How humanoids won the hearts of Japanese industry
If you push Promet the robot on to the floor, he will stand up laboriously, like an old man with arthritis. Ask him to take a beer out of the refrigerator and he will open the fridge door and, agonisingly slowly, remove a can. But play Promet traditional Japanese music and he will dance with surprising grace and agility.
Promet is a creation of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Japan. He is one of dozens of human-like robots under development in Japan, a country that has embraced "humanoids" with an enthusiasm matched nowhere else in the world.
ADVERTISEMENT
The best known, and most advanced, humanoid robot programme is Asimo, started in 1986 by Honda Motor. Other leading companies with humanoids in their labs include Toyota, Hitachi, NEC and Mitsubishi. The exception is Sony, which killed off its humanoid and doggy robots, Qrio and Aibo, in a cost-saving move this year.
Lesser-known companies are joining in, too. Promet, for example, is a joint project of AIST with Kawada Industries, whose main activity is building steel bridges. Hirohisa Hirukawa, who runs AIST's humanoid robot programme, says: "We spend about $2m (￡1m) a year on it. Honda does not disclose what it spends on Asimo but I estimate that it must be $100m a year."
There is little demand for humanoid robots at the moment because, although they can captivate an audience with their lifelike movements, they are extremely expensive - and not flexible or intelligent enough to be much practical use.
"A bipedal walking robot today costs more than a Ferrari," says Mr Hirukawa. "If we can find a nice application and sell a million of them, the price would fall to that of a cheap car." The most promising applications in the short term are in entertainment and show business, he adds.
A robot can be a powerful public relations vehicle, as Honda shows when it puts Asimo through his paces at corporate events. "Of course, Asimo is a nice ambassador for Honda's technology but we do not want it to be seen as a promotional gimmick or toy," says William De Braekeleer, the company's public relations manager for Europe. "This is an important research project on which Honda has been working for 20 years."
The long-term hope is that robots will be able to replace people in a wide range of essentially menial activities that human workers are unwilling or unavailable to carry out. In Japan, where the working-age population is in decline, an obvious application would be for robotic servants to help look after the fast-increasing number of old people.
That prospect may not appeal to many Europeans and Americans, who regard robots as coldly impersonal at best and a sinister threat at worst. But most Japanese have a quite different attitude; for them, robots are benign, friendly, even lovable. Humanoid robots fit in perfectly with Japan's cult of kawaii, a word usually translated into English as "cuteness".
Paro, a robotic baby seal developed at AIST to provide sick children and the elderly with "robot therapy", illustrates the point. Paro is one of the most successful commercial spin-outs in the institute's history, with 500 sold for several thousand dollars each. The furry white harp seal - loaded with sensors for vision, sight, sound, touch and posture - adjusts its behaviour in response to the way it is handled.
According to Takanori Shibata, the AIST researcher responsible for Paro, tests showed that very old people respond particularly well: "Paro improved their moods and brought vigour to them." He adds that interaction with Paro reduced stress in the elderly.
Sociologists have devoted considerable effort to ex???-plaining why Japan responds so positively to robots. They frequently give credit to the country's Shinto religion, which gives Japanese the idea that there can be a living spirit in anything; western Christianity, on the other hand, suggests that there is something faintly sacrilegious about mankind creating humanoids in its own image.
Takeo Kanade, a robotics professor from Japan who has worked at Carnegie Mellon University in the US since 1980, gives more credit to Japanese popular culture, which has featured friendly robots as toys and cartoon characters for more than 50 years. No one growing up in Japan during the 1950s or 1960s could have escaped the spell of Atom Boy and his successor, Astroboy. As Prof Kanade notes, it took a western chief executive, Sir Howard Stringer, to kill off Sony's money-guzzling Qrio and Aibo robots.
Alongside its cultural affinity with robots, Japan built up a technological prowess in industrial robotics during the 1970s and 1980s. Prof Kanade says scientists and engineers began to take humanoid robots seriously in the mid-1990s when, after 10 years of research, Honda produced the first prototypes of what became known as Asimo.
To make humanoid robots useful for much more than promotion and entertainment, researchers need to make huge progress with their mechanical performance and even more with their brainpower. "The two biggest mechanical issues are to make them faster and safer in their movements," says Prof Kanade, "but those will be easier to solve than giving robots human-like intelligence."
Robot manufacturers say a mass market for humanoids will emerge eventually, though this may take several decades. "The scenario we are working on is that everyone who has a car might have a robot in 30 to 50 years time," says Mr De Braekeleer of Honda.
日本机器人 越来越像“人”
如
果你把机器人“Promet”推倒在地，它会非常费力地站起来，就像一位患有关节炎的老者。让它从冰箱里拿一罐啤酒，它会打开冰箱门，以慢得让人恼火的速度取出一罐来。不过，要是对着“Promet”演奏日本传统音乐，它会以惊人的优雅和敏捷翩翩起舞。
“Promet”是位于日本筑波的产业技术综合研究所(AIST)的作品。它是日本正在开发的数十种与人类形似的机器人之一。日本正以全球其它地区无可匹敌的热情，投入“类人型机器人”(humanoids)研究。
名头最响、也最为先进的类人型机器人项目是“Asimo”，该项目始自1986年，由本田汽车(Honda Motor)发起。在实验室进行类人型机器人研究的其它主要公司，还有丰田(Toyota)、日立公司(Hitachi)、NEC和三菱(Mitsubishi)。索尼(Sony)是一个例外，为削减成本，今年索尼终止了对类人型机器人和机器狗的研究。
一些不那么知名的企业也跻身这一行列。例如，“Promet”就是AIST与川田工业株式会社(Kawada Industries)联合进行的项目。后者的主营业务是修建钢铁桥梁。AIST类人型机器人项目负责人比留川博久(Hirohisa Hirukawa)表示：“我们在这个项目上一年要花掉大约200万美元。本田没有透露在‘Asimo’上的花销，但我估计一年肯定得花掉1亿美元。”
目前，市场对类人型机器人的需求不大，因为尽管这些机器人能以其逼真的动作吸引观众，但它们实在是太昂贵了――而且其灵活性或智能尚未达到实用程度。
“目前，一个能双腿行走的机器人比一辆法拉利(Ferrari)还贵，”比留川表示。“如果我们能找到好的应用，卖出一百万个机器人，其价格将会降至一辆廉价汽车的水平。”他补充道，短期内最有前景的应用是娱乐和演艺行业。
机器人可以成为强大的公关手段，正如本田在公司活动中让“Asimo”慢步走过时所表现的那样。“当然，‘Asimo’是本田一位出色的科技大使，不过，我们并不希望它只被当成是促销花招或玩具，”本田欧洲公关经理威廉?德?布拉克莱尔(William De Braekeleer)说道。“这是一个重要的研究项目，本田已经为此研究了20年。”
远期希望是，机器人将能够代替人做大量仆役性质的工作，人类不愿意从事那些工作，或是无法从事那些工作。在适龄工作人口正在减少的日本，显而易见的应用之一，是让机器人帮忙照料迅速增多的老年人。
对许多欧美人来说，这种前景也许没什么吸引力，在他们看来，机器人最好也只不过是个冷冰冰的没有人情味的东西，而在最坏情况下，还可能成为威胁人类的邪恶力量。不过，多数日本人有着大不相同的看法；在他们看来，机器人是和蔼的、友善的，甚至惹人喜爱。类人型机器人与日本人喜欢“卡哇伊”(kawaii)的风尚极为吻合，“卡哇伊”翻译成英语时，通常译作“可爱”(cuteness)。
AIST开发的机器小海豹Paro便是一个明证，这款机器人旨在为患病儿童和老人提供“机器人治疗”。Paro是该研究所历史上最为成功的商业化产品之一，目前已售出500个，每个售价数千美元。这种毛茸茸的白色格陵兰海豹，安装有感知影像、视觉、听觉、触觉和姿势的传感器，可以根据人们对它的触摸方式，相应地调整动作。
AIST负责Paro的研究人员柴田崇德(Takanori Shibata)称，测试表明岁数很大的老人的反应尤其令人满意：“Paro改善了他们的情绪，给他们带来了活力。”他补充称，与Paro的互动，降低了老年人的精神压力。
社会学家已经投入大量精力，来解释日本对机器人的反应为何如此积极。他们常常将这归因于日本的神道信仰，这种信仰赋予日本人一种信念，即万物皆有生命灵气；而另一方面，西方基督教认为，人类按照自己的形象创造类人型机器人，隐隐有些亵渎神灵之嫌。
日本一位研究机器人的教授金出武雄(Takeo Kanade)，自1980年起就在美国卡内基美隆大学(Carnegie Mellon University)工作，他将原因更多地归于日本的通俗文化。50多年来，这种文化一直将友善的机器人形象塑造为玩具和卡通人物。上世纪50、60年代在日本长大的人，都不可能感受不到阿童木大使(Atom Boy)及其后继者铁臂阿童木(Astroboy)的魅力。正如金出武雄教授所指出的，索尼之所以能下决心终止耗费巨资的Qrio和Aibo机器人项目，是因为西方人霍华德?斯金格爵士(Sir Howard Stringer)出任首席执行官。
除了与机器人在文化方面的密切联系，上世纪70至80年代期间，日本还具备了工业机器人技术方面的实力。金出武雄教授表示，科学家和工程师们在90年代中期开始认真考虑研究类人型机器人，当时，经过10年的研究，本田制造出了首个机器人的原型，即后来的Asimo机器人。
要想使类人型机器人的用途远远超越宣传和娱乐，研究人员们需要在机器人的机械性能乃至智力方面取得巨大的进展。“两个最重要的机械问题是，如何使它们的动作更为敏捷和安全，”金出武雄教授表示。“但与赋予机器人与人类类似的智力相比，这些问题更容易解决。”
机器人制造厂商表示，类人型机器人最终将拥有大规模的市场，不过这或许需要数十年的时间。本田的布拉克莱尔表示：“我们正在努力实现的设想是，在30年至50年的时间内，每个拥有汽车的人可能也会拥有一个机器人。”
