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Robots Are Net's Future, Says Vint Cerf

Posted by timothy on from the would-be-great-for-remote-grocery-picking dept.

Ned Nederlander writes "Vint Cerf talks the future of the Internet with Ed Cone: 'I expect to see much more interesting interactions, including the possibility of haptic interactions — touch. Not just touch screens, but the ability to remotely interact with things. Little robots, for example, that are instantiations of you, and are remotely operated, giving you what is called telepresence. It's a step well beyond the kind of video telepresence we are accustomed to seeing today.'"

12 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Pffft! by sm62704 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Science fiction writers have been saying this for decades. Actually, I think the esteemed Vincent Cerf has been talking to Captain Obvious.

    Robotics will have to both become far less expensive, and far more developed than now before this happens. I'm already 56, I may not see it.

    --
    mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    1. Re:Pffft! by sm62704 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't fear being dead, but as I actually died once I don't look forward to the transition from life to death. Those who die in their sleep, or die without pain or suffering, are extremely lucky. My ex-wife's mother died in mid sentence, never knowing she was dying! That's the way to go, I think.

      My grandmother lived a hundred years. She outlived her siblings, her friends, two husbands, and three of her four children. As a father I can't imagine anything worse than outliving one of your children. When Grandma was 95 she told me "I don't know why people want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old".

      She was an infant when the Wright brothers flew that short powered flight at Kitty Hawk, and saw the moon landings. When she was born people pretty much lived exactly like they had five hundred years earlier, yet when she died it was 2003, to me the science fiction century. Stuff in Captain Kirk's Star Trek that was unbelievable fantasy when the show was filmed and I was a young teenager is now real - flat screen computers that fit on desks; doors that open automatically; routine space flight; "communicators" (cell phones) -- we even have technology that was impossible in the 23rd century when the movie Star Trek II came out. Kirk was allergic to the drug they used to cure age related presbyopia, so McCoy gave him reading glasses.

      I was severly nearsighted all my life, became farsighted as well in middle age, and got an eye implant in 2006 that had just been FDA approved in 2003 that cured my nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and a cataract that had occurred because of steroid eye drops. I have better than 20/20 vision now! Dr. McCoy would be jealous of my surgeons (I had surgery to my retina this past April, as well as the cataract implant in 2006); today's operating rooms make Dr. McCoy's tech look primitive.

      As to living a few hundred years, I'd like to see what the future holds, but there's always more future in the future no matter where in time you live. And a person's perception of time is always a fraction of how long (s)he has lived. Time goes faster when you get older. When you're four, Christmas takes forever to get there - but the day after Christmas, Christmas is 1/4 of a lifetime away. A year to a four year old is the same as a decade to someone who is forty.

      Time is a dimention, no different than space. You can only live in a limited space, and a limited time. Make the most of what you have of it!

      I don't know if it's universally true that "men that live fully don't despair death" but I live life to the fullest. Hell, I'm 56 and I had sex with a 27 year old woman last month (cost me twenty bucks; although the next time around she stole my money).

      I'm spending my remaining space, time, and money on enjoying myself as much as possible (and writing about much of it, which is also enjoyable), and helping others do the same. There's just too much misery in the world. Life's too short to sit around bored.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  2. Real-time Systems don't like latency.... by TheNarrator · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Imagine! You could control a robot playing tennis remotely! Oh wait.. What if the network lags. Oh we just simulate what would actually be going on the remote tennis court on the local machine and just pause the remote player's screen until we actually hit the ball and then we can send him a message telling him how hard we hit it and in what direction.

    Oh WAIT! We're talking about REALITY not a simulation. Well then.. If we lagged we missed the ball and there's no way to paper over it like we can in virtual worlds.

    If you had a traditional robot playing tennis running a hard real-time operating system then everything from moving into place, winding up and swinging would all take a predictable amount of time and given a good algorithm one could play a pretty good game.

    Anyway, Tennis is a relatively trivial example but things that happen in the physical world where physical forces are in play do not tolerate internet like latency very well. You cannot send xon/xoff like flow control signals to reality.

    1. Re:Real-time Systems don't like latency.... by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Anyway, Tennis is a relatively trivial example but things that happen in the physical world where physical forces are in play do not tolerate internet like latency very well. You cannot send xon/xoff like flow control signals to reality."

      That is correct, so the way it would work is to isue higher level commands. Much like a coach would to a player. The coach gives only higher level statigy like "Stay more left of center and move up a bit." As robots become better they will need les and less real-time control.

  3. What's the point? by kalirion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For social meetings, etc, would a robot avatar be that much better than a virtual avatar? I can understand when physical actions are actually required on the other end. But meetings? That would just be creepy.

  4. Creativity ??? ... by foobsr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From TFA: Another change I'm pretty sure will happen over the course of the next 20 to 50 years is the way we interact these online systems, or even with local ones. Today it's keyboards and mice, but I expect interactions, conversational interactions, gestural interactions to be normal.

    Sounds like a quote from a prediction of how interaction with computers will evolve from about 40 years ago.

    Rather I would expect humans to become part of the cloud via low level (nano) interfaces on a borg line (or part of the 'Big Media' as a successor to the 'do no evil' corp).

    CC.

    --
    TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
  5. This would be a step backwards by Bicx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of the best things about the web is that it connects all of us without necessitating a physical presence. The resources necessary for multiple physical robots would be counter-productive and take away a good deal of what makes wide-area networks so effective and useful.

  6. great by nimbius · · Score: 1, Interesting

    one more person who has to create another tangible step backward for technology.

    its called a script, vint. ive been making these tiny robots my entire career.

    theres a distint possibility Mr. Cerf is too old to be anything but a father figure to the tubes waxing steampunk on an internet he likely hasnt shared familiarity with in around a decade.. nothing to see here. move along

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  7. Robots, yes. Teleoperators, no. by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The whole point of robots is not to require an operator.

    Teleoperators have their uses, but those uses are limited. They're useful if the worksite is dangerous (disarming bombs), unsuitable for humans (underwater), or on a different scale (surgical teleoperators). Remotely piloted vehicles have their uses, too, but even there, the trend is toward automated vehicles.

    The remote-presence thing might be useful for people who go to too many meetings and don't have enough clout to force them to be videoconferences. This is a niche market.

    1. Re:Robots, yes. Teleoperators, no. by AeroIllini · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Teleoperators are required when the decision tree is too complex for a robot to do autonomously. They are used when nothing but a wet human brain will do, but the human hardware (fragile and/or poorly dexterous tissue and bone) is not up to task.

      Your examples (bomb diffusing, underwater exploration, surgery) all fit this mold. Better to have a human brain making the decisions for hardened robotic hardware than to have a simplistic autonomous decision tree in charge. These applications are not going away.

      --
      For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
  8. What Do *We* Want the Future of the Web to Become? by jznomad · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about this as an example, the "remote controlled killers" - http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/09/remote.fighters/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

  9. Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If the little robots allow the long-held dream of being able to punch someone in the face through the internet, there will be griefers and it'll be banned.

    If the little robots are helpless against physical humans, there will be griefers and it'll be a failure.