Eoin Gubbins looks at the positive side of robotics

IN science fiction, robots tell you that you’re in the future (or in a galaxy far, far away). If there is a robot, then you’re in a different time, a different place, or a different dimension.

Yet, we’re getting closer to a time when robotic helpers are the norm. Sick of hoovering? iRobot’s Roomba, automated vacuum cleaner has been around since 2002, and Aldi stock a cut-price version.

These little machines whirr around your home, sucking up dust and dirt, and return to a charging station when they’re low on power.

While most would jump at the chance to cut out an irritation like cleaning, Google have their sights set on a robotic replacement for a treasured activity: driving.

The internet giant’s driverless car project had run up almost 700,000 unmanned miles by April. Their data suggests that automated cars are already safer than humans, raising questions about whether human driving might be considered hugely irresponsible in the future.

Even more impressive is the potential for these cars to make driving accessible to the disabled and the blind. A great deal of robotics research in Ireland is focused on improving the situation for those with disabilities.

Much of it has been inspired by the words of a single Cork woman: Millstreet teenager Joanne O’Riordan. Ms O’Riordan was born without arms or legs, and made an international impact when speaking to a UN conference on women in technology in 2012.

She called on the scientific community to develop a robot that would help her complete tasks that are impossible for her, like picking up her phone or pen. Prof Kevin Kelly of Trinity College Dublin heard her call.

“She made comments about the role of technology in empowering people like her, and delivering solutions to some of her particular needs,” he explains. “It resonated with me.”

After exploratory conversations with Joanne and her family, a team of students and academics embarked upon the task of building an automaton.

They built Robbie the Robot, a proof of concept robot designed to demonstrate that a robot could be built that would allow Joanne to do things like picking up her phone, or a pen from the floor.

Discussions are continuing on how to progress the project so that an improved version of Robbie can be built.

Dr Emanuel Popovici of UCC and his colleagues were also influenced by Joanne’s call. Although the project of producing the type of robot Joanne asked for was beyond their scope, they realised robotics could address a different problem that would help many other disabled children.

“All kids have a right to play,” says Dr Popovici. “Some of these kids, even though they have the right to play, they cannot, because some toys are very hard to interact with if you have certain disabilities.”

They set out to develop toy robots anyone could interact with. They designed robots that danced to Irish music while unattended – they reacted to the music. Dr Popovici says they don’t want to develop toys only for children with disabilities, but to imbue toys with sufficient intelligence so that those children can interact with them.

“Everybody can play with them,” he explains. “They are toys for all – including bigger children like myself!”

Securing a cleaner environment is another area to which robots may be able to contribute. Dr Vladimir Ogourtsov of the Tyndall Institute in UCC is part of an international team that has developed a shoal of robotic fish to detect issues with water quality.

“They can work together in order to find pollutants in the harbour area,” he explains.

The fish, whose swimming motion is modelled on ordinary fish, provide real-time monitoring of pollutants using chemical sensors, rather than engaging in time-consuming testing and analysis.

With all of the potential benefits of robotics, opportunities are available for entrepreneurs with expertise and imagination. Friends Niall McCormick and Colmán Munnelly founded robotics education company Colmac Robotics in 2013.

Their childhood passion for the subject made them think children could benefit from learning about it. Colmac provides robotics camps throughout the summer, and their success has them thinking big about the future of robotics education.

“Originally we just said we’d give it a go for the summer, and then it was phenomenally successful,” says Mr McCormick.

“The main idea of the camps is to spur childre on — to get creative and imaginative. It doesn’t specifically need to be to get them into technology, but we allow them to be as creative as possible.”

Despite Ireland’s aspirations towards a digital economy, Mr McCormick says there are relatively few opportunities for kids to get acquainted with technology. “We’re hoping this will give them an interest at quite an early age, that when they go into the secondary school system they already have an intimate knowledge of it and aren’t completely put off.”

Jian Liang, a research engineer at the Nimbus Centre in Cork Institute of Technology, has seen the positive effects of this kind of interaction with robots first-hand.

He has worked as a mentor for a group of teenagers at one of the Coder Dojo programmes hosted at Nimbus, who entered a robotics competition run by EMC.

The teenagers learned to programme robots to carry out elementary physical tasks, such as dropping spheres into cylinders. More importantly, Mr Liang believes that the primary benefit of this kind of experience for children will be an increasing familiarity with technology.

Of course, just because robots are available to carry out tasks doesn’t mean people will be comfortable using them.

Prof Cynthia Breazeal, a researcher at the Massachussets Institute of Technology has done extensive work in social robotics, trying to understand how to make robots palatable to humans.

She and her colleagues in MIT’s Personal Robots Group have created robots that make eye contact and smile when praised.

As robots continue to be integrated into our lives, it seems likely that this kind of research will be essential. Trinity’s Prof. Kevin Kelly says teams exploring those issues, including psychologists, computer scientists, and sociologists, are likely to become more common.

“That’s already happening to some extent, and I think you’re probably going to see a lot more of that,” he explains. “I think increasingly it will need, not convergence between those groups, but a lot more collaboration, partnerships, and larger, more multidisciplinary teams working on these problems.”

Niall McCormick of Colmac Robotics says developments in the field like South Korea’s long-term goal of having a robot in every home by 2020, and the purchase of robotics firms by Fortune 500 companies, give a sense of the force behind the field.

“When you see companies like that buying these companies en masse, there’s obviously a massive push on to get robotics into everyday life,” he says.