Corona Daily 379: Asimov Now, Part II

In Japan, some students didn’t miss their graduation ceremonies. Ohmni Labs’ Newme robots replaced the locked down students. The telepresence robots were draped in academic gowns. Each student appeared via Zoom in the robot’s head, which was a computer tablet, smiled and received the degree from the chancellor. A similar ceremony was held at the Nanjing University in China.

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Talking about education, the Roybi robot designed to teach kids age 3-7 is selling well. Listed as a great invention by Time magazine, Roybi teaches languages, science and math. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, it tailors its lessons to the child’s style of learning. It recognizes the child’s emotions, and accordingly teaches content the child can enjoy the most. The versatile Roybi can tell stories, sing songs, or explain theorems. This cute robot costs $189.

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In Singapore, a robot hound called Yellow Dog (made by Boston Dynamics) is equipped with many cameras and censors. The hound goes around the park warning walkers walking too close to each other, or not wearing masks.

Aibo, Sony’s robot dog can learn to recognize and respond to over 100 different faces. The pet costs $3000 but no maintenance costs thereafter. It is helpful for people who need a companion or have dementia.

By the way, if you are locked down or quarantined, you don’t need a dogwalker any more. A drone, remotely operated by you, can take your (real) dog for long walks.

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An earlier post talks about the awful conditions in the meat processing plants in the USA. Before 6 June, 20400 Covid-19 infections were recorded in 216 plants in 33 states, with 91 workers dying. ‘Tyson foods’ is now investing speedily in “robot butchers”. They can’t yet match the finest human motor skills such as gristle removal and filleting without cutting bone. But more routine tasks like splitting carcasses are easier for the robots. In Europe, the more advanced robots use optical eyes and lasers to sort cuts of meat.

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In the USA, ‘Harvesting Croo Robotics’ has introduced Berry 6 that has 16 robotic heads, and six arms. The arm cameras scan fruit, estimate its 3D location, assess whether it is ready to be picked. Picked berries are assessed for ripeness, defects, and weight and automatically sorted into different chambers. The robot currently takes 20 hours to pick what 30 human workers gather in a day. The robot maker promises the productivity will keep improving.

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In Russia, the city of Perm in Siberia has a woman humanoid with long blond hair and brown eyes. The company ‘Promobot’ machine-analyzed thousands of Russian female faces to create an average looking female clerk. She wears a white shirt and brown waistcoat and can recreate more than 600 facial expressions by moving eyes, eyebrows, lips and face muscles. She is connected to a scanner and printer and to the document database. She asks and answers generic questions, verifies the database and issues certificates about criminal records, drug use or other commonly needed documents.

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In August, a robot resembling a Kangaroo will start stacking sandwiches, drinks and ready meals at Japanese convenience stores. Telexistence, the maker, felt Japanese customers are put off by robots that look like humans. Following the trial, the chain Family Mart plans to roll out the robots to twenty Tokyo stores.

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Tomorrow I will talk about cobots, and discuss the long term risks of robots replacing human beings.

Ravi