High Tech in the Toy
Chest |
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Dr. Makimoto began his
talk with the comment that “IEDM attendees are
academically oriented researchers, so I worried about
how I could bridge this talk on entertainment in the
field of toys and your academic interests.” However,
his first comments “All work and no play would
make anyone dull—even a robot!” and “High
Tech’s future is in the toy chest!” filled
the hall with congenial laughter. (See figure 1.)
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Figure 1.How to Bridge the
Gap?
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Dr. Makimoto continued, pointing
out that toys stimulate the imagination, and he argued
for the importance of entertainment technologies, referring
to artificial intelligence, wireless communication,
and virtual reality.
History
of Robotics
The concept
of the robot has a long history, going back at least
to ancient Greece, but the first practical robots were
the first generation robots of the 1960s, such as the
manual manipulators and playback systems. While the
second and third generations appeared at 10-year intervals,
it was in the 1990s that the fourth generation of robots,
devices that coexist with humans, was developed, thus
arriving at the “entertainment robot,” which
Sony took the lead in developing and presenting to the
world. (See figure 2.)
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Figure 2.Brief History of
Robots
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Twenty years ago (when I held
a different job), I presented another IEDM Plenary Talk.
In that talk I described future robots that would work
in place of humans. So in some sense, I predicted the
current robotics age that would appear twenty years
later. However, I did not imagine that there would be
robots whose purpose was entertainment.
The
Sony Entertainment Robots AIBO and SDR-4X and Their
Chip Technologies
All
3000 units of AIBO (AI based robot) (figure 3), which
Sony released as a commercial product on June 1, 1999,
sold out within 17 minutes of the point orders were
first accepted over the Internet. This phenomenon demonstrates
the high level of interest in this product.
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Figure 3.AIBO, the First Generation
Entertainment Robot
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While AIBO is a robot in the
form of a dog, as shown in figure 4, in addition to
the RISC processor and other semiconductor chips used
as its intelligence, it also includes a truly phenomenal
number of sensors, including image sensors for eyes
and touch and acceleration sensors in all parts. In
the latest version of AIBO, its intelligence and functionality
has evolved further; for example, it detects the charge
level in its batteries and walks to the charging station
when the batteries run down.
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Figure 4.Various Devices and
Sensors of AIBO
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Development of the SDR-4X (Sony Dream
Robot) (figure 5), which is a biped robot, was started
in 1997 and took 5 years to complete. After the development
period, it features three times the computing capacity
of AIBO, and twelve times the memory. These advances
in semiconductor technologies not only allow the SDR-4X
to walk, but to dance, stand up by itself if it falls,
recognize and remember the faces of people it meets,
engage in simple conversation, express the emotions
of joy, anger, sadness, and happiness, and to sing with
vibrato. It does a lot.
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Figure 5.SDR: Humanoid Entertainment
Robot
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Sensor
Technologies and Intelligence Used by Robots
The SDR-4X biped robot uses a large
number of sensors to achieve these functions. (See figure
6.) It uses twice as many sensors as AIBO did. In addition
to semiconductor chips and actuators in joints, future
robots will require even larger numbers of sensors,
including image sensors to recognize three-dimensional
images, various sensors that detect motion using MEMS
(micro electro-mechanical systems) technology (including
gyro sensors, motion sensors, and acceleration sensors),
artificial skin with embedded touch sensors, and robot
hands with artificial muscles. Universities and corporations
are hard at work developing these sensors.
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Figure 6.Sensors of SDR-4X
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Furthermore, Dr. Hans Moravec
of Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) has predicted
that advances in semiconductor process technologies
will lead to robots that have information processing
capabilities equivalent to the human brain by the year
2040, as shown in figure 7. The spectacular RoboCup*
concept, which aims at a robot soccer team defeating
the human world champion team by 2050, was proposed
in 1992, and the first RoboCup tournament was held in
Nagoya in 1997. Last year, RoboCup 2002 was jointly
sponsored by Japan and Korea in conjunction with the
World Cup soccer match.
*:
RoboCup: RoboCup was proposed in 1992 by Dr. Hiroaki
Kitano of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory and Kitano
Symbiotic Systems Project, Japan Science and Technology
Corporation.
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Figure 7.Evolution of Robot
Intelligence
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Diversity
of Future Semiconductor Technological Advances and the
Future Market for Robots
Due
to this evolution in robot technology, future semiconductor
technologies will be made even more diverse, not only
by microfabrication technologies that follow Moore’s
Law, but also by demand from “Cleverness Driven
Devices” that will include a wide variety of sensors
used in the robots mentioned above as shown in figure
8. According to forecasts (figure 9) by the Japan Robot
Assosiation, the market for personal robots, which includes
entertainment robots, is hoped to reach 3 trillion Yen
in 2010, which exceeds Japan’s current PC market.
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Figure 8.Diversifying Directions
of Chip Technologies
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Figure 9.Market Forecast of
Robot Industry in Japan
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The semiconductor market has
seen a series of market-driving waves, from the analog
wave to the first digital wave, in which the PC was
central, to the second digital wave, in which the digital
consumer and network were central. After these waves,
we expect a robotics wave to occur. (See figure 10.)
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Figure 10.Rising New Wave
of Robotics
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International Response
to This Talk |
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Finally, Dr. Makimoto
presented a comic strip in which he has a conversation
20 years in the future with a robot similar to “Tetsuwan
Atom (Astroboy),” a familiar robot character from
Japanese comics originated in 1952. Dr. Makimoto’s
humorous description using different voices for the
different characters elicited appreciative laughter
from the audience. When this 45 minute plenary talk,
which included video presentations, was over, applause
and personal congratulations from the over 1700 engineers
from around the world continued for a surprisingly long
time.
It was clear that the reason this talk was so well-received
was that many engineers have the same opinion about
the importance of “Cleverness Driven Devices”
including their sensor and battery technologies.
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Press Coverage
in Japan and the US
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IEDM
flash news: “Sony’s Dr. Makimoto thinks
that robots will be the next driving force”
Nikkei Electronics, December 11, 2002
IEDM 2002 began on December
9, 2002 in San Francisco, CA. Dr. Tsugio Makimoto,
a corporate adviser to Sony Corporation gave the
plenary talk, in which he suggested that entertainment
robots, such as Sony’s AIBO and SDR-4X, would
be the next driving force for semiconductor technologies
and markets. He also argued that the directions
in which semiconductor technologies evolve will
be even more diverse due to the fact that robots
will be driving the industry in addition to the
personal computers and digital appliances that
have played this role until now.
Robots offer engineers room for creativity
Source :EE Times December 10,2002
SAN FRANCISCO ---- Tsugio Makimoto,now a technical
advisor to Sony Corp.'s semiconductor operations,painted
a much livelier picture of robots in a keynote
speech today (Monday,Dec.9)at the 2002 IEDM. "Exercising
cleverness"Makimoto described the several dozen
DSPs and controllers, with a total 2,300 Mips
of processing power, that are in the SDR-4X model. |
| I hope that this talk on entertainment
robots can bring us a brighter outlook for
the semiconductor and electronics industries,
just as Tetsuwan Atom (Astroboy) brought
dreams and hopes to children almost 50 years
ago. |
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Vol.32
