IT’S been sixty years since writer Isaac Asimov dreamed up his laws governing
robot behaviour. But the message still hasn’t sunk in. Researchers in Thailand
have developed a robot security guard that comes armed with a gun, and has no
qualms about whom it shoots.
Called “Roboguard”, the gun-toting sentinel is designed as a cheap
alternative to a human guard. It can be ordered to fire at will, or told to
check first with a human via a secure Internet connection.
As they appeared in Asimov’s science fiction writings in 1940, the three laws
of robotics were meant to prevent robots from harming people
(see Table).
Roboguard appears to have the potential to flout all three.
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The machine was built by Pitikhate Sooraksa of King Mongkut’s Institute of
Technology in Ladkrabang, Bangkok. It consists of a handgun and a small video
camera mounted on a motorised holder that can direct them automatically.
“It has two modes, manual and automatic,” says Sooraksa. Using the weapon in
manual mode, he can control the gun from a computer anywhere in the world. A
laser pointer on top of the gun marks its current target.
For automatic operation, Roboguard is fitted with infrared sensors that allow
it to track people as they move. Sooraksa has password-protected the “fire”
command for when the robot is operated over the Internet. “We think the decision
to fire should always be a human decision,” he says. “Otherwise it could kill
DZ.”
This doesn’t reassure Kevin Warwick, a cyberneticist at Reading University
who has long warned of the dangers of robots gaining too much power over human
beings. “Things can always go wrong,” he says. You can never allow for all
eventualities. “We need to think about introducing laws like Asimov’s, but even
then robots will find ways to get round them.”
Other researchers were equally concerned about Roboguard. “I find this quite
horrific,” says Chris Czarnecki of the Centre for Computational Intelligence at
De Montfort University in Leicester. “What about time delays across the Internet
when it’s busy? What you’ll be seeing and what the gun’s pointing at will be two
different things. You could end up shooting anything.”
Czarnecki also suspects the robot’s tracking system might be error-prone. “If
the tracking’s infrared, what happens when the Sun comes out? It’s a big source
of infrared radiation.”
At the moment, Roboguard is tooled up with nothing more powerful than an air
gun. To test its accuracy, Sooraksa pinned balloons to the walls and took
potshots at them from a computer. “It’s very similar to a real gun,” he says. It
could easily be upgraded to a more powerful weapon such as a machine gun, he
adds.
Sooraksa says Roboguard might be of interest to private companies, but sees
the armed forces as a more likely buyer. “We’d like to show it to the military,”
he says. “It should be in good hands.”
The current, static version of Roboguard could be just the start. Sooraksa
hopes to develop his prototype further. “You could make it mobile, it could be
designed as a walking system,” he says. “We have the technology.”