The Future of Intelligent Robots

Robots have been around for over half a century now, making constant progress in terms of their sophistication and intelligence levels, as well as their conceptual and literal closeness to humans. As they become smarter and more aware, it becomes easier to get closer to them both socially and physically. That leads to a world where robots do things not only for us but also with us. Not-so-intelligent robots made their first debut in factory environments in the late ‘50s. Their main role was to merely handle the tasks that humans were either not very good at or that were dangerous for them. Traditionally, these robots have had very limited sensing; they have essentially been blind despite being extremely strong, fast, and repeatable. Considering what consequences were likely to follow if humans were to freely wander about within the close vicinity of these strong, fast, and blind robots, it seemed to be a good idea to isolate them from the environment by placing them in safety cages. Advances in the fields of sensing and compliant control made it possible to get a bit closer to these robots, again both socially and physically. Researchers have started proposing frameworks that would enable human-robot collaborative manipulation and task execution in various scenarios. Bi-manual collaborative manufacturing robots like YuMi by ABB and service robots like HERB by the Personal Robotics Lab of Carnegie Mellon University[1] have started emerging. Various modalities of learning from/programming by demonstration, such as kinesthetic teaching and imitation, make it very natural to interact with these robots and teach them the skills and tasks we want them perform the way we teach a child. For instance, the Baxter robot by Rethink Robotics heavily utilizes these capabilities and technologies to potentially bring a teachable robot to every small company with basic manufacturing needs. As robots gets smarter, more aware, and safer, it becomes easier to socially accept and t