The Robotics Revolution Constantly Changing

The state of robotic is constantly changing, but there is one barrier that will continue to impede its success if not addressed. For most commercial robots, only the “technically elite” are currently able to create the robot control policies they want, while the rest of the population must make do using the built-in policies (such as those on the iRobot Roomba, Wow Wee Robotic line of Robosapiens) included by the robot’s creators. Through lifelong robot learning, the aim to provide users of consumer robot technologies with a medium for transforming desired behavior into robot control policies. Specifically, given the same situational awareness, a robot should make a decision similar to the one the creator of the policy would make. While several paradigms exist for such policy transfer, it remains confronted by a human robot divide.

This divide refers to the disparity between the needs and ideas of users in society, the population with a diverse set of technical abilities and creative design sensibilities, and their ability to instantiate robot control to meet their desired ends. If a personal robotic revolution is to come, similar to that of personal computing, there will need to exist applications that will make new forms of personal expression tangible, enhance personal productivity, and put this technology into the hand of users (analogues to the spreadsheets, web authoring, 3D virtual world, etc on the PC).