Maybe we need an Automation Tax

Imagine this situation. A large company decides to significantly increase the level of automation at one of its facilities. A facility that currently employs a substantial number of men and women doing relatively low-skill tasks, which can now be done by a new generation of robots. Most of the workers get laid off which, for them and their families, leads to real hardship. The company was the only large employer in the area, which is economically depressed (one of the reasons perhaps that the company built the facility there in the first place), so finding alternative work is really difficult. And because most of those jobs were minimum wage, with little or no job security, redundancy payouts are small or non-existent and this of course means that the laid-off workers have no financial buffer to help them re-skill or relocate.

Now I am not anti-automation. Absolutely not. But I believe very strongly that the benefits of robotics and automation should be shared by all. And not just the shareholders of a relatively small number of very large companies. After all, the technology that such companies benefit from was developed by publicly funded research in university research labs. In other words research that you and I funded through our taxes. Ok, you might say, but companies pay tax too, aren't those taxes also contributing to that research? Yes, that's true. But large companies are very good at reducing their tax bill, multinationals especially. Our imaginary company may, in reality, pay most of its tax in a different country entirely from the one hosting the facility.

And of course it is we, through local and national taxation, who - as best we can - pick up the pieces to support the laid off workers and their families, through family tax credits, employment and support allowance, and so on.

Maybe we need an Automation Tax?

It would be a tax levied nationally, whenever a company introduces robotics and automation to one of its facilities in that country. But the tax would only be payable under certain conditions, so for instance:

• If the new robotics and automation causes no-one to be laid off, then no tax is due.

• If the automation does result in jobs becoming redundant, but the company re-trains and re-deploys those workers within its organisation, then no tax is due.

• If the company does lay off workers but makes a tax-free redundancy payment to those workers - regardless of their contract status - sufficient to cover the full costs of retraining, upskilling, and - with all reasonable efforts - finding work elsewhere, then no tax is due.

Only if none of these conditions are met, would the automation tax be due. The idea is not to discourage automation, but to encourage companies to accept a high degree of responsibility to workers laid off as a result of automation, and more widely their social responsibility to the communities in which they are located. The tax would enforce the social contract between companies and society.

Of course this automation tax doesn't go anywhere near far enough. I think the best way of sharing the wealth created by robotics and automation is through a universal Basic Income, but until that utopian condition can be reached, perhaps an automation tax is a start.

The Next Big Things in Robotics

Last week I attended the launch event for a new NESTA publication called Our work here is done: Visions of a Robot Economy. It was an interesting event, and not at all what I was expecting. In fact I didn't know what to expect. Even though I contributed a chapter to the book I had no idea, until last week, who else had written for it - or the scope of those contributions and the book as a whole. I was very pleasantly surprised. Firstly because it was great to find myself in such good company: economists, philosophers, historians, (ex-) financiers and all round deep thinkers. And second because the volume faces up to some of the difficult societal questions raised by second wave robotics.

The panel discussion was excellent, and the response by economist Carlota Perez was engaging and thought provoking - check here for the Storified tweets and pictures. Perhaps the thing that surprised me the most, given the serious economists on the panel (FT, The Economist) was that the panel ended up agreeing that the Robot Economy will necessitate something like a Living Wage. Music to this socialist's ears.

In my contribution: The Next Big Things in Robotics (pages 38-44) I do a bit of near-future gazing and suggest four aspects of robotics that will, I think, be huge. They are:

• Wearable Robotics
• Immersive Teleoperated Robots
• Driverless Cars
• Soft Robotics

To see why I chose these - and to read the other great articles - please download the book. Let me know if you disagree with my choice, or to suggest other Next Big Things in robotics. I end my chapter with a section called What's not coming soon: super intelligent robots

"My predicted things that will be really big in robotics don't need to be super intelligent. Wearable robots will need advanced adaptive (and very safe and reliable) control systems, as well as advanced neural–electronics interfaces, and these are coming. But ultimately it’s the human wearing the robot who is in charge. The same is true for teleoperated robots: again, greater low–level intelligence is needed, so that the robot can operate autonomously some of the time but ask for help when it can’t figure out what to do next. But the high–level intelligence remains with the human operator and – with advanced immersive interfaces as I have suggested – human and robot work together seamlessly. The most autonomous of the next big things in robotics is the driverless car, but again the car doesn't need to be very smart. You don't need to debate philosophy with your car – just trust it to take you safely from A to B."

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Related blog posts:
New Robotics and New Opportunities
Soft Robotics in Space
Google robot car: Great but proving the AI is safe is the real challenge
Why robots will not be smarter than humans by 2029

What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics?

This was the latest question posed to the Robotics by Invitation panel on Robohub. Here, reposted, is my answer.

Judging by the levels of media coverage and frenzied speculation that has followed each acquisition, the short answer to what does it mean is: endless press exposure. I almost wrote ‘priceless exposure’ but then these are companies with very deep pockets; nevertheless the advertising value equivalent must be very high indeed. The coverage really illustrates the fact that these companies have achieved celebrity status. They are the Justin Beibers of the corporate world. Whatever they do, whether it is truly significant or not, is met with punditry and analysis about what it means. A good example is Google’s recent acquisition of British company DeepMind. In other words: large AI Company buys small AI Company. Large companies buy small companies all the time but mostly they don’t make prime time news. It’s the Beiberisation of the corporate world.

But the question is about robotics, and to address it in more detail I think we need to think about the giants separately.

Take Amazon. We think of Amazon as an Internet company, but the web is just its shop window. Behind that shop window is a huge logistics operation with giant warehouses – Amazon’s distribution centres, so no one should be at all surprised by their acquisition of brilliant warehouse automation company Kiva Systems. Amazon’s recent stunt with the ‘delivery drone’ was I think just that – a stunt. Great press. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see more acquisitions toward further automation of Amazon’s distribution and delivery chain.

Apple is equally unsurprising. They are a manufacturing company with a justifiable reputation for super high quality products. As an electronics engineer who started his career by taking wirelesses and gramophones apart as a boy, I’m fascinated by the tear-downs that invariably follow each new product release. It’s obvious that each new generation of Apple devices is harder to manufacture than the last. Precision products need precision manufacture and it is no surprise that Apple is investing heavily in the machines needed to make its products.

Google is perhaps the least obvious candidate to invest in robotics. You could of course take the view that a company with more money than God can make whatever acquisitions it likes without needing a reason – that these are vanity acquisitions. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think Google has its eyes on the long term. It is an Internet company and the undisputed ruler of the Internet of Information. But computers are no longer the only things connected to the Internet. Real world devices are increasingly networked – the so-called Internet of Things. I think Google doesn’t want to be usurped by a new super company that emerges as the Google of real-world stuff. It’s not quite sure how the transition to the future Internet of Everything will pan out, but figures that mobile robots – as well as smart environments– will feature heavily in that future. I think Google is right. I think it’s buying into robotics because it wants to be a leader and shape the future of the Internet of Everything.


Do please read the other panelists' answers - all interesting, and different! 

euRathlon and the DARPA Robot Challenge: a difference of approach

A week ago the DARPA Robotics Challenge unveiled the ATLAS humanoid robot, which will be used by seven competing teams. Developed by Boston Dynamics, ATLAS is an imposing 1.8m 150Kg bipedal humanoid robot, powered via a tethered cable. Another six teams have designed their own robots, and interestingly five of these are humanoid, and one a four-limbed simian-inspired robot.

In the euRathlon project we are taking a different approach in that we don't expect, or require, the competing robots to be humanoid or zoomorphic. None of the euRathlon competition scenarios demand a humanoid robot to, for example, be able to step inside a vehicle and drive it. However, for the land robots at least, there is nothing stopping euRathlon teams from bringing humanoid robots to the competition.

As I wrote when we launched euRathlon early this year, the big vision of euRathlon is a competition scenario in which no single type of robot is, on its own, sufficient. Inspired by the Fukushima accident of March 2011, the 2015 euRathlon competition will require teams of land, sea and flying robots to autonomously cooperate to survey the scene, identify critical hazards and undertake tasks to make the plant safe. Leading up to this grand challenge in 2015, will be related and preparatory land and underwater robot competitions in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

The difference of our approach is not the result of an in-principle decision. Rather, it flows naturally from several factors. First, we are specifically creating competition scenarios that require cooperating teams across the three domains of land, sea and air. Second, we are looking for very high levels of autonomy, so the robot teams will, ideally, complete their mission with hands-off human monitoring only. Any human interventions will be penalised in the euRathlon scoring schema. And third, we are not looking to push innovation in the robot platforms themselves, but rather in their cognition, autonomy and system level team working. Thus, euRathlon teams who make use of existing and proven robot hardware will gain a big advantage in that they can focus all of their efforts on the software, communications and systems engineering; the AI and the autonomy. And by autonomy we mean both control and energy autonomy. The euRathlon competition scenarios preclude the use of tethered power connections, so robots must carry their own energy supplies sufficient to last the whole mission.

For these reasons the euRathlon robots are likely to look rather conventional: wheeled or tracked land robots; fixed or rotary wing (i.e. quadcopter) flying robots, and ROV-type underwater robots. Not as dramatic as the DARPA robot challenge humanoid or animal-like robots perhaps, but looks can be deceptive: the real innovation in the euRathlon robots will be in the autonomous cooperation across the three domains. Something that has not been demonstrated in realistic outdoor disaster response scenarios.

Of course there is nothing to stop euRathlon teams from using a bio-mimetic approach, so fish-like underwater robot cooperate with bird-like flying robots, and legged animal-like land robots. That really would be something!

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Related blog posts:
euRathlon is go! (Feb 2013)
Real-world robotics reality check (May 2010)
A truly Grand Challenge (August 2007)

New Robotics and new opportunities

Here are the slides of my talk at the BARA Academic Forum for Robotics meeting Robotics: from innovation to service, on Monday 20 May 2013:



The key messages from my talk were:

• The new wave of robotics represents a kind of Cambrian explosion in robotics: an exciting but also bewildering exploration of new forms, functions and materials. This explosion of diversity means that the New Robotics is not one kind of robot. Thus any kind of prediction about which of these will successfully evolve to become mainstream is more or less impossible.

• There are two common myths: first, the waiting-for-AI myth: the idea that robotics is waiting for some breakthrough innovation in Artificial Intelligence, without which robotics is stuck. And second, the need-full-autonomy myth: the idea that fully autonomous robots represent some ideal end-state of the development of robotics; this is not true - instead we need robots and human-robot interfaces that will transition smoothly between tele-operation and semi-autonomy. We call this dynamic autonomy.

• There are significant opportunities for innovation right now - underpinned by a significant head-of-steam of fundamental technologies from university R&D. I offer some examples for discussion, including companion robots, wearable robots and tele-operated robots with immersive tele-presence, perhaps making use of remote tele-haptics (although I claim no special insights). 

• We need new and agile approaches to innovation. New kinds of research-industry partnerships and flexible, responsive pathways to commercialisation. Especially campus start-ups and incubators, nurturing post-docs as next generation entrepreneurs; and innovative modes of funding. We also need responsible and sustainable innovation.Haptocs 

Here are links to further information, and video clips, on the projects and robots highlighted in the talk:

Slide 10: The Cooperative Human Robot Interaction Systems (CHRIS) project

• Project web pages: www.chrisfp7.eu
• YouTube movie showing CHRIS robots including BERT, from BackToThePlanetVideo

Slide 11: MOBISERV - An Integrated Intelligent Home Environment for the Provision of Health, Nutrition and Well-Being Services to Older Adults

• Project web pages: www.mobiserv.info
• YouTube movie showing MOBISERV concepts

Slide 12: Hand exoskeleton for post stroke recovery

Slide 13: Tactile Sensing - tele-haptics

Slide 14: Surgical Haptics

• Haptics for tele-surgery
• Palpating surgical gripper

Slide 15: Search and Rescue - Disaster Response

• Project web pages: www.eurathlon.eu

Slide 16: Towards energy sustainability

• The BRL Bioenergy & Self Sustainable Systems theme

What is the single biggest obstacle preventing robotics going mainstream?

The question Robotics by Invitation asked its panel in May 2013, was:

What is the single biggest obstacle preventing robotics from going mainstream? It has been said that we are on the edge of a ‘robotic tipping point’ … but where, exactly, is this edge? And what’s holding us back?

Here is my answer:

It depends on what you mean by mainstream. For a number of  major industry sectors robotics is already mainstream. In assembly-line automation, for instance; or undersea oil well maintenance and inspection. You could argue that robotics is well established as the technology of choice for planetary exploration. And in human culture too, robots are already decidedly mainstream. Make believe robots are everywhere, from toys and children’s cartoons, to TV ads and big budget Hollywood movies. Robots are so rooted in our cultural landscape that public attitudes are, I believe, informed – or rather misinformed – primarily by fictional rather than real-world robots.

So I think robotics is already mainstream. But I understand the sentiment behind the question. In robotics we have a shared sense of a technology that has yet to reach its true potential; of a dream unfulfilled.

The question asks what is the single biggest obstacle. In my view some of the biggest immediate obstacles are not technical but human. Let me explain with an example. We already have some very capable tele-operated robots for disaster response. They are rugged, reliable and some are well field-tested. Yet why it is that robots like these are not standard equipment with fire brigades? I see no technical reason that fire tenders shouldn’t have, as standard, a compartment with a tele-operated robot – charged and ready for use when it’s needed. There are, in my view, no real technical obstacles. The problem I think is that such robots need to become accepted by fire departments and the fire fighters themselves, with all that this entails for training, in-use experience and revised operational procedures.

In the longer term we need to ask what it would mean for robotics to go mainstream. Would it mean everyone having a personal robot, in the same we all now have personal computing devices? Or, when all cars are driverless perhaps? Or, when everyone whose lives would be improved with a robot assistant, could reasonably expect to be able to afford one? Some versions of mainstream are maybe not a good idea: I’m not sure I want to contemplate a world in there are as many personal mobile robots, as there are mobile phones now (~4.5 billion). Would this create robot smog, as Illah Nourbakhsh calls it in his brilliant new book Robot Futures?

Right now I don’t have a clear idea of what it would mean for robots to go mainstream, but one thing’s for sure: we should be thinking about what kind of sustainable, humanity benefitting and life enhancing mainstream robot futures we really want.

Manifesto for a Robot Standard Interface Specification

This blog post could well turn out to be to be the most boring I've ever written - but I think it's important. I want to write about something that robotics desperately needs: an industry standard interface specification (see I told you it was going to be boring).

Let me explain what I mean by talking about a fantastically successful standard called MIDI, that has without doubt played a significant role in the success of music technology. MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface. It provides an industry standard for connecting together electronic musical instruments, i.e. synthesisers, computers and all manner of electronic music gizmos. The important thing about MIDI is that it specifies everything including the physical plug and socket, the electrical signalling, the communications protocol and the messages that can be sent or received by MIDI connected devices. With great foresight MIDI's designers provided in the protocol both standard messages that all MIDI equipped electronic musical instruments would expect to send and receive - and recognise, but also customisable messages that manufacturers could specify for particular instruments and devices. In MIDI each instrument is able to identify itself to another device connected via MIDI; it can say, for example, I'm a Roland synthesiser model ABC. If the other device, a sequencer for instance, recognises the Roland ABC it can then access that instrument's custom features (in addition to the standard functions of all MIDI devices).

Robotics needs a MIDI specification. Let's call it RSIS for Robot Standard Interface Specification. Like MIDI, RSIS would need to specify everything from the physical plug and socket, to the structure and meaning of RSIS messages. Devising a spec for RSIS would not be trivial - my guess is that it would be rather more complex than MIDI because of the more diverse types of robot devices and peripherals. But the benefits would be immense. RSIS would allow robot builders to plug and play different complex sensors and actuators, from different manufacturers, to create new robot bodies and new functionality. Imagine, for instance, being able to take a Willow garage PR2 robot and fit a humanoid robot hand from the Shadow Robot Company. Of course there would need to be a mechanical mounting to physically attach the new hand, but that's not what I'm talking about here; I'm referring to the control interface which would be connected via RSIS. The PR2 would then, via the RSIS connection, sense that a new device had been connected and, using standard RSIS messages, ask the new device to identify itself. On discovering it has a handsome new Shadow hand the PR2 would then install the device driver (downloading it from the cloud if necessary) and, within a few seconds, the new hand becomes fully functional in true plug and play fashion.

Industry standards, and the people who create them, are the unsung heroes of technology. Without these standards, like UMTS, TCP/IP, HTTP or IEEE 802.11 (WiFi to you and me) we wouldn't have ubiquitous mobile phone, internet, web or wireless tech that just works. But more than that, standards are I think part of the essential underpinning infrastructure that kick starts whole new industry sectors. That's why I think standards are so critical to robotics.

Maybe a Robot Standard Interface Specification (or the effort to create it) already exists? If so, I'd very much like to hear about it.

Robotics a key future industry

Great to see an independent report listing robotics as one of the key future industry sectors for the UK in today's Guardian: uk industry set to put its best robotic foot forward. (Notice also the brilliant photograph of the amazing hand on the BRL/Elumotion robot BERTI.)

There's clearly something in the air because just a couple of days ago blogs were discussing the launch of a US National Robotics Technology roadmap. Here's an interesting quote from the briefing paper "robotech represents one of the few technologies capable in the near term of building new companies and creating new jobs and in the long run of addressing issues of critical national importance".