I Think… Americans’ Robots = Robots in the Fiction

“The robot looks like a cabinet attached to a giant vacuum cleaner. Muniz can unload Tugette’s cabinet, press a green button, and send the machine rolling to its next delivery.” – Bloomberg Businessweek (June 01, 2010)

I love innovation but I don’t like the fiction.

When Bloomberg Businessweek talked about the robots in offices, they forgot to mention about the drawback such as the system error, security concern, and so on. In my opinion, robots are good for some industries, but they are still not good for many – not yet! For example, Bloomberg Businessweek is now trying to promote a relatively new trend using robots to transport food, medicine, and lab samples in the hospitals. They focus only on the voice and appearance of a rolling machine in the EI Camino Hospital, but not the security concern and the working process. I question what should be the first priority here?

In fact, in health-care industry, it’s more important to focus on consolidating all working models including the impact of the physical environment in the system and sub-systems.

(1.) If there is a machine error in the middle of the process, some may not receive the treatment on time. Is there any signal telling the operator that the robot stops working? Is there any human practice as a plan B to support the system in this scenario? I guess not yet. What they are trying to put upfront is still only a dream of having robots taking all of your jobs.

(2.) How could you be sure that the robot is smart enough to recognize and reprogramming itself if someone accidentally moves or removes the target? In this case, that robot may put a medicine in the wrong order resulting in a serious problem in healthcare. Have the developers ever imagined about this scenario yet? I guess not because so far they have talked only about the physical movement and the emotion of the robots – not a real complex interaction yet.

(3.) At the corner, if someone interrupts the robot and quickly inject a poison or any substance that can cause death to the patient, then how could you prevent this? I know that this is the worst case scenario, but the impact is costly and the possibility is more than 0%. The door is opened to the white-collar crime. The developers and buyers should take this into serious consideration too. For the robots used in the hospitals, they may put an alarm or camera on the robot. Also, they may have to adjust the existing environment.

Etc.

Larry Fisher, research director at market researcher ABI Research, said that Americans are unlike the Japanese who are more accepting when robots mix with people. It’s clear that they are trying to promote a robot that can act like a human, the Terminator. Well, I think in many industries we need a specialist, not the Terminator as they claimed. To conduct the advanced research, I believe Japanese researchers may have already had the advantage since the robots are in places where they can observe the real interaction between machines and people. This can help Japanese developers to achieve the American’s dream. On the other hand, some American marketers have a very narrow perspective visioning only the end result; it’s obvious that they know nothing about R&D, and I’m not sure about the cost-effectiveness as they mentioned.
© PK*[June03, 2010]

Note: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2010/tc2010061_798891.htm

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