Many times people ask me how robots can help humanity overcome natural disasters such as
earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoe, and man-made disasters, such as nuclear meltdowns and chemical spills. How can machines fix leaking or exploding oil pipes or clean up chemical spills in a way that preserves wild life and vegetation?
We know that restoring an interrupted cycle of nature or ecosystem is essential to ensure food security and the capacity for production and access in order to feed the world's population.
Democratized education, as MOOCs have provided the world and myself, have given us new and unforeseen opportunities. The simple idea of giving the world education free of any charge is so refreshing, in the midst of universities charging obscene amounts of money to earn a degree, mismanaging their services, not treating their students properly, and raising their fees annually. That kind of business model is doomed to fail. The MOOC experience provides the world and myself with all-you-can-eat buffet of academia is just beautiful to experience, and that is what brought us to this endeavor and the formation of our team, AI Research Labs.
Facebook
to our rescue, assisting us in meeting other MOOC students, enabled the
forming of groups, which led to interaction, consultation, empathy,
discussion and the development of new and exciting friendships. Those
are friendships based on the thirst to study and the curiosity of
learning new things in the academia world. We are a network fed by pages
such as ED = Education x Democracy https://www.facebook.com/pages/ED-Education-x-Democracy/323715421057498?ref=hl
and groups such as STEM MOOC (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)https://www.facebook.com/groups/512351718781334/ , CompSciblings (a group for gender diversity) https://www.facebook.com/groups/236300739774529/
and our favorite womens group: CompScisters!https://www.facebook.com/groups/compscisters/
Guess
what I chose what to study? Yes, those topics that weren't so-called
"women friendly" by mainstream media, or accessible to women.
Facebook came to our rescue, assisting us in meeting other MOOC students, enabled the forming of groups, which led to interaction, consultation, empathy, discussion and the development of new and exciting friendships. Those are friendships based on the thirst to study and the curiosity of learning new things in the academia world. We are a network fed by pages such as ED = Education x Democracy https://www.facebook.com/pages/ED-Education-x-Democracy/323715421057498?ref=hl
and groups such as STEM MOOC (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) https://www.facebook.com/groups/512351718781334/ ,
CompSciblings (a group for gender diversity) https://www.facebook.com/groups/236300739774529/
and our favorite women group: CompScisters! https://www.facebook.com/groups/compscisters/
Guess what I chose what to study? Yes, those topics that weren't so-called "women friendly" by mainstream media, or accessible to women.
I took these classes over the past year:
Stanford University online: Intro to AI
Udacity: CS101, ST101, CS212, CS253, CS262, PH100
This is a list of classes I plan to take: EP245, CS373, CS387,
COURSERA: The list of classes are on this link: https://www.coursera.org/user/i/b139c359f90a08501b9e9d8afcd01883
edX: MIT 6.00X, Berkeleyx CS188.1x
Youtube: DIY, create your home energy source, mechanical battery, Astrophysics, NASA fan
Khan Academy: different tutorials, math, still exploring more.
Prior to that, in the 90's I was minoring in Computer Science at Binghamton
university and majoring in cinema. My goal was to combine both, and do
programming in the cinema, especially after seeing the movie " The
Matrix". The people of CS & Engineering were laughing at me, but that
didn't stop me. What did make me drop the CS minor was the lack of funds
to pay for school, even with three student salaried jobs (and 23 credits a semester and
me becoming sick with a heavy flu for almost 2 months because of lack of
sleep, bad campus food and stress accumulating). I took C++, java,
assembly language, lab in logic gates. I studied the physics of the camera, a hobby that later expanded to
aerial photography, building camera filters from scratch, and exploring cinema projectors from garage sales and later on building some too.
Interests: Neuroscience, Human Development, Psychology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, NLP, Physics, self sufficient energy, brain functions, the circular shapes (as in physics, math, architecture, aerodynamics, design, chemistry, astrophysics and philosophy), sound properties, languages, C++, Java, Python, web design, radio broadcasting, art making, photography (aerial, nature, music), music, cinema, film making and more.
I was watching Nora Denzel's video at Grace Hopper Celebration 2012, and what she said was striking me:
"As a world community, we need to solve the problem of unreliable access to water. In most countries it is the women's job to carry out the water to her family and community, so naturally women have the wealth of knowledge about soil density and more technical and geographical knowledge of everyday problems to maintain the family. The males in the village don't have that type of knowledge and experience since they don't do those so-called "women's jobs".
They never have to deal with those kinds of problems and their tendencies to discredit women's experience and not taking all the facts into consideration while designing a life-saving product or project have cost us dearly in failed water systems designs, which cost in human lives. Villages in Asia, India, Africa and South America can attest to that.
The fact is that every continent on earth can benefit from the right design when including 50% ratio representatives of both genders on the team, as women are 50% of the world's population.
My thinking is:
When more women are killed, it makes the human race slow down, as in a global disaster, it would put our future in a big question of existence. Nora said, that historically speaking, most designs were done by men and for men. Take, for example, the early version of the airbags. Since airbags were designed for male drivers, accidents were killing women and children. That problem was corrected later, when they redesigned the airbags system to fit variations of their body proportions.
Well, when I was five years old we had Yom kippur war. That was when all the men were taken to the front. Seven Arab countries were attacking Israel at that time. My mother, my eight year old brother and I went to the bomb shelter. We were twelve families squeezed into a small space. Each family at that time was a mother with two or three children or toddlers. We were all in one small bomb shelter with one tiny bathroom and shower together. The structure was made of a certain metal I'm not sure which, but had a noisy hollow sound. I remember it so vividly as if it was yesterday, despite my very young age at that time. That experience
brought me to ceramic classes as a child, to learn about building
structures. I later became an archeology buff, studying the
archaeological structures of many cultures, and how they aided against
the attack of invading armies.
I have been visiting archeological sites several times each year since
childhood (biblical, Sumerian, Greek, Roman, Mamlookian). If I were to design a bomb shelter today, it would be a very
different design, much more economical and practical, feasible for a
broad band of emergency usage, would have the features of a flood and
earthquake disaster shelter, and be made of better, smarter and durable
materials.
About the Robots:
First of all, the robot has to be a humanoid, closer to human characteristics.
When people see a robot they immediately assume dooms day scenario, of The Terminator style movie, when in reality the opposite is true. Artificial intelligence studies have advanced to the point where "no one has gone before" (Startrek The Next Generation Quote). Humanoids such as Data are more possible, as we are getting nearer that type of robot design. This is the meeting place where science fiction becomes a reality and it is so exciting to be part of it.
Planet Earth got its share of natural disasters: the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2004 and 2011 tsunamis events in asia and Japan
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110311-tsunami-facts-japan-earthquake-hawaii/
and following that the Fukushima nuclear disaster
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8953574/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-and-Fukushima-nuclear-disaster-2011-review.html proved the need of search and rescue robots in an effort to rescue human lives and the need for a good design is the one that occupies my mind.
A robotic system and humanoid would be helping the victims, communicating with humans in a friendly fashion.
Usually when people see a robot when they are in a panicked state of mind when disasters occur, they assume that the robot has no emotions, therefore s/he cannot their pain when they are being trapped under the rubble of an earthquake, for example.
While robot gender isn't assigned yet, it may play a social role in being female or male for specific populations, especially in patriarchal societies. Here it might be an opportunity to better women's image by choosing the robot to be the female hero(ine) rescuer.
See, robots do not need to be rough. With their haptic capability, they can be gentle in interacting with women (pregnant or not), children, babies (abandoned or not), and also perform a CPR on a baby or assist in childbirth under artillery.
I learned first aid, CPR and EMT to be able to volunteer for two years on an ambulance after my dear grandmother fell on the stairs and broke her leg. I remember feeling helpless at that time, not being able to help her. An ambulance came and helped, but you know how it is, wanting to help your own family. In time travelling through my mind, I would program that robot to be gentle enough treating my grandmother's injuries and cleaning the wound to prevent infections.
On September 11th 2001 a friend of mine died at World Trade Center Crash. He was the general manager of WHRW 90.5FM radio station, a person I was working with on a daily basis, as my colleagues can attest to that. When I came to attend his memorial service in Staten Island, NYC was a real disaster zone, with toxic fumes in the air. I could feel how heavy was the air there. If only we had disaster zone robots, it could be so helpful.
Panicked population looking for information when disaster strikes:
I say: "Right now we live in peaceful time, excluding when disaster strikes, and it does. It's only a matter of time when it does, so we better do our homework now."
You say: "Really? you must be so paranoid, living in constant fear of tomorrow ; you must be believing in conspiracy theory to think that way ; and you must be a hoarder, collecting so many items and gathering food waiting for a disaster to come.
I laugh and say: "Thank you for your joke, but I feel fine, no fear, no conspiracy theory: are you out of your mind? and one thing I do, is dedicate 3 hours a week to cook for the whole week and freeze containers, so I save time and money and have my meals ready when I need them. "
Being prepared for disaster is more of a state of mind and my previous experience showed me what I need to do in such events. When it becomes a routine, it's just following certain steps, and becomes helping other people implement those steps.
A robot can help with those steps: "Please stay calm, as I am relaying information to you. I am an independent unit that is also can be used as a telephone or communication device, can make calculations and this is the updated information coming the rescue team: weather today is such and such, food & water location is in place XYZ, Shelter is in such and such location, and Tony, Vik, Noa and Mel are sending you their love and asking you to be strong and trust me, the robot called (insert name)."
So disasters are bound to happen, and it is only a matter of time till the next disaster happens. Once we recognize that fact, we are better at doing our homework. That means the design and materials of our homes would be durable:
i.e.: why would u build a house from wood when deforestation destroy the amount of rainforest's, cultures and medical plants diversities when you know your area is in an annually wildfires zones, or you live next to a gas pipeline with questionable practices of the company owning it.
Or: cheap materials proves to be more expensive when talking about structural integrity.
Our bridges would be more secure: argodynamics of a Roman Empire bridge technology is superior to so-called conventional modern designs. They do not design it to last. They design it for-profit, so several times year they could hire workers for fixing it, without considering the consequences of a sudden unpredictable disaster. Here you can see a better picture of a-bound-to-happen disaster zones and draw statistic maps, histograms and probability theories.
Here is where ROS is playing a part:
ROS stands for robot operating system and is a pretty nifty way to simulate first and build later this baby.
In the team that I'm part of, we can actually simulate those disaster zones, building a robot from scratch, assigning different abilities through programming languages (vision, sound, feel, coordination, understanding human instructions and accents), making sure the design has hard grip for rough terrains while having the soft touch for humans. The haptic capabilities will be tested, errors corrected, doing all these while avoiding expenses of millions of dollars and saving human lives if we couldn't simulate. That's why I love simulation and want to test it to its full extend. I can summarize it by saying:
"I would like to create an AI entity: software and hardware that would be
an artificial humanoid who can interact with humans and rescue many
lives where humans cannot go from various reasons: where there is a
fire, earth quakes, terrorism and wars or simply on space missions to
other planets.
This humanoid would be able to think, feel, hear, see
and interact with us, humans, and would be very friendly user in the
sense of it can process human speech, even accents and dialects of
different countries, regions and different languages.
It is so
crucial for us that this humanoid would be able to understand
instructions when earthquake happens in Haiti, Fires happen in
California and a suicide bomber happens in Afghanistan, Mumbai or
Jerusalem. Those seconds of action matter the most.
This humanoid
also need self judgement, when there is nobody around and s/he is the
only rescuing entity around or got separated from the human or android
group because of a beam falling on and creating a barrier for example. I
can see a scenario where a baby is left alone and crying. That humanoid
should be able to rescue the baby, treat him/her gently, and bring
him/her to safety.
With my knowledge and experience, I would like to contribute to the team the best in my
ability: A robot should be able to perform First Aid, CPR, have medical
knowledge, as well as knowledge how human behavior & psychology is
when emergency situations are happening; How to calm down a panicked
human and try to get the right information from them, so we can minimize
human casualties and help them as soon as possible. "
In the past 2 months we have explored the use of ROS and Gazebo. We are also looking at innovative control strategies for humanoids. The technology available is amazing! The more I learn the more I research and learn more. That's why this workshop and any workshop will help me understand better ROS, Gazebo and anything that you offer now and in the future that can advance my team's work.
This is an ongoing process where we learn as we go. Any suggestions and responses are welcome, since this is a journey we are all taking together:
a journey to save humanity!
