A (rather longwinded) definition of a robot
December 16, 2011 at 7:49pmDefining a robot is by no means an easy task. The noun robot does not refer to one specific object; it is not based on a particular technology, activity or function and whilst certain stereotypical robot forms such as anthropomorphic pervade, other diverse and surprising configurations of technology can also be considered a robot. The definition for such a broad range of possibility is by necessity vague.
In ‘Philosophical Investigations,’ Wittgenstein approaches the subject of games: board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. He asks, ‘what is common to them all? - Don’t say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’” – but look and see whether there is anything common to all.’ He concludes that there is not something that is common to all but ‘a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.’ (Wittgenstein, 1998. P.31) Wittgenstein ultimately characterises these similarities as family resemblances.
This is helpful in terms of generating a practical understanding of robots, indeed we can begin by listing the family traits commonly associated with things robotic but still the problem of definition persists. First, unlike ‘game,’ when used as a noun in popular culture, ‘robot’ is commonly used without a qualifier, this suggests the existence of a generic notion: the mythical or iconic image of the robot. Second, unlike a game, the robot can exist simultaneously in diverse contexts and planes of reality: as a functional engineered machine operating autonomously on a production line such as an industrial robot; as a corporate vision of the future such as a humanoid robot; as a complex construct of fiction such as an android, or as a high-street product such as a robotic vacuum cleaner. And whilst the promiscuity of the generic concept of robots often leads to these worlds blurring together, the actual artefact is very poor at migrating between them: fictional robots rarely become products.
The word robot has its etymologic roots in the play ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ (R.U.R.) by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. Here the contemporary dichotomy of fiction and reality were combined: artificial humans (androids) operating as inexpensive production line workers, the word robot suggesting work, cheap labour or servitude in Slavic languages. Whilst there is a long history of objects, both real and fictional that could have been labelled as robots before Čapek coined the term, this moment (1920) serves as a sensible point from which to start, as R.U.R. was one of the first major works to move the robot beyond the world of magic and illusion and into the real world of manufacture and production. At the same time it built on a history of previous fictions such as the Jewish legend of the golem, several Greek mythologies such as Pygmalion and Daedalus and Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein,’ in exploring the creation of artificial life and its potential implications.
In the years following R.U.R., fiction and reality diverged as Čapek’s vision of automation came true but the robots designed to operate on production lines emerged out of the logical progression of Fordism and as such manufacturing engineering and market demands informed their form and behaviour rather than historical notions of humanoids. This engineering approach and the relative uniformity of the industrial robot has influenced many of the recent attempts at definition, for example the Robot Institute of America (1979) suggest the following:
A re-programmable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.
More recently (2007) The International Federation for Robotics (IFR) divide robots into two categories: Industrial and service. Their definition of an industrial robot is not dissimilar to the above. A service robot they tentatively define as follows:
A service robot is a robot which operates semi- or fully autonomously to perform services useful to the wellbeing of humans and equipment, excluding manufacturing operations.
Had the success of industrial robots diminished our fascination, or distracted us from more dramatic or sensational robots, then the above definitions would suffice, but the robot in contemporary culture has been far more informed by the drama of science fiction and the theatre of the technology fair than the reality of production lines and it is this spectacular image that continues to dominate public perception. Largely influential in this shaping of the popular robot was the Westinghouse Electric Corporation’s Electro, a giant metal, walking, talking robotic man presented at the 1939 New York World Fair. Whilst this was not the first humanoid, Electro’s importance was in starting the trend for suggesting that robots could enter the home as domestic helpers. This represented an optimistic version of Čapek’s cautionary tale and created a positive vision of the robotic future that persists to this day. Today, the robots in fiction continue to be far more advanced than their real-life counterparts, but research continues to reduce this disparity and is a major motivational force in contemporary science and engineering.
It is now time to conclude by attempting some hard definition of the robot In terms of actual definition, it is necessary to apply a rather broad set of criteria and in doing so give space for a re-thinking of the term and its materialisation. The barest generally accepted defining factors and those that I will apply in this thesis are as follows: ‘For a thing to be considered robotic it should be able to sense and interpret in some fashion its environment; compute decisions based on that sensory information; and then act on those decisions in some mechanical way.’ This statement serves to satisfy from a technical perspective but its dryness fails to reflect the mythical or emotive factor associated with robots in fiction or expectation. To the technical definition I then add: ‘The complexity or sublimity of either the sensing, computing or mechanics should elevate the status of robotic object above that normally ascribed to machines or products.’
