16 2016 – The Year of the Robot
Nick Hawes is one of the foremost UK experts on robotics – he lectures in Artificial Intelligence (AI) whilst also conducting research on robotics, specifically how to make robots more independent, or autonomous. An autonomous robot is defined as one with some control over its own ability, which is able to ‘think’ for itself using the Perception, Reasoning, Action sequence.
In his speech, Hawes outlined his views on the trends in the industry as well as near-term forecasts for the use of robots in our everyday lives. Rather than simply reproduce this speech, we have paraphrased the Q&A from the evening to try to draw out the most interesting discussion points.
Q. When do you foresee the mass production of driverless cars?
I think we’ll see early adopters in about 10 years, and mass production occurring in about 20 years time. It’s an industry which is moving rapidly – for example, engineers recently managed to convert a Tesla car over to autonomous driving by virtue of an online software update, whilst elsewhere, giant strides are being made by global giants (Google) and local companies (Oxbotica) alike. However, it’s the ancillary industries that are arguably holding things back – there is a huge issue over legislation and insurance which will take years to sort out, not to mention public opinion with the moral issues that arise with driverless cars.
Q. Given your experience, what do you think will be the next big industry for robotics?
I think logistics, be it business to business, or business to customer. This was the first industry to make a profit using robotics, and whilst
Sponsored by:
From left: Neil Tustian of Moore Stephens, Duncan White of Marks & Clerk, Dr Nick Hawes, David Murray of The Business Magazine, David Bloxham of GCS Recruitment and Chris Cole of Barclays
there is already plenty of automation around; we’re only just at Wave 2 and there is scope for so much more to be done. For example, the most expensive component by far in warehouse picking robots is the laser scanner which stops it from bumping into people – these are forecast to become a lot cheaper in the very near future, which will help to bring costs down and drive innovation in this space.
[Note: previously in his speech, Hawes had outlined the 3 Waves of Robotics – Wave 1: No Uncertainty (robots working in a controlled environment without humans), Wave 2: Mobility Under Uncertainty
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The cream of the Thames Valley’s leading technology minds gathered together at The Forbury Hotel for the sixth Annual Southern Tech Dinner, organised by The Business Magazine. This year’s event was sponsored by GCS, Moore Stephens, Barclays and Marks & Clerk and focused on the theme of ‘Autonomous Robots’ with guest speaker Dr Nick Hawes from the University of Birmingham
– where we are now (eg automated warehouse pickers), Wave 3: Manipulation under Uncertainty – about 20 years hence (eg high-grade ‘human’ sensing abilities).
Q. So … no drone deliveries then?
No, I don’t really think we’ll see drone deliveries from a central warehouse flying all over parts of the UK, regardless of what you might read in the press. For one thing, their range is currently very limited, so you’d have to truck all the goods to a nearby area first, which effectively negates the benefits. Then, there is the security issue – these things
are very open to being hacked and taken over or stolen, which would include whatever they happened to be carrying at the time leaving a lot of very unhappy customers. There might be scope for a very local delivery by drone – for example, my local pizza shop is about 200m from my front door, so I could suggest that to them?
Q. Where does the UK rank globally in the field of robotics?
We (and the rest of Europe) are very good at the software side of things – the smart stuff. However, we don’t build the hardware – the robot bodies – that is where the USA leads the way. And to a lesser extent the Far East, where they prefer to build robots which look and mimic humans or animals as closely as possible. Some of the best AI talent in the world is found here in the UK, although it is interesting that on my courses that around 40% of students come from overseas, especially the old Soviet bloc countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, where coding is taught at school level, meaning that their computer science students are very advanced when they start their degrees over here.
Q. Which industries are the biggest drivers of robotics?
CNick Hawes
Well, I’ve already mentioned logistics as the industry with most near-term potential for improvement from robotics, but from the R&D side, it’s probably the Military. Boston Dynamics’ have developed BigDog – a rough-terrain robot which can walk, jump, and carry heavy loads, whilst Atlas is its human-shaped counterpart. The implications are tremendous – for example, if a single robot could have turned off one valve in the reactor at Fukushima in 2011 after the disaster, it would have saved billions of dollars with untold environmental benefits. However, again legislation is a huge issue here with military robots – you have to be very careful indeed with autonomous weaponry.
* Although officially, in the Chinese calendar, 2016 is the Year of the Monkey.
www.businessmag.co.uk
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH COAST – APRIL 2016
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