关于机器人的报道

关于机器人的报道冀复生1. 5.前言这是去年MIT (麻省理工学院)的《Technology Review》刊登的一组关于机器人研究开发进展的报道。

这组报道覆盖面很广，包括了机器人结构、极限条件机器人、微型机器人、手术机器人以至玩具机器人。

从这些报道可以看出美国一些重要研究单位在干些什麽（在机器人领域）。

对我们研究开发布局的战略思路应该有点参考价值。

2. 6.THE ROBOTS ARE COMINGThe Net EffectBy Simson Garfinkel May 2002Robots that can climb stairs, crawl over ditches, survive three-story falls—and pester people who ignore your e-mails.本文报道了一个侦察机器人：大小和衣箱差不多。

可以以每小时15公里的速度匍匐前进，能爬台阶，从十米高度摔到水泥地上仍可继续工作；一个遥控（从几百甚至几千公里外）巡视机器人：设想某一天你忘记了回答远方朋友的电子邮件，这个“家伙”没准会根据你朋友的指令，突然从背后轻轻拍拍你肩膀，指着计算机示意让你赶快打开信箱；还有一个用于油井检测的几米长的蛇形机器人（我们在863计划里也支持过类似的机器人开发）。

作者认为机器人其实就是自治的，能够执行人类委托任务的计算机。

换句话说，明天的计算机主要会以机器人形态出现。

值得关注的不是这些机器人本身，而是其背后的研究机制。

以侦查机器人为例，研究项目来自美国国防部，而承担项目的是从MIT分离出来的一个小公司。

公司的骨干是在大学实验室从事了十几年研究的两位研究人员。

他们在学校的研究在我们许多人看来似乎毫无意义 — 研究昆虫形状的智能机器人（俗称“智能蟑螂”，大概就和美国许多孩子作为玩具的那种差不多 — 我在MIT媒体实验室就看见一批少年中学生用这种东西作为他们自己进行各种人工智能实验的平台）。

大胆冒叫一声，二十一世纪的某一天里，我们也许会突然发现机器人比今天的微机还普及。

美国人是以他们的独特方式来迎接这一机遇的。

教育与研究（不仅是大学教育，甚至延伸到了中小学课外活动），研究与商业化的转换与衔接是如此平滑自然。

我们呢，似乎还在研究与教育分割，研究与开发脱节，技术与市场割裂的环境里挣扎。

我们的落后从根本上讲不在“学术水平”，致命的因素是我们的机制和支持这种机制的思想观念。

科研、教育与产业之间的结合，最主要的因素应该是人员和知识的流动。

大学就得“教书育人”，从事研究；在大学里开发产品，“古今中外”鲜有成功者。

不少国家大学成了象牙之塔，结果国家的竞争力也逐渐退化。

我国改革开放后推动大学和研究所进入市场，成效如何还得叫历史去考验。

但把大学和研究所办成公司恐怕“此路不通”。

应当提倡的是“大循环”，即大学和研究所“生产”的人才和知识（注意主要不是知识产权，尤其大学里产生的知识应该以向社会扩散为主，即使申请了知识产权也应该只是作为扩散知识的辅助杠杆）支撑产业发展→国家竞争力增强→社会通过税收与捐赠回馈给大学和研究所。

而不是“小循环”，即从国家拿到科研经费→研究成果拿来办公司→公司收入支持大学和研究所发展。

因为后一种方式扭曲了大学和研究所的功能，不仅对社会贡献有限，而且会引发许多深层次问题。

Morticia is quite the capable robot.She can scramble over the outback at about15 kilometers per hour, climb stairs, survivea 10-meter drop onto a concrete floor andeven navigate underwater. Not bad for alittle critter that’s less than 20 centimetershigh and 65 centimeters long—about thesize of a small suitcase.Created under a U.S. Department ofDefense contract by an MIT spinoff companycalled iRobot, Morticia is a military machinewith a mission. Instead of carrying bombs,she carries eyes and ears, transmitting whatshe sees back over a wireless link. She3. 6.1.1.1Illustration by MatthewBouchardis also a pioneer, showing us how robots are likely to be integrated into our jobs and our lives in the coming years.I met two of the cofounders of iRobot, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, more than15 years ago when they were students working on artificial cockroaches at the MIT Robotics Lab. I wasn’t impressed. So when I learned a couple of years ago that Professor Rodney Brooks had formed a company with them to commercialize the cockroach technology, I pretty much wrote the whole thing off.But when I walked through the door of iRobot’s offices in Somerville, MA, earlier this year, I realized I had made a huge mistake. IRobot isn’t about cockroaches—it’s about creating the whole range of technologies that are necessary for building mobile, autonomous computers that perform valuable functions. This is hard stuff, requiring innovation in computer hardware, software, materials, mechanical design, wireless communication, artificial intelligence and more.Consider Morticia—one of the first prototypes of what iRobot calls “Packbots.” These are rugged machines that can be packed up in a box, thrown into the back of a van or a Humvee and hurled through the window of an office building where a crook is holed up with some hostages. The robot’s most prominent featuresare two rotating flippers that can be used for added traction, climbing steep steps or even righting itself if it happens to fall upside down. There are two cameras in the front, optional infrared headlights and seven payload bays for extra batteries or instruments. IRobot designed and built the whole shebang, from the treads (a fundamentally new design) and the nylon wheels with the cyclone-shaped spokes (designed to absorb heavy impacts) to the flippers. You just can’t buy this stuff off the shelf.“In Los Angeles they have a hostage situation every three days,” says Greiner, who is now iRobot’s president. “Standard procedure is not to send in a police officer.” That’s because the officer might get shot or end up “amplifying” the situation.Which is where robots come in. “If you can send in a nonthreatening robot and establish communications,” Greiner maintains, many hostage situations can be defused. The robot can also look around and verify whether the hostages are still alive—or if they even exist. Packbots were also sent in to explore the rubble after the attacks on the World Trade Center last September, but, alas, they did not discover any survivors.“It’s a very good robot,” says Martial Hebert, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. As with other robots that iRobot has developed, the company plans to sell a version of the Packbot for robotics researchers around the world. Hebert has used an earlier version of the Packbot to develop advanced navigation algorithms.If you’re lucky, you will never encounter the business end of the Packbot. But within a year or so, you might find yourself looking eye to eye with another iRobot creation called the CoWorker. Designed to meander through an office building, the CoWorker looks like an oversized children’s wagon with a long black neck and a cute little video camera on top. CoWorker is a mobile videoconferencing system that you can drive from room to room of your company’s office in, say, San Francisco, while you’re sitting in your house on the other side of the country. You log onto the computer’s onboard Web server, view a picture of the room that the CoWorker is in, and then click your mouse where you want it to go. The robot charts a path, driving around obstacles and maneuvering through doors.CoWorker is a big step forward from the teleconferencing systems that have been bopping around corporate America for many years. With today’s systems, you need to ask your colleagues to meet you for a teleconference. With CoWorker, you drive the teleconferencing system into their offices—quite handy when the long-distance workmates won’t answer your e-mails.IRobot has also created a nine-meter-long robot that crawls down oil wells and performs measurements on the inside. And the company’s consumer division has put the low-cost My Real Baby robot into the hands of more than 100,000 children since its release in November 2000.What’s happening here is clear: the real revolution in mobile computing isn’t handheld computers; it is autonomous systems that can perform useful work.IRobot isn’t the only company to see the potential here. ActivMedia Robotics in Peterborough, NH, for instance, sells a full line of robots for third-party developers and researchers; and don’t forget Sony with its Aibo robotic dog. This whole world of robots is amazing, and it’s only going to get more so. To anyone who was just laid off from Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks or some other telecommunications company—get into robotics. This is the future./articles/garfinkel0502.asp(URL: )4.7.RECONFIGURABLE ROBOTSDemo May 2002PARC's Mark Yim shows off his robots, which reassemble themsleves to slink like snakes, roll like wheels or scamper like lizards.“可重构”是计算机技术，也是信息技术的一个重要发展趋势，作为未来计算机归宿的机器人自然也要向这一趋势发展。