Under the cries of 60 000 rampaging soccer fans, the Brazilian goalkeeper Dida fix its target, conducts a long clearance and, as expected, Ronaldhino seizes the ball. In a performance that is both art, magic and the perfection of sporting gesture, the athlete starts in a ballet dribbles which stuns the defensive opponent. From the corner of the eye, he saw Ronaldo, demarcated, which darkens the goal. In a split second, his brain compiles data: the speed of his teammate, distance, trajectory and the tension he must give his password, the point of impact, and all this during that it is itself a full course. Contact! The ball leaves his foot and is in an arc just above a defender. Ronaldo jumped, and the head, redirect the pass perfect in the skylight. But Brazil! Considering the complexity of equations that describe such a sequence of the game, the computing power necessary to solve them instantly biomechanics and agility required to perform each of these gestures, one can not help thinking that only the human machine can accomplish such a prodigy. Yet at universities around the world, including at Laval University, students and professors have embarked on a company known as RoboCup, whose goal is to design and produce by 2050 a team of robots capable of defeating the champions title of the World Cup soccer. Sottise! clameront not only athletes but also all persons who have grown disillusioned believer in hard as iron that in the near future, robots would provide us tedious and repetitive tasks of life. The robots seem we have done lurch for this great appointment.
Who is to blame? At the lightness of science fiction? At the pretence of science? At the complicity between these two creatures that feed on each other?
A myth millennium
There is no doubt that many works of science fiction-that we believe the cycle of robots Isaac Asimov or the films Star Wars, Bicentennial Man and Artificial Intelligence-have cultivated the idea that humans were called to live with humanoid robots friends or enemies, “Richard St-Gelais, a professor in the Department of literature. But for this specialist paraliterature, science fiction has just passed the myth of the golem millennium.
Describes for the first time in the Psalms, the golem is a creature of human appearance, shaped in clay, which comes to life when its creator recorded a biblical verse on his forehead. Initially small and servile, it is growing rapidly and can be turned against its creator. “Today, technology has replaced the mystique, but one thing remains: we are both fascinated by the idea of creating a being in our image from inanimate matter and frightened by the possibility that it uses its powers against us. ”
The ancestors of humanoid robots have appeared in Europe in the eighteenth century while watchmakers-engineering mechanics created robots with complex mechanisms enabling them to play a musical instrument. This was mainly objects of curiosity that used to entertain, “says Clement Gosselin, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Robotics Laboratory. In the middle of the twentieth century, the first industrial robots are emerging and they are not human. “They are controlled machine tools with electromechanical relays,” he says. The engineers have succeeded amazing things with this system, considering the constraints of time. ” From there arose the most robots who share our daily lives. Indeed, despite appearances, we are surrounded by robots. Not those kind of humanoid Asimo as Honda and his fellows, which serve mainly public relations agents for their manufacturing, but robots that are a credit to the etymology of the word: workers slaves (robotnik, a Polish worker, and robota, slave work in Czech). Our houses are filled with machines that perform tasks by running a predetermined sequence of actions: from modest toaster robot cleaner of the pool, through the washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, food and vacuum-robot. “This is obviously not under these traits that science-fiction presented robots of the future, but science fiction is not a predictive science,” says Richard St-Gelais. The robots have also taken their place on the labour market. The first industrial robot began his career on an assembly line of General Motors in 1961, but it was not until the development of the microprocessor in the years 1970 and the development of desktop, in the years 1980 to attend a real robot boom. “These innovations have lifted the main limitation of robots, said Clement Gosselin. It is as if they were transplanted a brain. ”
Slave servile or potential enemies?
Today, there are over 900 000 industrial robots around the world and their annual growth rates approach 10%. In the automotive industry, one worker in ten is a robot. As their cost of production decreases and the cost of labour increases, the trend toward automation is not about to falter in industrialized countries. The robots are on track to return their powers against the workers by throwing in the streets? “This is the big question,” says Sophie Amours, professor of industrial engineering at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Indeed, the robotics industry is a growth sector which creates jobs, but its purpose is to replace workers. “Developed countries have little choice, she says, however. To cope with competition from countries where wages are very low, they must find a way of reducing the share of the workforce in the manufacturing cost of their products. The robots are one of the planks of salvation available to them to maintain their economic development. ”
However, it is not enough workers being replaced by robots to find the path to prosperity, it warns. “Robots should be used to manufacture products at higher learning added that humans would find it difficult to do with efficiency.”
The robots do not only threaten the jobs of workers: they also threaten their physical safety. Because of tasks assigned to them and productivity is expected of them, the robots are equipped with powerful engines that give them great strength and high acceleration movements, “says Clement Gosselin. “If they dereglent, certain types of robots can seriously injure and even kill a human being. That is why there is now physical segregation between workers and robots in factories. ”
The lack of collaboration between the two groups, however, affect the productivity of enterprises. “If robots can assist humans in the same working environment, they must be powerful but harmless. It is a mechanical challenge is not impossible to raise, but that requires technological compromise. We must rethink industrial robots in depth. “The researcher also undertook a five-year project with General Motors to explore avenues for promoting a concerted work between humans and robots.
There is still a long way to go before that science does not deliver robots that we implicitly promised. All-mechanical systems, artificial intelligence, integration of components, ability to react to unforeseen situations-remain to improve, says Clement Gosselin. The speed of progress will Does a team of robots to defeat the best soccer players in the world in 2050? “At the moment, I do not bet for the team of robots,” he says. But if you measure the progress made by robotics for 40 years and if one considers that there is still so much time in front of us, I do not bet against robots neither. ”
FOOT AND HANDS … ROBOTIZED
The slightest obstacle is a barrier for most robots on wheels. This has pushed the student researcher Mathieu Goulet and Professor Clement Gosselin to develop a walking robot capable of moving in rough terrain, congested or dangerous. In designing this creature all-terrain, researchers have conducted by biomimetisme, modeling and simplifying the locomotor system of the ant. The result is a small six-legged robot, Hexapode, which manages to move and ensure its stability through the coordinated efforts of its 18 engines. It differs from other walking robots by the range of programmable movements that can execute and its stability.
Not only is this robot is small, agile and strong as the ant which it was based, but the analogy could be pushed even further by creating caste robots. “We could have agile robots that would act as scouts and other stronger instruments to carry or bring back samples, the researchers argue. Obviously, we are still far from the company of robots.
“We have passed the stage of walking and the rest is yet to be done, recognizes Clement Gosselin. If Hexapode was a human, this would be a child of two years. But a child with great potential. ”
The fist SARAH
To accomplish a complex mission, a robot must not only move, but it must be able to manipulate tools or objects. For this reason, researchers Robotics Laboratory devote part of their work to the understanding among robots. Their most spectacular achievement, SARAH (Self-Adaptive Robotics Auxiliary Hand), lend support to the decommissioning of nuclear installations in Great Britain. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority will use this prehensile developed at the Laboratory to expedite the handling of waste stored at a research center on nuclear energy closed in 1990. The cleaning of the site is done by remote to avoid direct contact with humans radioactive waste, and the method used so far imposed frequent changes of gripper.
With its three fingers articulated, SARAH may seize and lift heavy objects and rigid as a brick or a madrier, small objects more fragile as a ring or a tennis ball or soft objects or irregularly shaped as a sponge or a baseball glove. The hand baladeuse could also take the path of space. Indeed, the University has granted a license to MDA (MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates), a company specializing in space robotics, which included developed the Canadarm which are equipped U.S. space shuttles. Currently, the Canadian arm is equipped with a prehensile composed of two jaws rudimentary. “Our hand would allow it to perform tasks that are impossible for now,” says Clement Gosselin. MDA caresses also another project which would SARAH contribution to the repair of defective satellites orbiting the Earth.