Changing Face of Robotics

Labs work to take creations to next level

By HIROKO TABUCHI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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TOKYO -- At a university lab in a Tokyo suburb, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic expressions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust.

Hooked up to a database of words clustered by association, the robot responds to the word "war" by quivering in what looks like disgust and fear. It hears "love," and it smiles.

"To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks," said project leader Junichi Takeno of Meiji University. "Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them."

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A Love Through The Ages

Japan's love affair with robots could be said to be more than 300 years old. Wooden windup dolls known as "karakuri" appeared as early as the 17th century. Especially famous is a kimono-clad tea-serving machine considered one of the world's first "robots." It carried a bowl of tea on a tray from the host to the guest, waited patiently until the guest replaced the bowl, and then returned to the host. Based on Western gun- and clock-making technology, these robots were designed as helpers or crowd-pleasers. That was long before Czech playwright Karel Capek's science-fiction drama "R.U.R." introduced the word "robot" to the public at large in the early 1920s. Capek's machines are happy at first to toil as laborers for their human creators, but they stage a rebellion that triggers the end of the human race. But, "in Japan, where robots are the good guys in anime or comic books, people just don't feel as threatened by robots as they do in the United States or Europe," said Brian Carlisle, president of Auburn-based Precise Automation and former head of the U.S. Robotic Industries Association. "The Japanese accept robots, and robotics technology has the potential to enter many new kinds of applications. Naturally, the possibilities are larger here."

-- THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

While robots are a long way from matching human

emotional complexity, the country is perhaps the closest

to a future where humans and intelligent robots live side by side and interact socially.

Robots are taken for granted in Japanese factories. Robots make sushi. Robots plant rice and tend paddies.

There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming offices, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter at public technology displays. Now startups are putting out robotic home helpers.

They aren't all humanoid. The Paro is a furry robot seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, designed to comfort the lonely, opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers.

For Japan, the robotics revolution is an imperative. With more than a fifth of the population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the work force and care for the elderly.

In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, including about $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year from 2006 to 2010 to develop key robot technologies.

The government estimates the industry could surge from $5.2 billion in 2006 to $26 billion in 2010 and $70 billion by 2025.

Still, Japan faces a challenge in making the leap from toys and experimental robots to full-blown human replacements that people can afford and use safely.

"People are still asking whether people really want robots running around their homes, and folding their clothes," said Damian Thong, senior technology analyst at Macquarie Bank in Tokyo. "But then again, Japan's the only country in the world where everyone has an electric toilet. We could be looking at a robotics revolution."

That revolution has been going on quietly for some time.

Japan is an industrial robot powerhouse. More than 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan in 2005, about 40 percent of the global total and 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, according to a recent report by Macquarie, which had no numbers from subsequent years.

And they won't be claiming overtime or drawing pensions when they retire.

"The cost of machinery is going down, while labor costs are rising," said Eimei Onaga, CEO of Innovation Matrix Inc., a company that distributes Japanese robotics technology in the United States. "Soon, robots could even replace low-cost workers at small firms, greatly boosting productivity."

That's just what the Japanese government has been counting on. A 2007 national technology road map by the Trade Ministry calls for 1 million industrial robots to be installed throughout the country by 2025.

A robot can replace about 10 employees, the road map assumes -- meaning Japan's future million-robot army of workers could take the place of 10 million humans. That's about 15 percent of the current work force.

Meanwhile, robotics technology is being used to spur advances in other fields. It's used to build more complex cars, for instance, and surgical equipment.