Ok, I was reading an article in Popular Mechanics talking about some of the advancements in robotics (term coined by Asimov, I already knew that though) and some of the social, legal and ethical challenges this sci-fi field faces.  Then they mentioned this video:

Mostly it seems people are a little creeped out by it.  But the guy who wrote the PM article claims that seeing it in person, seeing it move like we do, immediately wins you over.  He also claims that by 2015 robotics will be a $15 billion a year industry.  Crazy right?

I’d like to get a link to the article and discuss what he says more, but it isn’t online yet.  Instead I’ll just dig up Isaac Asimov and give him a pat on the back for being right it seems.  I think it will still be years before we really see robots taking a role in caring for our children or our old, but that appears to be the direction we are headed, besides the obvious military usage.  Social tools, or social robots, seems to be the aim of the designers.

In the PM article they talk about a bunch of 5th and 6th graders visiting the lab where Nexi is housed.  When a couple of the kids got too close, our robotic friend became “agitated” (ie imitated a sort of angry/uncomfortable facial expression and stance).  The truly scary thing?  The children reacted as they might to an agitated adult, they backed away, only feeling safe to approach once Nexi “calmed down.”  Comments were heard from some of the kids saying that it was smiling at them as well.

The problem I see is the same problem seen with the younger generations, too much reliance on technology for social interaction (texting, Facebook, etc).  What happens when kids are raised with robots?  Either they become as dysfunctional around human beings as the stereotypical home-schooled kid, or do they learn to recognize real emotion from the imitation?  There’s going to be a whole host of issues our society isn’t prepared to cope with if these sort of social robots become common place too quickly.

This isn’t something we should leave for the future or even the “smart people.”  This is an issue that will quickly overtake the unprepared and could very well lead to ideas that Asimov already put in print.  My prediction is that the robotics industry will have a sort of boom similar to the computer and HD technology.  While it might propagate through populations similarly to HD (sort of slowly) it will find niches that it will fulfill better than humans could and thus become indispensable (the computer).

This already has happened on the military end (think of the all the unmanned aeronautical vehicles (UAVs) the Air Force employs) and the industrial end (the assembly line anyone?).  The next, and biggest, area for robotics to tackle is the consumer world.  It might not happen violently or remarkably swiftly, but it is inevitable.

Just as inevitable is the fact I will get my hands on a MDS style robot as soon as I can.