The future of robots is guaranteed

Robots are about to deny prisoners in a South Korea jail a pastime — calling guards names. The practice often leads to riots and deaths.

The Los Angeles Times highlighted other advantages — No breaks, no demands for higher pay, no unprovoked attacks and not even a chance of accepting a bribe.

In March, the four-wheeled robots will undergo a month-long trial in a Pohang city jail. Equipped with cameras and sensors, the 1.5-metre tall robots will cruise the behind-bars hallways doing just what human guards do.

Suspicious activity

They will note suspicious activity, detect moods, injuries or hostile inmates and report to a control room manned by live warders.

They will be most useful for night patrols. The whole programme costs $864,000.

The experiment is just one of the latest examples of utilitarian tasks robots are increasingly being developed to perform. The story is fascinating.

Most celebrated ones are crawler scientists shot into space to take photographs or to celestial bodies like the Moon to search and analyse samples.

Then there are the drones like the ones the United States uses to spy and blow up anybody Uncle Sam hates.

There are also those used by bomb disposal squads or to take photographs in mine disasters and small “scouts” police and soldiers toss into rooms or over walls to see what’s there.

Invasive surgery

These may soon look crude. Neurosurgeons can expect help from a robot with movements 10 times steadier than the human hand.

Additionally, it has 13 types of movements compared to four available to human hands in invasive surgery. The ROBOCAST project is sponsored by the European Commission and the robot is working on dummies.

Amazingly, some of the robots are inspired by nature. Borrowing from creatures that lack hard skeletons like starfish, Harvard University scientists have developed a 2.1 centimetre robot that’s limber enough to wiggle and worm through tight places.

Think of an eventual one, equipped with a microscopic camera and “arms,” on the way through the rectum to check out things or perform delicate housekeeping in the stomach.

Not so long ago, Time magazine had a list of 10 robots inspired by nature. Here are some examples. There’s not-so-cuddly BigDog in the United States. It can balance on ice, slippery mud and even after being kicked.

Carrying 153 kilogrammes, a 33-kilometre trip non-stop isn’t much of a sweat. Soldiers in tight spots would love it.

Then there is a Robotic Fish. At almost 1.5 metres long to accommodate sensors and spotting shiny carbon fibre shells, this fish is designed to patrol waters and monitor pollution levels.

People can take care of the toxics. Because it lacks a propeller, real fishes couldn’t care less. For search and rescue comes, of all creatures, a Robotic Snake from Japan.

It can slither and swim into spaces humans can’t reach. Because its modules are independently powered, it can be re-jigged as short or as long as needs arise.

Are robots destined to replace humans? Hardly! However, a sports lover on a couch watching a favourite game on television while a robot fetches a drink can’t be ruled out; neither can a Robotic prison guard disabling brawling prisoners in a cell. The future of robots is guaranteed.