Technology: The Next Wave Of Smart Sensors And Personal Household Robots

Michael Orme - Thu 31 May, 2007

So we enter the age of the smart sensor. The vision now is to put a personal robot in every home and Microsoft aims to be along with Toyota, Matsushita and others a commanding force in what promises to be big and high profile global market as a new subset of the extended internet. Microsoft has developed a robot development system as a forerunner to orchestrating home robots as peripherals to a PC server via suitably tweaked Windows software to run the home. BTs resident futurist, Ian Pearson talks about the caring economy in which household robots will play a central role. If ever there was a case of an enabling technology meeting a social need, this is it...

Imagine if a gnat-sized spy plane flew into your office and snitched your password details as you keyed them into your computer.

Imagine battlefields, farms, factories - the whole environment - strewn with smart sensors, the size of grains of sand, sensitive to anything that moves, grows, makes noise or heats up and with rudimentary intelligence to not just sense and observe but also interact with the physical world on our own and other peoples’ behalf.

Again, imagine a new breed of caring household robot as consumer electronic items. Sci-Fi? Rather Sci-faction, swiftly becoming science fact.

Technologically, all the above - giving everything eyes, ears and rudimentary intelligence - is on the cards within the next 10 years and some of it, for example, those household robots a great deal sooner.

Indeed, there are already robot vacuum cleaners, Roombas made by MIT spin-out iRobot, which are given nicknames by their owners, offer companionship to the old and alone, and say ‘whoops’ if they fall downstairs.

The Japanese with their Shinto culture, who see artifacts as a part of nature suffused with gods, and who regard robots as ‘beings’ rather than artificial arms with claws, are moving into the vanguard of what is in essence a mammoth extension of the internet as the cyber and physical worlds overlap. Expect Toyota to become as well known as a personal robot maker as motor manufacturer.

The 1980s very much shaped the emergence of the microprocessor, which spawned the PC much to the surprise of the Intel honchos.

The 1990s were all about broadband access made possible by the laser, and mobile phones made possible by the micro-miniaturisation of the digital signal processor. 

Now, the key enabling technology is fast becoming the cheap, smart sensor in the form of tiny micro-electro- mechanical systems (MEMS).

My favourite futurist, Paul Saffo, at the Institute of the Future, Menlo Park, California, puts it soberly and without hyperbole, thus, running through the sequence of the microprocessor and laser revolutions: ‘’processing plus access plus sensors will set the stage for the next stage of interaction. By interaction, I don’t mean internet-variety interaction among people. I mean the interaction of electronic devices with the physical world on our behalf.

That’s the mammoth extension of the internet we referred to earlier. Again, let your imagination wander as MEMS redefine cereal packages, fridges, stock on the move, factory and security systems, and saturate your car, which already has sensors in its GPS, fuel injection and air bags.

Of course, we don’t know how it’ll play out just as the guys who developed the microprocessor had no clue about the PC revolution it would spawn. Nonetheless, it’s a fair bet that the sensor revolution will mean that privacy’s gone. Well, it’s virtually gone already with all those CCTV cameras and the operations of the all- seeing Nanny State. But now, with the live prospect of our lead-in cameo, we’ll all being living in glass houses.

How will the battle of the MEMS between terrorists and criminals and the rest of us play out? We haven’t the foggiest idea but if you get a minute, read David Brin’s fascinating and alarming book, The Transparent Society.

Let’s finish with a brief look at personal robots made possible by MEMS. No less a person than Bill Gates commented recently that he feels he’s in at the creation, just as he felt when he co-founded Microsoft.

The vision then was to put a PC on every desk. The vision now is to put a personal robot in every home and Microsoft aims to be along with Toyota, Matsushita and others a commanding force in what promises to be big and high profile global market as a new subset of the extended internet.

Microsoft has developed a robot development system as a forerunner to orchestrating home robots as peripherals to a PC ‘server’ via suitably tweaked Windows software to run the home.

BT’s resident futurist, Ian Pearson talks about the ‘caring economy’ in which household robots will play a central role. If ever there was a case of an enabling technology meeting a social need, this is it.

More and more societies are threatened with hosts of elderly ‘singletons’ needing help and companionship in countries where governments already have strangled healthcare budgets and where the cultural mores is not about the extended family and caring for elderly relations, and where ‘angel neighbours’ are ever harder to come by.

One thing is pretty well for sure, Japan will mobilise charming robots to help meet the problem. Go to any robot show in Japan and you can get a very clear view of an increasingly imminent future. My bet is that others will follow, noting the Roomba effect in the US.

So we enter the age of the smart sensor, expecting to be blind-sided, and severely disrupted, but, as always, where there’s turmoil there’s opportunity and without
getting utopian, wouldn’t it be nice to leave our chores to amenable robots, even if we are living in glass houses. 

Regards

Michael Orme
For The Daily Reckoning

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