Seas get breath of new life - Singapore Polytechnic

perspectiveinvasion of the mech title warriors of story/descriptionROBOTICS AND THE FUTUREOn the international scene, the Japanese aregearing towards equipping its elderly withhousehold support, the Europeans are developingadvanced medical robots, and the Americansare looking into educational and militaryapplications. So, what will Singapore be bringingto the table?“Personally I think there are two directions wecan take,” said Dr Zhou. “The first is for industry.We should develop robots to serve in theelectronics or maybe transportation sectors.”“The second direction, I certainly believe, istowards edutainment. Robots are very goodfor interaction with students and children.They will always have new ideas after playing.They learn to think by themselves, to work andcollaborate as a team, and they will pick up thebasics of mechanical design, software, and newtechnologies.”Now that robots are conversant, can jog at aspeed of 14 metres per minute (Sony’s Qrio), canoutwit a master chess player and deny a strikerfrom scoring a goal in soccer, who is to say whatthe future of artificial intelligence (AI) will be?We had to ask; after all, we have all seen ArnoldSchwarzenegger as the Terminator.“We should think of AI a little more positively.Because the technology is controlled by humans,we are the master. Although it is possible thatscientists are able to programme a robot in sucha way that it controls itself, robotics is really anintegration of technology. Any one technologycan see a robot computing faster than a human,but that will not be possible once we integrateeverything together. So we are safe,” explained DrZhou patiently.“A HUMANOIDPLAYING SOCCERINVOLVES MANYASPECTS OFAUTOMATIONAND CONTROL.”– Dr Zhou34