
Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming for Robotics? - ghosh
http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.51
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diego_moita
Sorry for the off topic but most non-biologists fail to precisely understand
what Cambrian explosion means.

It was a time when suddenly an huge variety of species appeared and what was
new among them all was the trait of a body plan or body structure with
diferent cells forming organs for specific functions. The explanation most
accepted by biologists is the appearance of HOX genes. These are genes that
switch on/off the expression of other genes and that is what causes cells in
the same organism with the same genetic code to be very different in
morphology.

~~~
nostrademons
Curious if there's any analogue out there in the current tech world? Printers
that can print or assemble themselves? A/B testing coupled to genetic
algorithms that can switch off functionality for certain user groups if it's
not useful?

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randcraw
Curious that the author suggests an explosive rate of improvement in robot
performance but then fails to mention any positive examples of robot
performance. Instead the entire article focuses on positive rates of
improvement in many constituent technologies needed when building robots.

Judging from the inability of every robot in the most recent DARPA challenge
to even get back up after a fall, I'd say today's robots have a long way to go
before a Cambrian level of explosive growth is shortly forthcoming.

~~~
robotresearcher
Every robot but one. The CMU robot got up after a fall.

Edit on why no examples: This isn't a review paper for a popular audience.
It's a paper on economic perspectives and he says just what he needs to about
where he sees the opportunities. The reader can easily find examples
elsewhere.

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zhanwei
The "improvements" and "big ideas" the author listed are real and exciting
developments. I think about robotics a lot (in academia) but given these
developments, a Cambrian explosion (i interpret as robot succeeding in general
simple tasks that human can do) is still way beyond my imagination. There are
many technical hurdles such as perception, planning, learning and reasoning.
The key challenge now seems to be finding scenarios where robots can be
successful with current technology.

On a separate note, the robobrain project
[http://robobrain.me/](http://robobrain.me/) seems to fit the running themes
in the paper.

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mangeletti
Making better hardware and software for controlling hardware is something that
is very difficult (hence most the machines having a hard time with the most
basic things for a human - walking, etc.), and because of this, most regard
robots as being in their infancy, with many more generations to go before we
have a robot that can truly function like a human (in the physical sense).

What's alarming about this is the fact that all of these problems are problems
that are solved by intelligence and brute force, and both of these functions
can be performed in the virtual world, but a lot of the fears we have about
"robocalypse" scenarios are rooted in the physical aspects of robots (e.g.,
autonomous drones with guns, etc.). Given a computer system with intelligence
much greater than a human (not necessarily passing the Turing test or being
intelligent by certain human metrics, but being very effective at problem
solving and engineering) could result in most of the current problems that
companies like Boston Dynamics, et al have been working on for years being
solved and tested in simulations in mere minutes. Such a machine can't just be
invented, but through evolution (genetic algorithms, etc.) on the copious
cloud computing environments, such a machine will eventually happen, unless
something changes (e.g., laws to attempt to prevent it, disaster of some sort
that sets us back financially and computer-wise a few decades, etc.).

This means, the thing we should really fear is machine intelligence, since the
physical world aspect of its existence is really secondary. A machine that can
design better solutions to physical world problems (like moving around,
negotiating obstacles, etc.) than the hundreds of teams working on the same
thing is what I fear.

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rebootthesystem
Before any of this can happen key technologies need to experience massive
evolutionary improvements:

    
    
        Computers:  
            10x computing power
            1/10 the volume (think: fits in the robot's head)
            1/10 the power consumption of a desktop computer
            10x reduction in failure modes (can remain operational with some damage)
        
        Power:
            2x to 10x the energy storage
            1/2 to 1/10 the volume
            Less weight
            Electric vehicle market will help here!
    
        Actuators:
            10x improvement in power-to-weight ratio
            10x to 100x reduction in cost
            10x to 100x reduction in weight
            10x reduction in fragility (think: still works after impact from a fall)
            Moldability (think of the shape of every muscle in your body)
    
    

There's more, of course, starting with software, languages, tools, etc.

~~~
gene-h
I disagree on a couple points about actuators. First off brushless electric
motors have pretty amazing power to weight ratios, problem is that they have
really low torque to weight ratios. We don't need moldability if we take what
we learned from electrical engineering and standardize everything.

Cost is a huge issue though, but if we standardize and mass produce them then
the problem could be solved. Series elastic actuators have solved some of the
fragility problem.

~~~
rebootthesystem
I am talking about the finished actuato rather than just the motor. This
includes actuator electromics. Think of all the muscles required to operate a
human arm, fromthe shoulder to the fingertip, again, including the electronics
to drive them. And then build that into a robot. And then have that robot do
gymnastics, MMA, compete in the American Ninja course, jog, trip and fall, in
general, deal with, survive and adapt to impact and minor damage.

In the context of actuators, not motors, we have a ways to go. It's not
hopeless, of course, but we have to admit that the biological muscle is a
really awesome machine.

Series-elastic actuators don't really deal with fragilityy as much as they
provide energy storage along one axis. Think of punching a boxing bag or
tripping and falling. The actuators we use today are susceptible to damage
from relatively minor impact from any direction outise of where they have
compliance built in. I can punch you in the biceps and will not break it.

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fidotron
The big problem in robotics is not sensing, electronics, or logic, but
mechanics and integration. Just compare the state of the art with our muscles,
or the highly optimized integrations of sensors, logic and actuators that
exist in the insect world (many of which in isolation we still haven't
reproduced) with anything coming out of a 3D printer and it should be obvious
we remain far further from the conditions needed for explosive growth than
many appreciate.

~~~
tlb
I disagree. There are plenty of examples of robot hardware that would work
great for valuable applications, but the software and sensing isn't there yet.

It's true that most research robots have crappy mechanics and integration.
That's because they know that software is the unsolved problem, and hardware
is mainly a matter of throwing resources at it. That can wait until the rest
of the technology is ready.

Check out a video of IPI's truck unloading robot:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plo7SH9aBgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plo7SH9aBgg)
That hardware more or less existed in the 90s. With the right software, two of
those (one throwing, one catching) could unload a truck way faster than
humans. But watching it, 90% of the time is sensing and thinking.

Or this humanoid:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673386)
(video sped up 10x). The hardware could indeed be optimized, but it's good
enough that it's not the limiting factor. With sufficiently smart software,
that could be the robot butler of the future. If you put automotive-scale
engineering resources behind it, the hardware would be slick, lightweight, and
rugged.

~~~
fidotron
Those robots, compared to biology, are utterly unimpressive. You aren't going
to get a robot butler before you have a robot honeybee, but where is the robot
honeybee? It's mechanically limited out of existence.

Software etc. are simpler nearer to useful than our hardware is, but it's the
hardware parts that are missing to make use of current software.

~~~
nostrademons
The wing of a plane is incredibly simple compared to the wing of a bird. No
muscles, no bones, no feathers - it doesn't even flap. And yet it gets the job
done.

Nature has a lot of path-dependence that can be avoided with design. Think of
how much cruft accumulates in a software program after 15 years of continuous
evolution, and then multiply that by a million. It's not unreasonable to think
that whatever hardware we use to emulate various human tasks might be a _lot_
simpler than the wetware that makes up an actual human.

