Horizon: Robots

Dude, where’s my robot? That’s what I wanna know! And it happens to be a question an older installment of BBC Horizon tried to answer. We all have been raised on promises of a future in which every home had a robot performing menial tasks, errands and chores around the house. So, the question seems to have some validity, no? First we visit the artificial intelligence (A.I.) lab at Stanford University to witness the very sharpest bit of the cutting edge of robot design in America – a desk on wheels with an arm sticking out... sigh ... boring! We then travel to Tokyo to see the most advanced walking android ... only to be asked to leave the lab after super robot HRP3 falls over... ouch ... painful! So, next we listen to Nobel-prize winning immunologist and neuroscientist Gerald Edelman explain how incredibly complicated performing a simple task (like getting him a cup of coffee) actually is, and that the difficulties for A.I. start with perception. That leads to issues how our brain recognizes objects and conditions around us – something scientists are only just about starting to teach computers. The problem seems to be that we tend to think of the brain as some kind of super computer, but it’s not. At least, it’s not digital, and it doesn’t run on programs. In other words, we’re probably still very far from the day that every home is supplied with a humanoid robot...