The Times: Tech column - Domestic robots/Fritz Hollings/Harvard's cybercourse
By David Rowan
THIS looks like being the year of the two-legged robot - at least, if you have a bit of cash to burn. Last week, Sony unveiled its new domestic robot, code named SDR-4X, which can walk around the house and, usefully, pick itself up if it falls over. It can recognise individual faces and voices, talk to you with a 60,000-word vocabulary, and, according to Sony's executive vice-president, Toshitada Doi, it is "designed to live with people in homes". It is pitched as an entertainment toy - not surprisingly for Sony - and, for the price of a luxury car, should be on the market in Japan later this year.
Honda, meanwhile, is pushing Asimo, its own new walking robot, as a high-tech worker - serving as a receptionist or patrolling offices as a late-night security guard. Asimo costs around £110,000 a year to hire, although Masato Hirose, Honda's chief engineer, predicts that within ten years it will be cheap enough to serve drinks in a typical family home.
In 40 years of international efforts to make bipedal robots a reality, the challenge has always been to combine agility with balance and spatial awareness. Learning to walk is no easy task for a machine. But advances in sensors and image recognition mean that today's models can walk effortlessly across various floor surfaces. Tomorrow the world's latest robots will stroll around in the Robodex exhibition in Yokohama, Japan, asking for work in nursing, security or education.
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WITH Hollywood panicking over illegally downloaded movies, and record companies blaming piracy for their current woes, Washington continues to seek a solution in draconian restrictions on consumer technology. Last week, the US Senate's powerful commerce committee chairman, Fritz Hollings, introduced a Bill that, if it becomes law, will limit how you enjoy legally acquired music and films. The proposed legislation, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Bill, would ban any electronic device that lets you record music or video unless it includes copy-protection technology.
In other words, everything from your computer to your DVD player would control your private use of digital content - with large fines and even jail sentences for those who build or sell devices that do not comply. This could mean the end of the MP3 player and the home-made compilation CD - in other words, legitimate uses of technology would be banned to prevent the occasional illegitimate use. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is leading a campaign against the Bill, says: "It is the technological equivalent of requiring that crowbars be made of foam rubber on the grounds that metal ones may be used in the commission of burglaries".
Nor would such a law affect the US alone: in a global entertainment market, we will all be forced to comply. The recent worldwide spread of copy-protected CDs has already shown how consumer rights can be ignored by the entertainment companies. If Hollings's proposal becomes law, those of us who pay for our digital content will have our consumer rights further eroded. It must not be allowed to happen. Join the campaign for fair-use rights in the digital world, at www.digitalconsumer.org.
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LAST week I enrolled for a six-week law course at Harvard University to bring this column's readers the latest insights into privacy law in cyberspace. But before my editors fret about the air fares and tuition fees, I should explain: this is a cybercourse, and I shall be logging in for weekly modules with students in 40 countries, from Canada to Kazakhstan. It is a remarkably constructive use of the Web by Professor John Nockleby and Harvard's Berkman Centre. Participation is absolutely free and readers of The Times are welcome to join me by registering at eon.law.harvard.edu/privacy.
(The Times, March 27 2002)
THIS looks like being the year of the two-legged robot - at least, if you have a bit of cash to burn. Last week, Sony unveiled its new domestic robot, code named SDR-4X, which can walk around the house and, usefully, pick itself up if it falls over. It can recognise individual faces and voices, talk to you with a 60,000-word vocabulary, and, according to Sony's executive vice-president, Toshitada Doi, it is "designed to live with people in homes". It is pitched as an entertainment toy - not surprisingly for Sony - and, for the price of a luxury car, should be on the market in Japan later this year.
Honda, meanwhile, is pushing Asimo, its own new walking robot, as a high-tech worker - serving as a receptionist or patrolling offices as a late-night security guard. Asimo costs around £110,000 a year to hire, although Masato Hirose, Honda's chief engineer, predicts that within ten years it will be cheap enough to serve drinks in a typical family home.
In 40 years of international efforts to make bipedal robots a reality, the challenge has always been to combine agility with balance and spatial awareness. Learning to walk is no easy task for a machine. But advances in sensors and image recognition mean that today's models can walk effortlessly across various floor surfaces. Tomorrow the world's latest robots will stroll around in the Robodex exhibition in Yokohama, Japan, asking for work in nursing, security or education.
++++
WITH Hollywood panicking over illegally downloaded movies, and record companies blaming piracy for their current woes, Washington continues to seek a solution in draconian restrictions on consumer technology. Last week, the US Senate's powerful commerce committee chairman, Fritz Hollings, introduced a Bill that, if it becomes law, will limit how you enjoy legally acquired music and films. The proposed legislation, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Bill, would ban any electronic device that lets you record music or video unless it includes copy-protection technology.
In other words, everything from your computer to your DVD player would control your private use of digital content - with large fines and even jail sentences for those who build or sell devices that do not comply. This could mean the end of the MP3 player and the home-made compilation CD - in other words, legitimate uses of technology would be banned to prevent the occasional illegitimate use. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is leading a campaign against the Bill, says: "It is the technological equivalent of requiring that crowbars be made of foam rubber on the grounds that metal ones may be used in the commission of burglaries".
Nor would such a law affect the US alone: in a global entertainment market, we will all be forced to comply. The recent worldwide spread of copy-protected CDs has already shown how consumer rights can be ignored by the entertainment companies. If Hollings's proposal becomes law, those of us who pay for our digital content will have our consumer rights further eroded. It must not be allowed to happen. Join the campaign for fair-use rights in the digital world, at www.digitalconsumer.org.
++++
LAST week I enrolled for a six-week law course at Harvard University to bring this column's readers the latest insights into privacy law in cyberspace. But before my editors fret about the air fares and tuition fees, I should explain: this is a cybercourse, and I shall be logging in for weekly modules with students in 40 countries, from Canada to Kazakhstan. It is a remarkably constructive use of the Web by Professor John Nockleby and Harvard's Berkman Centre. Participation is absolutely free and readers of The Times are welcome to join me by registering at eon.law.harvard.edu/privacy.
(The Times, March 27 2002)
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