P.C. Shannon

I first noticed this phenomenon with the rise of shows like Battle Bots. The combatants on that program are sophisticated remote controlled vehicles, not robots. A robot is an automaton. The word itself, with all of the sci-fi implications behind it, is sexy, and that’s why they use it.

I was watching a program — Science Times, I think — yesterday on The National Geographic channel, and they had a segment on “rat bots.” These are rats that have had three electrodes inserted into their brains that allow them to be lead around remotely, sort of the high-tech equivalent of dangling a piece of cheese. The idea is that you can get them easily into a building that has collapsed or been taken over by terrorists. The segment also featured competing technology in the form of remote controlled vehicles, referred to on the program as robots.

Netiher the rats nor the “robots” are autonomous. Both require a remote operator to guide them to their destination. Roomba, the robot vaccuum cleaner, is a real robot because you turn it on and without any further input from you, it will clean your room. It is autonomous. Imagine what a crappy product it would be if you had to sit at your computer and guide it around the room.

Eventually we will have real robots that can search for survivors in the aftermath of an earthquake wihtout direct control by a person out of harms way. The current crop of search-and-rescue robots are a good place to start. They’re just not actually robots.