Educating for the Future: the Need for more Comprehensive Training in Humanoid Robotics Technologies

In perusing through the site Future Scanner yesterday I came across a link to a new institution called Singularity University located at the NASA Research Park in Moffett Field, California. Singularity University was founded earlier this month with the mission of “preparing humanity for accelerating technological change,” and is being led by noted futurist, author, scientist, and inventor, Dr. Ray Kurzeil.

The official program at Singularity University is slated to begin Fall 2009 with concentrations planned in such areas—to name a few—as Future Studies & Forecasting, Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, Nanotechnology, Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement, and AI & Robotics, and Energy & Ecological Systems. The AI and Robotics program proposal for training futurists at Singularity University is comprehensive and multilayered in scope and is therefore worth referencing at length here:

“This track focuses on intelligent machines. The main topics are: (1) Introduction to intelligent machines: perception, actions, representation, reasoning, learning, dealing with uncertainty. (2) AI technology: efficient exploration of state space, planning, logical inference, probabilistic inference, representation languages, machine learning, and language understanding. Alternative approaches for producing artificial general intelligence (AGI) or strong AI.  (3) Robotics technology: hardware systems (sensors, manipulators), mobility, localization and mapping, human-robot interactions, multi-agent systems, autonomous vehicles, scaling to micro- and nano-machines. (4) Applications in home, transportation, medicine, security, internet, entertainment, space, and other areas. (5) Future directions: technology trends, solving the hard problems. AI ethics, potential for runaway AI, friendly vs. unfriendly AI. Uncertainties concerning when computers will match various capabilities of the human brain. Will computers become conscious?”

Singularity University provides a fitting segue to the issue of training programs designed for leveraging new technologies. The larger question here involves how, as a nation, the United States in particular will be prepared to leverage its massive resources in the coming decades to continue to stay ahead of the curve in technological innovations. Japan remains the world leader in the global robotics market, with South Korea and China second and third respectively in the well-developed Asian sector. A 2007 projection estimated that total sales for robots in Japan would reach 1 trillion yen, or $10.2 billion, by 2010. Though most of these have industrial applications, the humanoid robotics industries will continue to grow at a rapid pace. Experts have argued convincingly that robotics will play a vital role in the coming decades. For example, noted global futurist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur, Jack Uldrich says that the field of robotics is a “major game changer” on the technological horizon and that businesses will need to adapt to this new paradigm to maintain profitability.

An additional consideration to give regarding robotics has to do with implementing specialized training programs to ensure that the next generation of scientists, technologists, educators, and other thought leaders are prepared to pave the way for what Marshall Bain calls the Robotic Nation. In relation to the incredible prospects for the extensive role that humanoid robots will play in civil societies around the world, however, there are currently only a very small handful of training programs in the United States dedicated exclusively to robotics technology. In the Fall of 2007 Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts became the first college in the country to offer an undergraduate degree in robotics engineering. The curriculum is built around a core of an “Introduction to Robotics” course followed by four sequences entitled “Unified Robotics I-IV,” which draw upon a multidisciplinary integration between the fields of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. All of this is intended to prepare candidates to emerge from the program “with a well-rounded education and a promising future in the rapidly growing Robotics industry.” 

In the Fall of 2008 Georgia Institute of Technology inaugurated what it claims to be “the first truly interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Robotics” in the United States, through collaboration with its Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (RIM@GT), founded in May 2006. The emphasis here is primarily upon the cross-boundary integration between disciplines—drawing from curricula in computer science, electrical engineering, aero-space, biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering—at a level not previously seen before in a Ph.D. program. According to the school’s website, “the doctoral degree is designed to educate a new breed of multidisciplinary researchers who will enter the market best prepared to chart a new course for robotics in the United States.”

Georgia Tech’s program is second in order behind the nation’s first and most widely established Ph.D. program in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, founded in the late eighties in connection with the Robotics Institute. The Robotics Institute was developed at Carnegie Mellon in 1979, by Professors Raj Reddy and Angel Jordan and Westinghouse Electric Corporation President Tom Murrin, with “the goal of making it the best place on the planet to do robotics research.” To that end the university has continued to serve as one of the primary centers for robotics research in the United States for the past three decades.

The other major epicenter for robotics research in the U.S. has, of course, been the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From the inception of its Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1959, MIT has been the major player in the development of machine intelligence, and in more recent years has sponsored the Humanoid Robotics Group. Though MIT does not offer a formal Ph.D. program in Robotics, the major thrust of the industry in the United States has developed around the integrated contributions of talented researchers working here in collaboration within the traditional scientific and engineering disciplines.

While the future looks very bright for the robotics industry, according to global and domestic market projections, the United States—in proportion to its size and immense annual spending on technological research and development—offers surprisingly few programs dedicated centrally to robotics engineering education. The recently developed efforts at WPI and Georgia Tech, and the forthcoming program at Singularity University, all represent major milestones toward addressing the need for training professionals to enter the expanding field of robotics research. However, if the United States is going to be a strong global competitor in robotics, and especially humanoid technologies, greater numbers of educational and training opportunities for prospective roboticists will have to be developed at a much more rapid pace than has even occurred in the last two years.

Tags: future of robotics, human robot interaction, humanoid robotics, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, robotics, Singularity University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute