The development of cloud technology and robotics in the new decade
In our blog on Habré, we tell not only about the technological aspects of the work of the cloud service 1cloud , but also analyze the topics related to the technologies of third-party companies.
For example, last week we talked about the device service Netflix , supplying viewers with movies and TV shows based on streaming media technology. Today, we will look at what is happening in the niche of cloud robotics and related subject areas.
')
Analytical company Gartner in 2015 published its study of the “maturity cycle” of developing technologies. On the graph, technologies are distributed according to how large their adoption is by the majority. Thus, it demonstrates the fact that we cannot but be fascinated by new technologies, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, we quickly cool down to them when we realize that it is extremely difficult to successfully implement them.
The “peak of excessive expectations” is inevitably followed by “getting rid of illusions”, after which technologies finally enter the zone of “overcoming shortcomings” and only then reach the “plateau of productivity”.
“We observe this pattern of behavior in relation to virtually all technologies — moving up and down from expectations to getting rid of illusions and the ultimate increase in productivity,” said Jackie Finn, vice president and analyst at Gartner. - This is not only about technologies as such - we react to every innovation. This approach is also maintained in relation to new directions in management and work on projects. People told me that this rule is also true in private life. ”
The new document says that at the moment of the peak of high expectations are the technology of unmanned vehicles and the Internet of things. In turn, technologies such as augmented reality, cryptocurrency and hybrid clouds are at the lowest point of frustration - this is the stage that precedes the transition of technology to the next stage of development.
Gartner's 2015 technology maturity cycle
What Gartner does is a very serious and time-consuming task, since it is relatively easy to make short-term predictions about technology investments, but trying to understand how the IT industry will evolve over ten years is much more difficult.
According to the TechRepublic study, the main priorities for investment in the coming years will be issues of improving security, mobility, using big data and cloud services for businesses. Fashionable directions like 3D printing or wearable gadgets will be at the end of the list. Another study from Deloitte confirms this data and adds that “low priority” technologies will also be considered augmented reality and gamification.
However, one of the main technological and advanced areas is considered to be robotics. The potential of using robots has not yet been disclosed, but cloud technologies will soon have a significant impact on this area. Big data, machine learning, open source systems and the Internet of things can find their application in robotics.
The trend dates back to the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web first appeared. With the advent of the first browser, Mosaic, a professor and students from the University of Southern California began to develop the idea of ​​camera webcasts. And they came up with the idea that instead of passively watching what was happening with the help of a webcam, users could be given the opportunity to remotely influence a certain workspace.
Moreover, in order to make the process interesting, they decided to make a robot that not only builds a tower of cubes, but takes care of a garden with live plants. For these purposes, the industrial robot arm was adapted, equipped with a camera, an irrigation system and an air nozzle for collecting seeds.
It was installed in the center of a round flowerbed with a radius of three meters, filled with soil. So that users could control the “mechanical hand” - planting seeds, watering plants, and so on - a graphical web interface was developed that everyone could access.
"Telesad" [eng. The Telegarden] became available on the Net in the summer of 1995. Rumors about the project quickly spread, and after a few weeks, thousands of people began to visit it. Many visited the site regularly to water their flowers and even asked other users to look after their plants while they were on vacation. Thousands of seedlings began to sprout, and Telesad quickly grew.
"Telesad" became the first active device operating on the network. MIT Press published two books about it, and soon other devices and systems began to connect to the Web. Since then, robotics has progressed far enough. There are currently hundreds of research laboratories that have developed more than 5 million service robots that clean up homes and offices, and more than 3000 robots helping surgeons in operating theaters around the world. Many major achievements have been made in the world of digital cameras, inertia and many other sensors.
However, robots are not yet able to fold things or load dishes in the dishwasher. Such ordinary routine work is extraordinarily difficult for them. The main problem is uncertainty.
Put yourself in the robot's place: everything around you is unclear and unstable, staggers, moves and is seen in low resolution, you cannot determine what you are facing. Moreover, you are not able to fully control the movement of your own hands: as if you are wearing huge mittens.
Very interesting about this issue, Andrew Ng told (Andrew Ng) during a speech at Stanford University.
Think about creating a robot that would put things in the house in its place. After all, it is very important for everyone who has children, and especially important for older people. What if the robot could work silently while you were sleeping or at work, collecting things from the floor and putting them where they lay?
The problem here is that the robot is physically unable to remember all the objects: there will always be something with which he is not familiar. For example, you bought a new TV with a new remote control, which for some reason was on the floor. For a robot, this is already an unknown object, since the new console is different from the old one. Fortunately, today there is a solution to this problem: you need to connect an electronic assistant to the Web, so that he will have access to an extensive repository of information on the Internet.
In 2010, James Kuffner (James Kuffner), a researcher from Google, introduced the concept of "cloud robotics". The cloud is not new to the Internet. This is a new paradigm, suggesting new ways to apply it.
Cloud robotics is a new direction of robotics, the roots of which go to cloud computing, cloud storage and other Internet technologies tied to a converged infrastructure. This approach allows robots to gain access to the computing resources of modern data centers.
In the film The Matrix, there is a scene in which Neo, pointing to a helicopter, asks Trinity if she knows how to control it. Her answer was: “Not yet.” Then she loaded the “flight program” into her brain and lifted the “spinner” into the air.
For us, the ability to download information directly into the brain and acquire the necessary skills and knowledge in just a couple of seconds is an unattainable fantasy. But for robots it is not.
Already, several research groups are exploring the idea of ​​using cloud infrastructure in robotics, when machines gain access to huge computational resources and data volumes.
The idea of ​​connecting the robot to an external computer appeared in 1990. Masayuki Inaba, from the University of Tokyo, explored the concept of a “distant brain,” physically separating the sensors and actuators of the device and intelligent software.
Today, cloud robotics is trying to take this concept to the next level using low-cost computing technologies and fast networks.
Cloud technology is the key to a new generation of robots. Take, for example, the Google Robot Car, it uses the Web to access a huge Google database with maps and images from space and the StreetView service to match them with the flow of GPS data, cameras and 3D sensors, determining your location from amazing accuracy and avoiding collisions.
But what is interesting is that Google has been testing self-propelled cars in real conditions since 2010, and during this time not a single accident has occurred, provoked by a smart system. Until recently. On February 14, 2016, the autopilot vehicle became the culprit in a traffic accident for the first time in several years.
The car on the basis of serialized Lexus RX 450h reequipped for unmanned movement was going to turn at the intersection to the right. When the green light came on, the unmanned vehicle began to move, but the system found sandbags on the right side of the road, enclosing a storm sewer drain. The unmanned vehicle decided to occupy the center of the lane in order to go around the obstacle and go to the intersection.
The Google car, having missed several cars, began to rebuild in front of the bus that was slowly following - the control system decided that the driver of a large vehicle was letting it through, the test driver arrived at the same conclusion and did not interfere with the control. However, the bus driver thought otherwise and the cars collided.
Google representatives point out that this is a common situation on the road - a banal misunderstanding of maneuvers. However, experts from the department of Google X, dealing with unmanned vehicles, still made some changes to the algorithm. Now the system will take into account that, in general, buses and other large vehicles (in particular trucks) are less inclined to give in to other road users.
This shows that the system is not perfect yet, and active work is being done on it. As of August 28, 2014, Google cars are not able to recognize temporary traffic lights, can not distinguish pedestrians from police or crumpled paper from stone. And they do not know how to park. Google plans to correct these shortcomings by 2020.
Unmanned vehicles are a very promising direction, because many companies are engaged in this issue. For example, the car concern Daimler, which is working on the creation of autonomous trucks.
The developers decided to send several of their cars on their first long journey from the German city of Stuttgart to Rotterdam, Holland. Three self-propelled trucks will travel on public roads and share useful information with each other using Wi-Fi.
Nevertheless, all three trucks will be employees of Daimler, who will monitor the progress of the trip and in which case take control. No one is immune from the fact that for the time being the new system can give a sudden crash and jeopardize other road users, as it happened with Google.
Cloud technologies also find their application in marketing - this fact in itself speaks of their sufficient maturity. The relative cheapness of cloud systems allows them to be used for phone calls as easily as for sending emails. And do not configure your own VoIP-server. Everything is stored in the cloud using remote server farms with combined memory and processors.
This is quite convenient, since you don’t have to worry about the disk failing and updating the software or hardware. In addition, the cloud allows you to save on scaling and sharing data between applications and users faster than ever.
Systems of external telephone interactive communications (IVR) are the newest variation of robotic calls. The software that usually helps us all wade through the voice menus of banks and insurance companies has now fallen into the hands of marketers. They started using it to call potential customers.
Using cloud platforms, they can make a large number of robotic calls, attracting a live person only to communicate with customers who did not hang up after several minutes of communication with the computer.
Many IVR systems offer API developers with the help of which they can create telephone robots that make outgoing calls as well. Depending on how a particular interlocutor answers the questions, the system can redirect the call to the desired number within the company, where a living person will already try to finally close the deal.
Below is a promotional video of one of these systems:
Room for futurists
All that has been described above is waiting for us in the near future, but what if we go beyond the ten-year horizon? Then we will get to the area in which mainly futurists work, studying the development of technology.
Steve Brown, futurist at Intel, states that three mega-trends will determine the future of computing: "This is a decrease, an increase and a naturalness."
The “diminishing” trend is a consequence of Moore's law and will determine the development of small devices with low power consumption, which will significantly increase the likelihood of the spread of wearable gadgets and the Internet of things.
“Increase” refers to the continued growth of computer power, and “naturalness” is a state in which objects of everyday life will be endowed with some computational power.
“Calculations are our everything. Previously, we had to go somewhere to carry them out, for example, into a room with a huge humming computer. Today we live in an era when we can make calculations on the go, ” says Brown.
Further, we can expect that the calculations will be embedded in the world around us - we will turn the world into a huge computer. “As soon as this happens, extremely interesting things will start to happen,” Brown continues.
“Autonomous machines will change everything,” he says. “Enterprises will face difficulties when people have to work side by side with machines — both with physical machines and algorithms.”
The pace of technological development is accelerating: where it took us decades to make decisions, now the processes are going faster and faster. And all this means that management has to make better decisions about how to use new technologies. Moreover, they will have to face even more complex issues related to the security and protection of information.
“We need to define the essence of the relationship between people and technology, because now the vast majority of people perceive technology incorrectly,” said Dave Coplin, head of forecasting at Microsoft.
Koplin notes that many of us seek to use new technologies to perform tasks in the usual way, while the essence of new technologies is to make us fundamentally change the approaches to their implementation.
Developing more literate relationships with technology is necessary because of impending serious changes, Koplin notes: “What happens when technology moves into the background, what happens when every surface has the opportunity to display contextual information based on what is happening around and who looks at her? This is the world to which we are moving - a world where the data will expose many ethical issues. If we do not prepare people for these changes, most of the ideas will remain beyond the limits of fiction. ”
Nicolas Millar, a futurist from BT, echoed these ideas, saying that the CIO will have to take into account not only technological changes, but also how they will affect staff. This entails rethinking the concept of the employee’s workplace.
“An open space without partitions can distract employees from work,” he says. - But is it possible to generate innovations in a gray corner? Employees using tablets may prefer not to work at the tables, but those who will use devices that react to gestures may need more space. ”
Thus, we can conclude that in the long term, not only technologies will change dramatically, but also the “life algorithms” and foundations we are used to — we need to create a radically new type of thinking.
PS We in 1cloud consider a variety of topics in our blog on Habré - a couple of examples:
- Artificial Intelligence: What Scientists Think About It
- In simple words: We deal with "cloud" services.
- How cloud technologies affect data centers
- A bit about 2FA: Two-factor authentication
And we talk about our own cloud service :
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/281543/
All Articles