Not science fiction anymore: mail.ru’s Dmitry Grishin launches $25M robotics fund
June 17, 2012 | Source: Forbes
(Credit: 20th Century Fox)
Robotic technology is close to reaching a new phase of mainstream consumer adoption. That’s the theory behind a new $25 million fund from Dmitry Grishin, the co-founder and CEO of Russia Internet giant Mail.Ru.
The fund will invest globally in areas such as home maintenance, healthcare, education, entertainment — basically any mass consumer market.
The robotics industry now is where the personal computing industry was in the 1980s: ripe for mainstream adoption and poised for massive growth, Grishin says. Technology has advanced to make production of robotics much cheaper now. While it took perhaps $100,000 to build a robot 30 years ago, now it can be built for a fraction of that cost, he says, pointing to things like smartphone technology, 3d scanners and Microsoft’s Kinect platform.
Comments (11)
by Chrispium
@Gordon Russel.
Materials science is not far away from being able to create cables strong enough to build a space elevator. Lifting something out from the gravity well become much cheaper then.
by Alex_Ivanov
It is quite a big leap from a smartphone to an intelligent robot. I don’t think this will happen anytime soon. Without a smart brain the robot is just a zombie. The time for the smart electronic brain hasn’t come yet. It will only happen in the post silicon era which is not even on the horizon.
by Gorden Russell
If you add Kurzweil’s law of exponential progess to Moore’s Law, you will see that von Neuman Machines are six years away.
There is an article at Space.com, “How Telerobotics Could Help Humanity Explore Space.” The article is from May 8, so you have to enter “How Telerobotics” into the little search window.
The article quotes Brian Wilcox, the manager of Space Robotics Technology at JPL NASA. Now let me cut and paste what he said:
“Moore’s law has been operating for 50 years, with about an order of magnitude increase in computational throughput every five years,” Wilcox said.
This means that the throughput per wafer — at a roughly constant fabrication cost of under $10,000 — has increased from about the equivalent of one neuron on a 1.5-inch wafer using 1965 fabrication technology, to about 10 billion neurons using 2015 fabrication technology on an 18-inch wafer. Those wafers are just now going into production around the world, he said.
Wilcox observed that 10 billion neurons is about the equivalent of the human brain.
“Today, a game console, about the most capable consumer product in terms of throughput, has about the equivalent performance of the best invertebrate animal, the octopus,” Wilcox said. “Within the next 10 to 15 years, we will likely witness robot performance marching through all of vertebrate evolution, up to and including humans.”
I don’t know why he calls it the technology of 2015 if it’s in production today, but applying Moores Law to an equivalence of ten billion neurons for six years gives us four doublings, and a result of 160 billion neurons.
I beg to differ on Wilcox on one thing, humans have 100 billion neurons, not just 10 billion. But he’s a roboticist, not an anatomist, so don’t pick on him for that little error.
What Wilcox is telling us here is that robots will be able to do any human job in six years.
That is very frightening for the human worker, but very exciting for the exploration of space.
By the time that Planetary Resources is ready to send robots out to mine asteroids, the robots will be von Neumann machines. Wikipedia has an entry on von Neumann machines. Go check it out.
Now when you get one such machine at Lagrange Point Five (wiki has an entry on Lagrangian Points), along with a proper tool kit, that robot will be able to take a metal bearing asteroid and start to replicate itself. After 29 doublings there will be 536,870,912 robots in lunar orbit. They will also be doubling the number of robotic mining spacecraft out there hauling back asteroids. In a matter of years there will be a constant stream of asteroids being hauled back to L-5. Sure it may take each robotic ship a couple of years to match velocities with an asteroid and haul it back, but there are going to be a large number of robots doing this. In a decade they could exhaust the supply of near Earh objects. This is not a bad thing. These NEO are each and every one a threat to life on Earth. Good riddance when they are all gone. With the metals and volatiles taken from them, the mining vessals will be able to move on to the main asteroid belt. At the same time, ships can be built to carry people up from Earh and to explore Mars. There will be enough fuel taken from the moon to bring people up from low Earth orbit. The only cost will be to get them into LEO by Virgin Galactic.
by Gorden Russell
You have to work hard, Matthew, to be ready by 2021. You don’t have to be a master in computer programming to teach the robot a/c tech. These robots will have speech recognition programs better than today’s chatbots. You will just point to an a/c part and name it and the robot will get it. Then tell the robot what the part is for and it will understand that too. They will learn just like children, one step at a time. But once one robot has learned a/c then the learning can be copied from it’s computer and downloaded into other robots. So bargain for a big payday for teaching that first robot. You’ll only get to teach one.
by Bob Vasquez
I just want a robot that has multiple-joint fingers and wrists so that it can reach those screws and nuts that engineers have designed in those physically unreachable places on everything from cars to every manner of appliance and tool.
by Conrad Green
and any other menial labor job forcing the world to stop doing grueling labor and use their brains
by Gorden Russell
We are really going to need solar-powered harvesting robots after the Republicans force all the undocumented workers to self-deport. We’ll starve if there aren’t robots digging potatoes and picking apples. Robots will be capable of feeding pigs and chickens and branding cattle. Can you imagine something like a Terminator robot roping a steer? The Asimo by Honda can already run about five mph, so it will happen, maybe after the tech doubles four times in six years.
by Gorden Russell
On second thought, Conrad, if those harvesting robots have gasoline powered generators, they can run 24 hours a day during harvesting season. When the robots are von Neumann machines, they will be able to repair each other when they break down in the field.
by MrFriendly
Useless psychology degree? I dunno, but I think you should go on to become a PsyD/therapist, as this country is on the verge of a mental healthcare crisis (if it isn’t, already).
And yes, I’m bored enough to make random comments on news sites, tonight.
by Gorden Russell
to MrFriendly
You won’t be bored with your psychology degree following all the nervous breakdowns that will happen when robots take all the jobs in 2021.
by Matthew
Sweet. Someone is going to need to write the code to tell the robot how to fix an air conditioning system. I can be that guy, right after I get my useless psychology degree (1 yr away), earn my a/c license (3 years away) and then master computer programming (10 to 20) years away. I am ready for the a/c singularity! The first company designed to replace human a/c technicians with robots!