Robot Future?

With movies such as I-Robot, displaying the dark side of artificial intelligence it is no wonder that the average person is somewhat skeptical of a robot future. However, some cultures actually believe that the future will be a robotic society of humanoid robots interacting with humans in a cohesive nature. Japan is paving the way for a robot future. With the ever increasing population in Japan and the rise in a need for elderly care, Japan is looking to a robot future. At a university lab in Tokyo, Japan a robot is being developed by engineering students that can respond to trigger words such as war and love with appropriate emotional facial expressions. This humanoid robot can smile, grimace, show disgust, and fear based on certain trigger words. This may seem like something you would see out of a SciFi magazine or something from a Twilight episode, but it is in fact very real. Japan is currently leading the robotic revolution. Every home in Japan has an electric toilet and you can even see robots working in public as tea servers and vacuuming the lobbies of some of Japan's hotels. Japan already employs over 370,000 robots in it's factories. However, not all robots in development are humanoid, some are even animal like and furry-developed to comfort and offer companionship for the elderly and have the capability to blink their eyes, wiggle their feet or flippers. The most elite form of robot is the the assisted living robot. Assisted living robots have been under design for over twenty years. The ultimate goal for robotics engineers is to develop a robot that can interact with humans on an emotional level, respond to their needs, and adapt to any given environment.

Honda currently has an assisted living robot in development that they have named "Asimo". This Asimo robot can adapt its speed from a walk to a run, adjust its hand grip if its hand is being held, walk up and down stairs, and even sense danger on roadways. Honda is taking this revolutionary robot to the next phase of development and hopes to have a fully interactive specimen ready to market in the near future as an assisted living companion.

Robotics are not at all new to Japan. Japan is in fact the forerunner for this particular type of technology. The Japanese culture does not look at robots with emotions as being creepy- as some cultures would. This understanding is somewhat based on their native Shinto religious beliefs, that inanimate and animate objects are closely related and somehow one in the same. The Japanese government is fully supported of the robotic industry and has invested extensive amounts of money into the development of robots. The Japanese government invested $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies. The Japanese government estimates the industry could grow from about $5.2 billion in 2006 to $26 billion in 2010 and nearly $70 billion by 2025. Robotics is a huge industry in Japan and it looks like they will be leading the way for other countries to join the robotic race.

It looks like our world may have a science fiction future sooner than we could have ever imagined.