Part 39 And now for something completely different!

As much as I try to hide it, I have to face up to the fact that I'm getting old.

When I was  kid we didn't have TV, a car or a telephone.
We used to listen to radio serials or tune in short wave to hear foreign exotic languages.

World war two was still a strong memory for most adults and they had the scars to prove it.

When I was born the Korean war was in full swing and communism was considered to be the scourge of the world that threatened all peace loving nations.

The Soviet Union was a superpower and the only thing holding them back was the US and it's western allies and the threat of nuclear war.

My, how things have changed.

Today I play with robotics, type this on my computer or tablet and scan news on my phone that goes everywhere with me in my pocket. I stream TV programs for entertainment and watch live news from around the world whenever I want.
I sit in front of a computer for a living (considering I only use two fingers I manage to type rather well) and use spreadsheets, word processing and email all the time.

The Soviet Union is no more, Communism is on the decline and the greatest threat to the world is either the US president or the leader of North Korea... choose your own as they're basically interchangeable anyway.

Racism and nationalism are on the rise worldwide and the world is starting once again to become isolationist and pulling back from globalism.

Not necessarily a good thing but a function of the normal human progression. What happens is the world swings in one direction, goes too far, over corrects and then starts to swing back. Rinse and repeat so we get this cycle over time for an issue until it levels out and reaches a point of acceptance.




So, Where am I going with this?

A very good question!

My belief is that no matter what happens technology marches on despite the best efforts of people trying to hold it back.
Even wars, although initially tend to drag everything down through destruction and death, eventually generate a whole new raft of technologies in an attempt to gain the upper hand.

Radar, now used all over the world, is a good example and of course computers (Bombe) designed to crack the German Enigma codes directly led to the automation and computing technology we have now and use every day.

Computing has long become a mainstay in business and robotics is now taking over huge swathes of industry to increase production and reduce costs.

Automated vehicles are coming quickly and will soon be an accepted part of society as are automated shipping and air taxis.

Humanoid robots are now in many hotels and can be seen all over the world and are becoming more refined and lifelike at an accelerating rate.

The video above shows how lifelike these robots can look now.

Try these about Sophia.

Sophia addressing the U.N.

Now that we can see how human these robots look and act, people are starting to get creative.

Companies are combining the existing silicone sex doll industry with robotics and creating a whole raft of moral and social issues along the way.

Warning, links lead to sites that may offend some readers.

Robotic sex dolls are now available.

Sound like something out of science fiction? Well it is and it isn't.

Very lifelike (static) sex dolls have been around now for about 20 years in the west with Japan having had them for longer, initially for disabled people who had no alternative and later for men who are too shy to meet women or simple want their relationship purely on their own terms.

So the logical (but maybe not desirable) development of this is for the two technologies to combine to create extremely lifelike robotic sex dolls.

Again, science fiction?

Not so much, it's happening now.

 The technology is there and will improve, if that's the right word in this context, over time.

As with any technology, as I have said ad nauseum, once it's out there it's not going away any time soon.

So we are left with a huge moral dilemma that will have to be addressed in the not too distant future.

For example lifelike robotic sex dolls that look like children has chilling implications as well as people wanting to act out their basest fantasies doesn't bear to think about.

On the plus side it may be a boon for disabled people and those with severe social disabilities that won't ever get to have a life partner.

So again the wheel turns and a new cycle starts.

One day when the dust settles we will again have a different world, very different to the one I was born into.

I think I might drag out my old Yo-Yo and not think about these things for a while.

Part 38 - Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

Most of my blog has been about autonomous vehicles with the odd rambling diversion into politics, and robotics and computing in general.

My background has been in electronics and that developed later into networking and computer operating systems.

In recent years I have worked more with people and their interactions with computing.

Which brings me to the big picture.

Where are we going?

It's pretty fair to say that computers are here to stay.

Automation is taking over more everyday task at an ever increasing rate and impinging more on our lives with each passing year.

How much we allow it to take over, to a certain extent is up to us.
Travelled on a bus or train lately? There is virtually no eye contact at all.
Being one of the few people without social media accounts I have time to look at people and all I see is a sea of heads all busy tweeting, reading or talking on their phones.

Walk along a footpath and you have to avoid the people texting while they walk.

So where will this go in the future?

I have seen Microsoft's Enhanced reality goggles where you can see the world your in but also see VR superimposed on it. Exciting stuff but scary at the same time.

I don't profess to know where it's going but like all other things there will be swings to and against change until society ends up with a compromise people can live with and then we have the new normal.

So, it's been a while since I wrote anything here as there hasn't been a lot of news.
Previously everyone wanted to get in on the hype and released press release after press release to get their name in the game. Now it's all about getting their heads down and push to market.

The next year will be very interesting!

Some current news: Dubai, who seems to be leading in some areas of technology is currently testing several automated air taxis.

In keeping with their philosophy they are also testing the worlds first aerial police motorbike.

The US, while it's government appears be winding back the clock, some departments still seem to be based in reality and are putting rules to allow autonomous cars on the road without drivers or even steering wheels or pedals for that matter.

That's it for the moment but I hope to re-engage with more interesting update shortly.

Part 37 - Feedback and the art of the feel.

I haven't posted anything for a while, mainly because there hasn't been a lot of newsworthy stuff happening in the autonomous arena.

So I am going to do something a little different - sort of.

Feedback may not be considered to be something that people pay a lot of attention to but it is critical to virtually everything.
Consider autonomous cars. Without feedback you could program a car to go from A to B easily and set it off but it would never get there and probably kill anything that got in its way.

It relies on sensors to provide feedback in the form of data that tells it what to avoid. Without that it is straight programming, IE go straight 100 metres turn right 90 degrees go straight 100 metres etc. This would be OK in a closed controlled environment but not on a public road where circumstances change from second to second.

A computer arm in a factory needs feedback even if it does repetitive tasks. Consider if something that it needs to pick up is off centre. The arm could come to pick it up, have the edge of its gripper over the top rather than at the side of the object, and when it moves down to grip it actually applies force to the top. this could result in damage to the arm or the goods.

Feedback can take many different forms, for location in determining where something is, as well as feedback on the pressure applied to an object.
Consider when you pick up a mug of coffee, the grip force is very different to what is required to pick up a crystal wine glass. Therefore there has to be sensing of location in relation to the object as well as identification of the object to determine the appropriate force of grip.

In life we use the same criteria.

When faced with a situation we have to input data to determine a course of action. That may require a number of people with different skills and experience to determine the correct approach.

But what happens when the leader is very much his own man and refuses to involves others because of an unshakable belief in their own abilities despite constant feedback to the contrary?
Like a robot that decides the crystal wine glass is a coffee mug despite the evidence and treats it accordingly.
At what point do you decide to shut it down?

 Hopefully before its actions causes irreparable damage.


As I have said before, repeatedly, we are on the cusp of change in so many different areas, all primarily due to the development of computing.

The fact that computers can do so much more now and so much faster has spread the effects further afield.

Pure research now has advanced as we can run many "what if "scenarios and get results back in a decent time frame.

Automation is now reaching into all areas including medicine.

A robotic surgeon has now reduced the time taken for opening the cranium for surgery from 2 hours to about 2.5 minutes.

This automated process means that the patient is under for far less time and the human error element is removed.

Even in sport you can't get away from Technology.
Being an Australian I love the America's Cup. Apart from the technology, three of the yachts have Aussie skippers and many crew members are ours a well.

I live in Perth where the cup was held back in 1988 and was there to watch it.
It has come a long way since these boats used to sail along at a snail pace and everything was manually controlled.

Now it's foiling catamarans with wings that fly (literally) through the water at multiples of the wind speed, hitting up to 100K per hour.

One yacht has even reached  130 Kph

Meanwhile as mentioned before, what happens when all this automation increases to the point where there are few jobs?

Unemployed people don't have the money to be consumers so who will buy the cheaper faster produced items?

One solution that has been getting a lot of attention and should be looked at professionally is a universal basic wage.

Politicians are still 20th century thinking that we can bring back the jobs from Asia and rebuild our industries to have jobs so everyone can have a unicorn in their own yard.

These jobs aren't in Asia anymore, they are at home and being automated to compete with Asia.
They are not coming back people, not ever.

The feedback on jobs is not getting through to politicians, they have their own agenda and don't want feedback that contradicts that.

We do need to seriously look at alternatives, even if it turns out they don't work the research could point to another direction.
At least we have to be looking at options even if the alternatives don't jibe with the politicians aims.

Feedback is essential to any process, but to work it has to be accepted.

Ignore it and we end up with shards of glass not wine.

Part 36 - State of Play

I thought it might be time to see where we actually are at this point in time as there have been many announcements in the past year talking up what will be done but we actually need a reality check.

In previous blogs I have discussed factory automation, shipping automation and computers in the home as well as robotics in general.

In transport the focus has been on automated cars and trucks but that's only the most visible part.
Dubai is well on the way to introducing a personal quad copter taxi service by July this year using the Chinese Ehang184.

Automated trains have actually been around for some time with more coming on.

Fully automated services passenger services with no staff on board already exist in:

• Spain 
• Denmark
• UK
• France 
• US 
• Canada
• Germany
• Switzerland

Automated long distance ore trains are in use here in Australia as well as trucks and other processes in mining.  Australia leads the world in mining automation.

Industrial automation is definitely here to stay, even in the most unlikely areas.

Now for something completely different!

Now that it's 2017, many new cars are appearing with low level autonomous features as standard.
Adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance braking and lane holding are rapidly becoming standard features on even cheaper cars.

2018 will see the more autonomous functions appearing in earnest.

Google's Waymo, self driving car project, has announced public testing for hundreds of families in Arizona USA. It's also extending its fleet of automated minivans from 100 to 600 which will make it the largest fleet of robotic cars in the world.

Meanwhile, Roborace is the world's first robotic racing car.

However the first race between two of them actually didn't go as well as expected with one crashing into the barrier.
After all, that's what testing is about, rather on a track than a city street.

Stay tuned.

Part 34 - In a land far far away-

Due to family issues and a general malaise on my part I haven't done a blog for some time so I will now make the effort.

Firstly I finally got to take a ride on the only automated bus being legally operated on public roads in the world.

Of course this is in my home city of Perth Western Australia, often said to be the remotest city in the world as it's on the west coast of Australia (With a name like that where else would it be?)
The next nearest major city would be Adelaide which is 2,700 kilometres by road (1300 plus miles) so that is a lot of empty space but more on that later in this entry.

Perth is a modern city with nearly 2 million people and lots and lots of white beaches and a climate that California only thinks it has and without the pollution.

So for us to be the first in the world with an automated bus is pretty cool.

This is a joint project between the Royal Automobile Club (RACWA) and the state government to test this technology in a real world environment.

It is attracting interest from around the world with many visitors suprised that it's happening here.

Even Kryten from Red Dwarf fame (otherwise known as Robert Lewelyn) has been on the Intellibus.

His video is far better than mine so I will point to that to save me the embarrassment.

While the Intellibus is on the road it is not running (yet) in full autonomous mode as there are staff on board armed with an Xbox controller that gives them control if needed.

The bus takes off, trundles along, turns corners and gives way to traffic before proceeding.
However it detects obstacles and stops if impeded as the object avoidance is not yet turned on and the Xbox controller comes into its own and allows them to navigate around the obstruction.

This was particularly obvious when a woman opened her car door directly in front of the bus and it braked hard to avoid removing her from the shallow end of the gene pool.  

The bin men had been recently as well and the bins on the road also made us stop and take remedial action.

The first thing I noticed when we took off was that I had absolutely no fear of not having a human in total control.
The second thing I noticed was the push bikes overtaking us but after all, it is early days in the testing and you can't really expect the authorities to sign off on full road speeds straight out of the gate.

All in all I found it to be a great experience and very much look forward to this becoming the norm.

All Kudos to the RAC and the government for putting Perth in the forefront, albeit in a limited way, of this amazing new technology.


A couple of weeks ago I had to opportunity to visit a number of remote communities in the far east of Western Australia (WA), close to the Northern Territory (NT)  and South Australian (SA) borders.

To give you some context, WA covers a million square miles. There are sheep stations in the far north bigger than many European countries (and US states).

You could plonk Texas in the far north and never miss the space WA would lose, it's that big.

Considering a single state that is 1/3 the size of the whole continental US and has less that 3 million people with 2 million living in Perth, then you can appreciate that there is an awful lot of empty.

The remote communities I visited, in the course of my work, are really remote, as can be seen from the above photo. The white dots is the community.

The local people here are nomadic tribes that wander through the three states, sometimes spending six months at one site before moving on. These are the Ngaanyatjarra people and one of only two tribes, I believe, who still have their native tongue as a first language.

These communities have local schools with a transitory population and very dedicated staff that do their absolute best for the kids and the community. As with most schools in Western Australia, I.T. is widely used for education and these remote communities are no exception. They have broadband of varying speeds and computers and tablets at the schools.

One of the principals related a story where all the kids disappeared one morning and the whole community went bush for  a few hours.
When the boys returned they were in full body paint (ochre).
They all filed back into class like that and it was a testimony to the meeting of cultures when they were sitting there in full paint and googling through Ipads.

The point I am trying to make is that technology is now everywhere and there is no getting away from it.

Even in the middle of nowhere technology still exists and is widely accepted and used, so when people talk about bring back jobs by stopping automation, stopping globalisation and generally acting like a Luddite, think of a kid, sitting in the middle of nowhere looking at a whole shiny new world through a device held in his painted hand.  




 

Part 33b Addendum - in requiem

Not a blog as such as I haven't had a chance to write a one due to a death in the family.

My Uncle, Brian Bevan has passed away at the age of 94.

A well loved and widely respected man who had a profound affect on my life and it was a privilege to have known him.

Goodbye Brian, you will be sorely missed......

Part 33 - Tempus Fugit

Technology is not something new, it's not a product of the modern age, it is something that has been part of human history since history began.

Automation is a logical progression, where technology makes life easier why not use it more efficiently to take the workload off people and make their time usage more efficient?

Man has always striven to develop new technologies and adapt it to our advantage.

We started with fire by adapted that from nature so we could cook, keep warm and have light to see by at night. From that point on, man started to make things that made life easier for them, like tools.

One of the major inventions that had a huge impact on the development of society was the wheel. This revolutionised the transport of goods and allowed more people to travel in groups and move bigger loads with far less effort.

The printing press made mass produced printing available for the first time and allowed society to make it's first steps away from the church as a source of all knowledge. The church pretty much had a monopoly on literature and guarded it jealously so they could control what was disseminated to the masses. Once anyone could print their own literature that became a threat to the church.
This bought up a continuing battle that still rages when new technologies threaten the established order. The church, through their government control attempted to shut it down by introducing a printers guild, where anyone who wanted to print had to obtain a copy right from the guild.
This is where the modern copyright comes from and I will touch on that again later.

With the advent of steam engines the world really took off and the industrial revolution changed manufacturing, agriculture and transport forver. This was a major turning point in automating labour intensive industries into machine driven industry.

People became feeders of the machines and factory output increased dramatically with a smaller labour force and as people had to work to survive, they had to work in appalling conditions for low pay as they could be easily replaced.

The telegraph, then the telephone followed closely by radio changed the way the world communicated and fast global communication was born.

Electricity and electronics increased the spread of technology and allowed it to move into wider business use and into the home. Everyone in the developed world could have a washing machine, electric cooker and radio.

For the first time you could have the news at home, soon after it happened as it was telegraphed around the world in a matter of hours.

With the advent of the first computers by the British to crack German codes in World War 2, the world stood on the brink of a huge business transformation.

When the personal computer came out in the eighties the world well and truly fell over the brink and the whole world changed again.

Accountants could do forward projections via spreadsheets in hours rather than days and they literally threw money at the computer companies. Again staff numbers dropped and productivity increased.

We all know how the office environment transformed with these new devices but then the Internet hit and stood the world on its head again.

That transformed the business model more than the advent of the computer had.

In the interim the Asian region moved massively into the 20th century and as their people became more affluent the consumer base grew and they moved into larger scale manufacturing.
With a cheap labour force they expanded their markets to the world and the west, faced with increasing labour costs moved many jobs to Asia.
Many western companies also saw this as a bad thing and decided to automate to cut costs and increase manufacturing capability as well as keeping the industry in their own countries.

You now have the situation, particularly in the US where manufacturing is the largest export sector and to keep competitive is increasing their automation and shedding even more jobs. '

 Asia saw this happening and is now automating as well to increase productivity and cut jobs to compete with the rise of western technology.

As computers grow and computing power increases dramatically with every new generation the scope of automation increases exponentially. You now have computers in nearly everything from your fridge to the toaster to the phone in your pocket.

The greater the computing power, the more ways we have to use it.

Autonomous vehicles are now a reality and it's only a matter of when, not if, they become widely available.

This level of automation sees a new generation of jobs to be shed as there will be very few truck drivers, delivery people, taxi drivers and anyone else involved in supporting these in the not too distant future.

Quite a few factual type reporting articles (sports in particular) are being written by computer so there are journalism entry level jobs there disappearing as well.

Medical technology is now high tech with many machines that go ping!

Seriously though many more patients can be monitored from a central location without having to do frequent rounds to check, again reducing staffing levels. They can automatically release medication without intervention and adjust the levels based on electronic monitoring.

Autonomous vehicles will stand the world on its head yet again and the social implications are huge as I have discussed before.

Shipping in major ports is now virtually automated across the globe.

Even the flying car is back on the radar (pardon the pun).

Technology is happening at an ever increasing rate and as with any technology there are always people for whatever reason always want to oppose it.

This can be for many reasons including not wanting to redefine the business model which invariable introduces cost and loss of profit due to market erosion. The music publishing industry is a classic example of that.

Movie and television companies still cling to regional copyright in the face of world wide simple to use pirate techniques that bypass these controls.

Most people actually want to pay for their content but if they can't get it at a reasonable price they will find other ways of getting it.
Ask many Netflix subscribers who previous had access to Netflix content from around the globe. Now that they can't get it anymore, many have gone back to downloading the same content.

Companies are automating their factories to compete with cheap Asian goods, robots are moving into home and retail, and online shopping is becoming the norm.

Taxi drivers are protesting world wide over Uber and related services.

In the next year or so Uber and truck drivers will be protesting automated vehicles.

The expression used to be that the only certainty in life is death and taxes.
In the modern age that has become death, taxes and change.

Once it's out there the technology is not going away.
Unfortunately there is only one option, adapt or die!

I have always been a supporter of technology but we are now at such an advanced stage of development that the people aspect needs to become a major part of the discussion.

As people are displaced by technology their income, and by extension, their purchasing power reduces.

I have reduced this to a couple of very simplistic equations:

Higher automation = higher output and lower employment levels
Lower employment = smaller consumer base
Smaller consumer base = lower sales,
Reduce prices = increase sales
Reduce cost = higher automation
 rinse and repeat

It's not really rocket science but with many governments having the emphasis on developing new jobs  then it's not being considered as an issue.

Once you look at industry today and the levels of automation then you will see that these jobs are not coming back... Not ever.
 
So despite the public rhetoric surround trade deals employment and globalisation, we really need to start a new conversation.

Unfortunately I see some of the current world leaders following an alternative reality.