Robotics comes back to reality
Article Abstract:
Robots are moving out of the realm of science fiction and into real-life applications, with the usage of robots in industry, food service and health care. Robots have long been used in assembling machines, but reliability was a problem as was the need to design products so that robots could assemble them. Now with better controls and sensors, and the use of complex programming, robots are being used in areas dangerous to humans, such as nuclear power plants. While robots have not proved successful in food service, where the interaction with humans and the tasks they must perform require robots more sophisticated than in industry, hospitals use Transition Research Corp's $60,000 Helpmate robot to deliver patient food trays and carry records and supplies. Robots may fulfill their potential in surgery, however, if they can be used to perform operations, such as hip replacement, that require cuts more precise than any human could make. An obstacle to the successful use of robots is the need for complex rules of behavior in their programming.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: News, opinion and commentary
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1992
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The software with good sense
Article Abstract:
Douglas Lenat, a researcher at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp in Austin, TX, is designing a knowledge base called 'Cyc,' which is a 'large common sense knowledge-base construction' that will augment other programs by giving them common sense. Lenat says: 'We're trying to instill in Cyc what the writers of Britannica assumed everybody already knows.' The Cyc project began in 1984. At that time, Lenat projected that it would take ten years to create a knowledge base of 100 million common sense assertions. When it is completed, Cyc's knowledge base will contain 4 billion or 5 billion bytes of data - about 10,000 times the size of a typical expert system today. This work is expensive: each of seven shareholders - Apple, Bell Communications Research, Control Data Corp, DEC, Harris Corp, Eastman Kodak, and NCR Corp - contributes $500,000 a year.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: News, opinion and commentary
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1990
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The service robot lumbers off the drawing board
Article Abstract:
The nuclear and utility industries are the largest users of service robots but the robot industry has a large potential for growth in fast-food franchises, hotels, retail stores and hospitals. Service robots enhance productivity and enhance work that people do by performing menial tasks in a human environment. The field has been slow in developing and it is estimated that there are no more than 100 robots of all types working in service environments, as compared with 37,000 manufacturing robot arms, which normally perform single tasks and are not integrated with human workers. The National Service Robots Association estimates that 100 manufacturers are developing service robots.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: News, opinion and commentary
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1990
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