Robots have to face a new serious competitor: the Knowbots, or network robots.
The automatization imposed by robots in factories and production lines is limited in a world dominated by information. A world where in 1995 e-mail transmissions surpassed, for the first time in history, the volume of regular mail in the U.S.A. A world where around 24 million people have connected to Internet in the last three months. A world, finally, where in countries like Finland, with a population of 5 million people, there are 300,000 Internet users.
Hans Moravec, director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the world's greatest experts in robotics, acts as visionary from time to time to announce that in a few decades, say between the years 2050 and 2100, we will be living with robots gifted with an intellicence similar or superior to that of human beings.
Moravec sees it clearly: "The fourth generation robot and its successors, endowed with perceptive and motor capacities similar to those of human beings, but intellectually superior, will substitute humans in all and for all. The functioning of our society could be conferred to machines capable of directing industry, carrying out research work and taking care of
production, which could inmediately be transferred to space in order to make use of the inmense resources from the solar system and, this way, leave human beings on an Earth transformed into a natural reserve."
Nicholas Negroponte, inspirer and leading person in Media Lab, the great world temple of communications, also places his bets in favour of robots, in this case domestic robots. His book "The Numeric Man" says: "A day will come when we will have numeric robots with legs to walk up the stairs, arms to vaccuum the carpet and hands to hold the tray with the hors d'oeuvres."
It's not necessary to wait for the 21st century. In 1996 we already have robots who test footballs for Adidas; robots, such as Rosa, who prune geraniums; or talented machines like Eva who are taking a crash course in aeronautics before taking off to Mars. The Spanish robot fleet surpasses 4,000 units.
There are others with a personality of their own, such as the nearly 60 robots soon to be shown in ART FUTURA 96 by Chico MacMurtrie, the great robotics artist. Some, like the fabulous Horny Skeletons, are extremely loving metallic machines. When they caress their permanently erect limbs, smoke comes out noisily from their eyes, mouths and ears. Another of the troupe's stars is the Neollithic Pneumatic Drummer, a 12 feet tall android who does nothing but beat its drum. His machines, as he himself says, are not rigid but full of grace.
Robotics researchers have their eyes set on cyberspace, on the evolution of knowbots, the virtual replicas of their steel-neck colleages. Knowbots are inmaterial autonomous creatures, capable of studying the user's behaviour in order to guess his or her needs. According to the most radical experts, some could take on an altruistic activity, transforming in cyberspace virgin portions of the Universe.
The idea of knowbots, or "intelligent agents", or "electronic personal assistants", is one of the most recurrent theme within the Internet user community. It matter nots that it comes from researchers such as López de Mántaras or artists such as Knowbotic Research, also guests of ART FUTURA 96.
A knowbot is an artificial creature who lives in cyberspace, that virtual space made up of information that exists on the other side of the computer. A knowbot is fed all the possible data on the user's habits, preferences and needs and then selects any existing information from the Net on a specific topic, classifies electronic mail by priority or finds the cheapest plane tickets.
It is no trifling to assess the topic of knowbots. Companies such as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems are very interested in project "Earth", by biologist Tom Ray, where he intends to create some kind of cyber-reserve of artificial creatures in cyberspace so that they may evolve freely according to the laws of natural selection.
The economic interest of this digital microcosm is quite clear. It is possible that in the year 2000 it may provide new ways of navegating the Net. It is then that the new functional intelligent will be ready, and capable of instinctively recognizing forms and objects. The future of knowbots also faces extreme personalization (according to Negroponte), easy programming and the ability to adapt toany hardwarde platform.
