If your idea of a robot is a mechanical man, then you have to admit that the Japanese are way ahead in the robot business. For years they have been working to create a self-contained functional mechanical man. They have a face that shows emotion although it’s just a head. And they have the best two-legged walking machines. Integrating walking and carrying things in hands is also their forte. The robot waiter on the front page is one of their latest and best efforts. I for one think they are on the wrong track. I prefer my waitresses to joke with me and tell me their war stories. And in my view people are pretty badly engineered. We have back trouble because we don’t walk well, and we can’t lift much compared to an ant. Our forte is a big brain, not a classy chassis.

Years ago when all this began with computers and automatic controls, the powers that be tried to come up with a definition of a robot. Any machine with the ability to make choices (computer control) and had articulated arms was a robot. So it was that a computer-controlled painting machine was a robot even though it was stationary, had only one arm and a rudimentary computer. Meanwhile, a computer-controlled milling machine with a very complex brain (control system) was not a robot because it had no arm. Most of these industrial robots were stationary or at best slid back and forth on a base that was bolted to the floor. They could be and were plugged into the mains.

They also were and still are a pain in the neck. They have EMC problems so bad that they interfere with themselves. That’s why they’re considered design problems and design engineers fix them. Once the robots can live with themselves they are probably immune to external EMI. I mean, they have onboard arc welders that trash every radio receiver within a ten-mile radius, and they tend not to interfere with other equipment because, if the onboard noisemakers are suppressed so that the onboard computer will work, it won’t interfere with anything else in a factory. Once they start mixing with the rest of us in the world outside of factories there will be a lot of work for EMC engineers making the robots work in the near field of a RADAR or next to a pacemaker.

People are anything but mechanical marvels. In fact, the best walkers are probably insects. A three-legged stool is stable on the most uneven of floors. The insects walk on six legs. They stand on one three-legged “stool” while lifting and advancing the other, then they repeat the process by lifting the stool they were standing upon while standing on the other. They always have at least three feet on the floor and are always stable. They never trip and fall.

Spiders and crabs are even more effective because they have eight legs. Six to walk on and two for arms to carry groceries or whatever. The idea of a robot the size of a grand piano that looks like a spider scares the hell out of me. When it carries the goodies home, guess who will be the groceries.

You see, the robots will need power. If they move from place to place, power from the mains is out. Also, both computers and electric motors take lots of power. Right now they are replacing batteries in hand-held computers with fuel cells so that the batteries don’t poop out before you get to Los Angeles on your flight from La Guardia. Batteries, by the way, are a mature technology so we can’t expect a significant breakthrough in batteries. But fuel cells are something else and the big road block to using them is catalysts, so a few advanced thinkers are making headway using enzyme chemistry. That is, a living, bacterial, fuel cell has already been built and shows promise. Get the picture? The robot the size of a grand piano is going to eat food to do its thing – a giant titanium bug that eats meat.

On second thought maybe the Japanese have the right idea – make a robot that is as inept as we are so we have a fighting chance against them. With luck they will also be susceptible to EMI and we can jam them if we have too.