Robo-Erotica? Maybe NotHow much do you like your girl/boyfriend? ‘Lots’ might be an appropriate answer, but then there are always those annoying little traits which the perfect partner would avoid… Well, in the future they will have to watch out or they could find themselves being usurped by a robot, according to a PhD thesis submitted to the University of Maastricht. Entitled ‘Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners’, it suggests that, within a few decades, technologies will have allowed the creation of robots which are so human-like that people won’t be able to help themselves falling head over heals in love with them. The author is one David Levy, a world chess champion (he won a bet, made in 1968, that within ten years no computer would beat him). One of his arguments related to peoples’ affections: whilst in the beginning people only had affection for other humans, this has changed over the years to encompass first pets and then ‘cyber pets’ – those creatures which reduced children to tears when they died, their mothers, entrusted with their care during the school day, having forgotten to feed them. The research of the Mobile Robotics Group, in the Department of Engineering Science, has absolutely nothing to do with robot romance and is firmly rooted in reality. The chief research area is ‘Simultaneous Localisation and Map building’ (SLAM). The aim is to put a completely autonomous robot in an unknown location and then to get it to build up a map, whilst at the same time using this map to keep track of where it is. This is like the process that we use every time we go somewhere new. Drop us in a strange city and we will happily potter about, creating our own ‘map’ by remembering certain landmarks to guide us back. The importance of SLAM is that it allows robots to find their way about without any prior knowledge of the surroundings, and without any sort of objects being put in place beforehand to guide them – very useful for space or deep sea exploration.The group has two wheeled research vehicles named Marge and Homer. Who knows; perhaps in 2030 the group will have solved the SLAM problem and will be engaged in building robots for marriage.
by Laurie Eldridge
Gee Whizz
