Timing is Eveything

How a new book on robotics provided me with some artificial intelligence ahead of a major exhibition.

Reading, like with so many things in life, can be all about timing. I read Stephen King’s Four Past Midnight while staying in a very old and very creaky hotel that heightened the sense of fear and foreboding. For many years, the books of Carl Hiaasen were my preferred holiday read. Who wouldn’t want to read about a person being bludgeoned with a frozen lizard while sitting in the Spanish sunshine.

But never has my reading been quite so prescient as it was with “Our Robotics Future” by Elad Inbar.

I’d had the book for several weeks but, in the run-up to a big business trip, I hadn’t had time to actually open it until I boarded a flight from the UK to Germany.

In pretty short order, I had blasted past the introductory section in which the author defines what a robot actually is (and if you were hoping it would look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a leather jacket, you are going to be disappointed).

By the time I touched down in Munich, I had begun to understand the difference between the two key forms of intelligence: Narrow and General. As the author explains, we humans possess general intelligence (some humans more than others) which allows us to navigate our world on a daily basis. Meanwhile, even the most intelligent machines and software systems have narrow intelligence. They may appear human-like in some respects; but they are merely imitative, doing precisely what they have been told or programmed to do.

But this is where that prescience comes into play. My business trip was a week-long visit to the largest exhibition in the world: Bauma. The show takes place every three years and it is a global showcase for the very latest equipment, systems and solutions in the demolition and construction equipment space.

With the bitter taste of airline coffee still lingering upon my palette, I was introduced to a new autonomous machine developed by German construction equipment giant, Liebherr. The machine - a wheel loader - constantly scans its surroundings and makes informed decisions to minimise fuel consumption and to maximise productivity. Going about its daily duties, the machine never takes the same route twice as it adapts - in real time - to optimise efficiency. But the manufacturer explained that, smart though the system is, it is merely following some very advanced programming. “So, narrow intelligence?” I asked. The engineer before me - half my age yet twice as smart - said: “Oh, you know about artificial intelligence?” I had to confess that my wisdom, like narrow intelligence itself, was entirely imitative - I had gained all my insights from Elad Inbar’s book.

And that wisdom was about to pay even more dividends. I visited the exhibition booth of Japanese construction equipment manufacturer Komatsu, which was displaying the latest iteration of its Intelligent Machine Control system and, in particular, the new “swing to line” feature. That feature effectively allows a human operator to teach an excavator how to operate. The operator goes through the motions of digging, raising a bucket full of material and then depositing elsewhere (in a heap or in a truck) before returning to the start position. Having been suitably educated, the machine can then replicate those movements with human-like precision to relieve man (and woman) of boring and repetitive tasks.

Not to be outdone, Komatsu’s Japanese counterpart Hitachi demonstrated a very similar system, but with the added twist of programming the digging routine via an iPad. Once again, the machine could then carry out a multitude of pre-programmed tasks quickly, smoothly, productively and - above all - safely.

Elad Inbar’s book is rightly titled Our Robotics Future; and much of the book envisages a coming age in which robots and other forms of artificial intelligence become more commonplace in our homes and in the workplace. But based upon my visit to the Bauma exhibition, that age and that future is much closer than most people realise.

Of course, if your image of a robot lies somewhere between Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet and Robocop, this may not be the book for you. But “Our Robotics Future” is a timely roadmap of a not-too-distant future in which robots and artificial intelligence are not a threat; rather, they are a means of reducing the workload burden from humans. If you would like an early glimpse of what that future might look like, I would strongly recommend you get a copy of Our Robotics Future. And if you order it through Amazon, the chances are that your order will be fulfilled by a robot, thereby proving the author’s predictions still furher.