTS (Robot Tool Server) is similar, but more complex: a robot provides to RTS a mission in XML predefined format, with optional attached URL files (additional information,multimedia information, etc. uploaded and hosted in the cloud), and the RTS redirects the robot to the optimal machine (IP) to complete his mission like DNS redirects to a IP when it receives a domain name. A regulated register of AI bricks or tools is required.

I call this strong and generalist AI concept as "CLOUD ROBOTICS"