“Rosie, take a soil test, get me some coffee, then go recharge yourself!”

The success of “I Robot”, the new Will Smith movie, brings the topic of robotics back to center stage.  The inspiration for this movie was Isaac Asimov’s collection of short stories of the 1950s.  Like time travel, invisibility, and distant travel, these are the fodder of our imagination.  What do we have to look forward to before 2035? 

The Cye Personal Robot is a personal robot for use in the home or office.  It can carry dishes, deliver mail, vacuum the carpet, and lead guests into the conference room.  It even has an optional little red wagon for carrying bigger loads.  You can command it through a computer interface or by clapping your hands.  It receives commands through a standard computer wireless network (802.11b).  My favorite tutorial is CyePup – where it will wait for you, wag its tail and then go to sleep.

Palm Pilot Robot was developed at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute.  It’s brain is a standard off-the-shelf palm pilot which is placed on top of a base which includes 3 omni-wheels.  It appears this robot is ideal for staying on schedule and collecting data.

The newest entry into this field are nanobots.  This is a robot the size of a nanometer – one billionth of a meter.  (One hundred thousand stacked on top of each other would be about the thickness of a strand of human hair).  These microscopic machines will be used for everything from cleaning windshields to replacing the cells in our blood.  One specific type of nanobot called a respirocyte can carry many times more oxygen and other nutrients.  How about holding your breath for an hour?

When computers were new, I would be asked to speak to various school groups on what a computers and software could do.  One exercise was to stand at the blackboard and tell them I was a computer and they had to instruct me to draw a circle.  It would start with them telling me to pick up the chalk.  I would then quickly point out that I didn’t know what to pick it up with, and I didn’t know what chalk was or where to find it.  It was a marvelous educational exercise that got them thinking about process and instruction and terminology.

If I think of that exercise and what we can expect out of robots of the future, it does appear that we have a long way to go.  But the creative energy that’s being focused on this technology is incredible. 

How about a robot with a camera that you set at the edge of the field? You then tell it the crop and the expected yield.  Our little friend, who we will call “Scout”, wheels his way around the perimeter of the field and then zips to the middle – using GPS.  Along the way he is taking soil samples and analyzing the nutrients, organics, and soil type.  After a few minutes, he sits in at the edge of the field and shivers as he processes the data.  Then off he goes again – he has gotten some inconsistent data and wants to resample the area.  Finally he returns to the truck – flashes his green light and is ready to take to the new field.

How soon? Some scientists think this is next-decade work.  George Jetson can hardly wait.

Ps: Rosie, as you may recall, was the name of the Jetson’s domestic robot.