Robot-Age Knowledge Changeover

Citation

Gao, X. (2011), "Robot-Age Knowledge Changeover", Industrial Robot, Vol. 38 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2011.04938cae.001

Robot-Age Knowledge Changeover

Robot-Age Knowledge Changeover

Article Type: Book review From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 38, Issue 3

Rinaldo C. MicheliniNova PublishersNew York, NY2009$69.00339 pp.ISBN: 978-1-60692-905-6www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23_29&products_id=9354&osCsid=b4e1e66e3912ba994ffbdd4154c5e666

When researching the “industry” and “robot age”, we are often confused with the following questions: why will the “industry” paradigms be replaced by the “knowledge” ones? Is it reasonable to look at reliable alternatives, granting sustainable growth? Can the “robot age” permanently keep the balance between ecology and economy growth? Rinaldo C. Michelini’s Robot-Age Knowledge Changeover dispels our doubts. The book deeply discusses the paradigm shifts and the “robot age” together with sociology and natural science; moreover, it has the significance of both theory and practice.

The “industry” paradigms bring enormous economic benefits to us. However, they also simultaneously bring threats to the human environment because the transformation efficiency of the industrial revolution, which is based on taking out earth’s unique material stocks, ceaselessly downgrades into waste and pollution. This influences society’s growth and sustainability, but leads to the elimination of the quality of life. Facing the problem of concerted development between economy and ecology, shifting from the industrial age to the robot age will be an inevitable trend.

The book underlines the urgency and severity we are facing. Considering the effects on the ecological environment, the book is based on the author’s engineering background and academic experience, which seems to be lacking in other eco-techno books.

Chapter one introduces the general concept of the “industry” paradigms.

The wealth development requires four capital assets: two native, the human and natural assets; and two artificial, the technical and financial assets. The agricultural revolution pays great attention to the natural assets, but man is tied to the unpredictable natural changes and the harmful weather variations. Modern agriculture brings terrain decay, bio-types smash, varieties disappearance, and the like, induced by fertilizers, biocides, irrigation, single-crop farming, etc. Although the industrial revolution makes it up, it ignores the importance of natural assets. The industrial revolution, a vital option to economic development and a pleasing catalyst to the affluent society, clashes against the earth’s raw materials shortage and the polluting effects of man’s activities, so that generations to come will receive a downgraded heritage that cannot maintain persistence. The affluent civilization has little respite, and the thrifty culture comes in, to deal with the over-population, over-consumption, and over-pollution.

The “industry” paradigms are heavily influenced by cultural factors. The differences in the languages that people use to communicate and their ways of thinking, lead to the differences in the knowledge structure, and form the industry paradigms we can see; namely, the deployment of the industrial structure with Western characteristics. In addition, the book takes economic, political, and social factors into account. All these tell us that the new pattern exists.

We need to look for a change in order to face the socio-economic problems. The “robot age” proposes new attributes and mostly resorts to knowledge-driven value chains based on replacing tangible goods and factories with intangible functions and facilities in order to lessen the natural contribution penalty. Although the de-materialize axiom is helpful for transforming the earth’s stocks to conservative staples, it cannot solve the inherent problems caused by the industrial revolution.

The cognitive breakthrough focuses on renewable resources, efficiently creating the buildup of novel resources in the bio-mimicry way, which exploits the artificial living entities’ self-generating abilities based on biology-inspired genetic engineering. The re-material and de-material paths join by duplicated genetic codes, enhancing the resource backlog effectiveness, which provides a new path for the survival and development of human beings. The cognitive revolution looks at innovation as a necessary option for materials recovery. Without an energy provision, intelligence exploitation and innovation, no future will develop.

From the point of dialectics, the book expatiates the inevitable coming of the “robot age”. “Becoming” is the permanent feature, while “being” is a useless snapshot. Thus, the age cannot maintain steadiness, which is merely apparent. Actually, the “robot age” is coming to us step-by-step. Besides, the book uses the opponent’s logic and mediation art to explain the non-suitability of the “industry” paradigms and the inevitability of shifting to the “knowledge” paradigms.

Chapter two offers a bird’s eye view on the paradigms shifting from the fundamental “industry” paradigms to the new “knowledge” paradigms. The book continues to show that the old “industry” paradigms have negatively influenced the present structure of the economy by such ways: work organizations, efficiency, the economy of scale and the economy of scope, environmental pollution, service engineering and reverse logistics, the extension of the enterprises, and so on. The author also mentions that the fundamental “industry” structure is no longer fit for the new “robot age”. A new path to the better “industry” paradigms, which is founded by the “knowledge” economy and leads to a better economy structure, is shown by the description of the characters of the economy of scope. Furthermore, the investigations in the last two sections give viewpoints on setting a new economy structure, which are information infrastructures and networks, entrepreneurial know-how evaluations, marketing functions and facilities spread, knowledge entrepreneurship efficiency, product-service supply chains, etc. At the end, the author forecasts the prospect for engineering eco-sound businesses.

Chapter three examines knowledge paradigms. It starts with the descriptions of the shortcomings and the characteristics of the industrial revolution, and then it raises some correlative problems of the “robot age”. Owing to the localization of the “industry” paradigms, the author fetches out some hypotheses and demonstrates the socio-political frame. Industrialism is looked at as a changeful reality, being able to have alternative origins, and to follow different paths. The author points out that relevant changes have been faced, leading from the economy of scale to the economy of scope. This was initially driven by the affluent, societal lifestyle, then computer engineering applications, finally giving birth to the robot age – a technology-motivated phenomenon, rich, moreover, of the new economy’s distinctive innovation mix. Although the author emphasizes that the affluent society is forcedly reaching the end, he also points out that industrialism shall undergo utmost renovation to enable eco-safe paradigms. The hypothesis is to now look at a started breakthrough or to fully permit further growth. In this way, the knowledge paradigms have been recognized as the enabling support for the new work organization.

The author’s engineering background, together with the hypothesis and examples, provides a unique point that cognitive robots look at future scenarios, leaving aside the technical robot-age plain views, to outline more hypothetical prospects where cognitive options might play the winning role.

Chapter four introduces robot applications in manufacturing jobs based on engineering knowledge stemming from special research by the Robot Design Research Group at the University of Genova, Italy.

Robots play a crucial role in taking over oppressive and burdensome duties from human workers. However, human operators are not easy to replace, because on-process decisions and intelligent options are still a difficult problem. Moreover, the integration of robot technologies is a major challenge.

In the intelligent work organization, robots are only front-end instrumental enablers, while the overall technical innovation comes from the processing technological resources and methodologies, such as flexible manufacturing facilities, parts or tools dispatching and feeding, resource choices and re-fitting, adaptive modular setting/fitting, and so on.

However, information technologies supply the support for functions integration by means of knowledge intensive work organizations, which satisfy the oriented requests of any particular buyer and the eco-regulations.

Chapter five gives a short overview of robots in the service industry and expounds that the influence of the “robot-age” is not only on industry and intelligence, but also on other disciplines. This section takes service application robots and cognitive domain robots and shows that we should be not limited by fundamental research, and points out a new view for the “robot-age”.

For cognitive robots, anthropomorphism is essentially a prerequisite. The main object of developments is the individual, in his understanding, thinking, and conceptualization abilities. Gigantic tracks have already been traveled in these domains, and they will become driving supports, once the cognitive revolution is in effect, with artificial life as the enabling process, building new resources for mankind’s survival, and growth. The self-generating robot deserves remarkable interest, being the paradigmatic reference for artificial life, leading to straight specimens’ duplication by embedded properties.

Though service robots and industrial robots are comparable, the precondition of their development is based on their assigned capabilities. Owing to the diversity of their tasks, the properties of the robots are different; such as friendliness, safety, accuracy, endurance, roughness, un-damageability, and so on, depending on the requested functions and application fields.

The chapter mainly discusses the service robot class, and also involves the cognitive ones, requiring extremely different approaches. According to the differences in the application fields, service robots have many branches and include the surroundings-danger robot, the friendliness-range robot, the engagement-peculiarities robot, and so on.

In fact, artificial man does not suffer from the living man’s limits, and it is technically feasible to invent devices that comply with their surroundings, operation, or engagement requirements. In the first section of this chapter, the author provides an example of a service robot designed for action-surroundings choices. The subsequent two sections provide examples of basic operator-driven manipulators and autonomous service robot providers. The main challenge is based on the surroundings, where the design deployment is tackled. The review aims at clear-cut implementations, having explanatory application potentials, to mark the extended changes that the robot age will bring to every-day life, from the point of view of the actual robotic end effectors.

Finally, the chapter also describes preconditions and limit qualifications for robot development from service robots to cognitive robots. Engineers’ robot design activities will expectedly develop along these lines, although not enough attention is being paid to the standards of the current technology.

Chapter six presents the prospect of future trends and further proposes solutions to problems we face based on the summary of the book.

The ecologic concern is a top priority in the industrialization stage, and a cautious headway provides support for the eco-conservativeness work. The global view is unavoidable and faces over-population, over-consumption, and over-pollution. The post-global mix of socio-economic and technology drivers ensure human sustainable development. At present, the hyper market is the best choice for making globalization work.

The innovative “robot-age” vision provides the sound changeful “knowledge” paradigms. Certainly, the book does not ignore the status and effect of mankind, which plays an irreplaceable role in environmental protection.

In summary, the book displays wide knowledge and has a systematic structure of the knowledge to help us learn and research the “robot-age” knowledge changeover. The book has the following distinguishing characteristics.

First, the richness and readability of the contents. The author pays a lot of attention to the accuracy of the concepts, reaching systematization and succinctness in theory, and integrates theory with practice by application examples. Most obviously, we can see it from the catalogue organization, which reflects the author’s normative research spirit. The first three chapters deal with general concepts and discuss the background; chapters four and five introduce the development of the robot technology by good application examples of the robots.

Second, cutting edge comprehensive research. Seeking the knowledge architecture between the different disciplines is rather difficult and requires courage. The author’s engineering background and academic experience, together with the scientific knowledge in the fields of politics, economy, society, culture, and ecology, form the knowledge framework of the book.

Lastly, good applicability. The book not only provides references for researchers in the robotics field, but also solves problems about technology for the researchers in the sociology and economics field.

Xueshan GaoSchool of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China