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Robot With Knives Used In Robotics Injury Study
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that German researchers, seeking to find out what would happen if a robot handling a sharp tool accidentally struck a human, set out to perform a series of cutting, stabbing, and puncturing tests. They used a robotic manipulator arm, fitted with various sharp tools (kitchen knife, scalpel, screwdriver) and performed striking tests at a block of silicone, a pig leg, and at one point, even the arm of a human volunteer. Volunteer, really?! The story includes video of the tests."
I believe many of these experiments have been done before by Jamie, Adam, and crew.
Except that's stupid, because a robot handling a knife will be handling a knife because it will be, duh, cutting stuff. They use force pressure measurements on the robot to determine if there is resistance, and, if there is, the robot stops cutting. The obvious problem with this is the robot will be encountering resistance if it's cutting stuff it should be cutting.
A useful "don't cut humans" test would be something that distinguishes a human from, say, the side of pork I WANT my robot to cut up.
Seriously, if I get a robot to help me cube meat in the kitchen, and it stops cutting every time it encounters resistance, I'm gonna beat whoever sold it to me to death with the robot arm.
I'm a psychologist (amongst other things).
I don't know about Germany but in the USA such a study would never pass the IRB at most research universities and labs.
Could we first work on robots that DON'T stab people, before we put a lot of effort into developing robots that DO stab people?
Once again, the /. summary is misleading. TFA says that the researchers are developing a system that's used to detect and prevent such robot stabings. Whether or not this postpones the inevitable robot uprising is yet to be seen.
Asimov's "3 laws of robotics" (which are what I presume you are referring to) are FAR too wishy-washy, if we ever have sentiant robots with brilliant machine vision etc they may be appropriate but that is a long way off if indeed it ever comes.
In the meantime we have to deal with simpler issues of machines (including but not limited to robots) accidently cutting/stabbing/crushing stuff without realising it is there (or realising too late)
Also when I say robots need such safety rules I mean both the robots AND the humans they interact with need those rules.
Currently the response to the dangers of machines including robots is largely to keep the humans and machines seperate. Where humans and machines have to interact guards are placed and the operators trained to keep the risk of a dangerous interaction to a minimum. This works OK for fixed industrial stuff but isn't much good for a robotic helper arround the house.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register