Robot’s back worse than byte

Press, 28 September 1988, Page 28

Robot’s back worse than byte

NZPA-PA London Robots might soon be leading the blind instead of guide dogs, scientists were told. The immortal robot “dogs” — cheaper to train than real dogs — were already in use in Japan, Professor Michael Brady told the British Association’s annual meeting in Oxford. Professor Brady, professor of information engineering at Oxford University, said the robot was “a little cart” on a lead controlled by a joystick. “It has a bunch of ultrasound sensors on it which enable it to detect the presence of obstacles in front of it. It also has a

little map in its memory of the local layout of the streets. “It is capable of taking a blind person on a walk through relatively uncluttered streets. “Of course, it is an entirely different proposition to walk down Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon. That is outside the competence of what can be achieved.” He said robots were much cheaper substitutes for guide dogs, which were expensive to train. “Each one of them has their own unique personality. They have to be trained for a given locality/and for a given partially, sighted person.

“The great advantage of robot guide dogs is that although the initial investment is high the cost of cloning them is rather small.” In a lecture entitled "Robots that jump and grope,” Professor Brady emphasised that robots no longer consisted just of unfeeling mechanical arms that spot-weld and spray paint. “They are increasingly applied to problems that require them to sense their surroundings and adapt their paths appropriately. Examples include sheep-shearing, running robots, multifingered hands and much more,” he said. J