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| Robotics in Space Exploration |
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SPEAKER:
Rodney A. Brooks
Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Panasonic Professor of Robotics
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ABOUT THE LECTURE:
As eager as he is to invent robots that can travel to a moon of Saturn or Jupiter, and function autonomously in these hostile environments, Rodney Brooks would love a shot to explore space himself. “I made an offer to Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergei Brin that if they would fund a one-way mission to Mars, I’d go on it,” says Brooks. But he knows that robots are cheaper to send than us, “big bags of skin with biological processes requiring replenishment of all sorts.” Under the Bush Administration, NASA first laid out an ambitious program in robotic technology, involving sending machines to reconnoiter the moon and Mars and prepare habitation sites for humans. “Robots would dig channels, then lower habitation modules into them, and when people come, they’d live like moles underground,” says Brooks. But why send people at all if these robots can accomplish so much? It turns out that there’s a dangerously long lag time between sending a command to a robot and having the machine perform a function. Ultimately, human senses and timing will be needed on site.
But now NASA’s grand robotic research plans are on hold, says Brooks, blocked by the difficulties and enormous expense of designing a new launch vehicle. The future of sophisticated robotic work seems earthbound, says Brooks. First, there are military innovations -- Congress has mandated that by 2015, 1/3rd of all US military missions should be unmanned. Also, the oil industry is pushing for machine-based solutions to such gritty problems as deep-ocean drilling and oil-well maintenance. And don’t forget the new billionaire space cowboys, who dream of mining platinum fields on asteroids (for fuel cells on earth), or building space tourism businesses. But, Brooks reminds us, we have a way to go: After 40 years of research, “the generic object recognition that a two-year-old child could do, we can’t do with our robots.”
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
In addition to his multiple roles at MIT, Rodney Brooks is Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corporation. He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. Brooks is a Founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Brooks at CSAIL
Brooks at iRobot
NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 1:13:03.
John Durant, Director, MIT Museum, introduces the event, and explains the proceedings.
At 6:06, Rodney Brooks begins.
At 27:21, Durant reads out questions prepared by the audience.
At 29:06, Brooks and audience participants begin discussing the questions, which include:
the implications of implants in humans;
exploring gravity wells;
the capabilities of the next generation of artificial intelligence;
educating Americans to lead the robotics field internationally;
downsides to autonomous machines;
and exploring space exclusively with machines.
At 1:12:36, Durant thanks Brooks and closes the session.
The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on 2006-03-27.
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