GENERAL :: ZDnet :: Robots: Our helpers or replacements?
Robots: Our helpers or replacements?


Just one word: robots. That's the next big boom being buzzed about by the world's leading technology visionaries.

"In the last millennium, we came to rely on machines. In the new millennium, we will become our machines," Rodney Brooks, director at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Fujitsu professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said at the Association of Computing and Machinery's Beyond Cyberspace conference in San Jose last month.

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Scientists and engineers in laboratories across Europe, Japan and the US are building so-called "robo sapiens" that can navigate the corridors of today's office buildings and perform the tasks of an office assistant.

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Throughout Japan, service robots are functioning as guards in warehouses, delivering trays of food in hospitals and carrying documents from one office to another. Honda Motor is investing heavily in practical humanoid robots that operate household switches, turn doorknobs and perform tasks at tables.

The Japan Robot Association estimates that by next year, some 11,000 service robots will be deployed, with 65 percent of them in hospitals and nursing homes. The association also projects that by 2005, health-care robots will be a US$250 million market, with a possibility of growing to a US$1 billion market by 2010.

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