Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec is a Principal Research Scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. Moravec, whose interest in robots extends back to his childhood, discusses his intriguing and personal views on robots—from the current state of technology, to today’s bomb defusing machines, to the capabilities of robots in the next century. NOVA spoke to Dr. Moravec in October, 1997.
Can you walk us through what you think robot evolution will look like?
HM: Well, I imagine four stages. I think we’re just on the verge of being able to see machines that work well enough that they’ll become the predecessors to the first generation of mass-produced robots—that are not toys. I have a particular one in mind: a small machine that could be a robot vacuum cleaner which, with a thousand MIPS of computing, is able to maintain a very dense three-dimensional map or image of its surroundings. It will be able to both plan its actions and to navigate, so that it knows at every moment where it is and is even able to identify major pieces of furniture and important items around it. So—a small machine, small enough to get under things and to find its own re-charging station and to empty out its accumulated dust from time to time. That’s the research we’re doing and I think sometime within the next five to ten years we’ll have something like that—and its successors will become a little more capable. They’ll have a few more devices and be programmable for a 
broader range of jobs until, eventually, you get a first generation universal robot, which has mobility and the ability to understand and manipulate what’s going on around it.
NOVA: What do you mean by universal robot?
HM: It’s a machine which can be programmed to do many different jobs. It’s analogous to a computer, which is a universal information processor, except that its abilities extend to the physical world.
NOVA: Okay, so we’ve got the first generation of universal robot.
HM: Right, the time schedule is around 2010 now. Every single job a robot needs to know has to be built into the application program and when you run the program, the robot acts in a pretty inflexible way. Still, it’s perceptual in motor intelligence. It’s comparable to maybe a small lizard.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/robots/moravec.html
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