Aaron’s Thoughts On The Week
If you're going to be ridiculous, be over-the-top ridiculous. - Rick Nielsen
At the end of each year, I pack up and head out for several days of being unplugged and one with my thoughts. I leave the world behind and just reset and mentally prepare for the new year with a clear head.
With no internet access and very spotty cell service, I read a lot between hikes and some fishing. For this trip, I got four books done granted one was taken in on my flight home. There is something to be said about the power of words and what they can convey, not only informationally but emotionally. Being in the business of making standards, I know that words matter.
So when I fully replugged myself back in the modern world, it was a bit upsetting to see that the biggest thing I missed. At the same time I was gone, everyone was up in arms over a news article about a Tesla engineer who was injured while programming a group of robots.
Now, we will briefly discuss the headline, but as I read through the article, I was intrigued because the report was nothing new. It was a retelling of an incident that happened in 2021. It was already well known by many of us that work on robot safety items. So that was already a big strike for me and the so-called journalist who wrote the article. Are we going to hash up an old story for eyeballs and clicks? I guess so. Also, many are trying to get in as many kicks and hits on Elon Musk right now; that is another probable reason for the story right now. I’m no Musk fan, but this was pretty lame with everything else he does to bring up a report from 2021. Side note: the article also had a picture of the Tesla humanoid robot, even though it was clear that this was an industrial robot arm involved. Again, this is just another strike to their journalistic integrity.
However, the headline upset many because it flashed the simple text of “ROBOT ATTACKS TESLA ENGINEER!!” That was the final strike, in my opinion. Robots do not “attack” anyone. They are tools that we program to do certain things. So, when a robot hurts someone, it is due to a human error somewhere in the process. Either the system was not designed with safety in mind, there was a programming error, or the human worker did something that put them in the situation. The robot didn’t do anything; we do not live in a TERMINATOR world, even though Hollywood would love you to think that.
The story was eventually picked up by other news outlets who continued to use the term “ATTACKED” in their articles. Thus further pushing the narrative to the general public to stoke their anti-robot sentiment. Nearly all of these articles did not mention how the engineer failed to follow proper protocols and well-established industry safety standards. Now, that does point to potential safety concerns at Tesla, and again, those who follow industrial safety issues year-round know that Tesla does not have the best safety record compared to the rest of the automotive industry. I think the original reporter was trying to get to that, but by using the term “ATTACKED,” all blame was shifted away from Tesla to the robot in the general public’s mind. So, if the reporter’s main goal was to hit Tesla and Musk, her words destroyed that intention by just using a single word. As I said earlier, WORDS MATTER.
But this wasn’t the only robot that ATTACKED this week. A poor dog in China made the internet get all up in arms when its owner’s robot vacuum sucked up part of his tail and was attached to him until the owner returned home. The headline read “𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭 '𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬' 𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭!” again leading with a loaded word.
When a car hits a pedestrian, we don’t say the car ATTACKED the pedestrian (unless it involves an autonomous car). When I hit my thumb with a hammer, I don’t say the hammer ATTACKED me. It reminds me of the musical Chicago, where the female inmates explain why they are in jail….
Are reporters going to change how they report negative incidents between humans and robots? Highly doubtful. In this new world order of getting the most LIKES, COMMENTS, and VIEWS, people are simply going to do what is the easiest path to get those, and why let all the boring facts get in the way?
The reporters with integrity will tell the whole story, but their editors will still add colorful language that will stop people as they quickly stroll through their news feeds.
As for the robotics industry, we should call these what they are - “TYPEWRITER ATTACKS REPORTER” (TAR) stories because clearly, the typewriter made the reporter write those misleading and over-the-top headlines. Sounds stupid? Yeah, because like their stories they are.
Robot News Of The Week
The International Space Station To Receive A Surgical Robot
Developed in Nebraska, this robot will hopefully never need to be used, but it is still a great tool to have on the station in the future.
Miso Robotics Opens Autonomous Burger Joint
Downtown Pasadena, California, now has a unique autonomous burger restaurant called CaliExpress, which uses robots to prepare quick bites for hungry consumers. The restaurant is a collaboration between Miso Robotics, Cali Group, and PopID. Miso Robotics has provided its proprietary technology to automate the grill and fry stations, while PopID manages orders and payments through kiosks. The restaurant also offers personalized order recommendations and a facial recognition payment option.
Univ. of Iowa Health Care celebrates 10,000 robotic procedures
University of Iowa Healthcare says they have performed over 10,000 robotic procedures, and the program plans to continue growing. Robotic procedures have expanded to various disciplines in UIHC, from cardiac surgeries to transplants. These tools are specialized in soft-tissue procedures. Hospital staff use robotics in roughly 100 cases every month. UIHC says using robots for procedures helps with a variety of patient needs. They see less blood loss, lower infection rates, and shorter hospital stays.
Robot Research In The News
An MIT research group has demonstrated the ability to mind-control a 4-legged Boston Robotics Spot. Participants wore a pair of AttentivU smart glasses with built-in electrodes that can be mind-read. They could tell the robotic dog to fetch items and move about by thoughts alone.
Picture a future in which a simple request to your personal helper robot - “tidy the house” or “cook us a delicious, healthy meal” - is all it takes to get those jobs done. These tasks, straightforward for humans, require a high-level understanding of the world of robots. Deepmind announced a suite of robotics research advances that bring us closer to this future. AutoRT, SARA-RT, and RT-Trajectory build on their historic Robotics Transformers work to help robots make decisions faster and better understand and navigate their environments.
Artificial pain sensors could help robots avoid damaging themselves
A system that detects forces and interprets which stimuli have the potential to cause harm could imbue robots with a sense akin to pain
Robot Workforce Story Of The Week
Central Florida College prepares students for careers in robotics
On Valencia College’s Osceola Campus, the Advanced Robotics Learning Factory is training students in just 22 weeks to become semiconductor and robotics technicians. The curriculum was designed in collaboration with professionals at BRIDG and Skywater Technology. The program recently received a $4.1 million grant from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund.
Robot Video Of The Week
Stanford University researchers have introduced Mobile ALOHA
Imitation learning from human demonstrations has shown impressive performance in robotics. However, most results focus on table-top manipulation, which needs more mobility and dexterity for generally useful tasks. In this work, the researchers have developed a system for imitating mobile manipulation tasks that require bimanual and whole-body control.
They first introduced a low-cost whole-body teleoperation system called Mobile ALOHA for data collection. It augments the ALOHA system with a mobile base and a whole-body teleoperation interface. Using data collected with Mobile ALOHA, they then performed supervised behavior cloning. Finally, the researchers found that co-training with existing static ALOHA datasets can boost performance on mobile manipulation tasks.
With 50 demonstrations for each task, co-training can increase success rates by up to 90%. This allows Mobile ALOHA to autonomously complete complex mobile manipulation tasks such as sautéing and serving a piece of shrimp, opening a two-door wall cabinet to store heavy cooking pots, calling and entering an elevator, and lightly rinsing a used pan using a kitchen faucet.
Upcoming Robot Events
Jan. 15-17 A3 Business Forum (Orlando, FL)
Mar. 11-14 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (Boulder, CO)
Mar. 11-14 MODEX (Atlanta, GA)
Apr. 7-10 Haptics Symposium (Los Angeles, CA)
Apr. 14-17 International Conference on Soft Robotics (San Diego, CA)
May 1-2 The Robotics Summit & Expo (Boston, MA)
May 6-9 Automate (Chicago, IL)
May 13-17 IEEE-ICRA (Yokohama, Japan)
July 2-4 International Workshop on Robot Motion and Control (Poznan, Poland)
July 8-12 American Control Conference (Toronto, Canada)
Oct. 1-3 International Robot Safety Conference 2024 (Cincinnati, OH)
Oct. 8-10 Autonomous Mobile Robots and Logistics 2024 (Memphis, TN)
Oct. 16-17 RoboBusiness (Santa Clara, CA)