Robotics: Hephaestus Does It Again
After browsing through half a century of robotics research, the chapter emphasizes on motion autonomy as the key attribute of robots. The presentation follows a guiding thread inspired by an ancient myth accounting for the universally debated relationship
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Abstract After browsing through half a century of robotics research, the chapter emphasizes on motion autonomy as the key attribute of robots. The presentation follows a guiding thread inspired by an ancient myth accounting for the universally debated relationship between science and technology. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was a talented craftsman. Enamoured with Athena, he attempted to seduce her, in vain. The goddess of “knowing” withstood the advances of the god of “doing”. Robotics stems from this tension. Although the myth contradicts a current tendency to confuse science and technology, it nevertheless reflects the experience of the author as a roboticist. Robotics explores the relationship that a machine which moves, and whose motions are controlled by a computer, can have with the real world. In this sense the robot differs from automats, whose motions are mechanically determined, and computers, which manipulate information but do not move. What degree of autonomy can such machines be expected to have? This question does not cover robotics entirely, but it does account for a large part thereof, and it has a certain ambition. In particular, it resonates with the sciences that take
The text is adapted from the inaugural lecture delivered on the January 19, 2012, in the framework of Liliane Bettencourt Chair of Technological Innovation at Collège de France in Paris. It benefits from the translation by Liz Libbrecht of the original version entitled La robotique: une récidive d’Héphaïstos, and published in Collège de France/Fayard Collection « Leçons inaugurales du Collège de France », no 224, May 2012. This work has been partly supported by the project ERC Advanced Grant 340050 Actanthrope. J.-P. Laumond (*) LAAS-CNRS, 7 Avenue du Colonel Roche, BP 54200, 31031 Toulouse Cedex 4, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 D. Herath et al. (eds.), Robots and Art, Cognitive Science and Technology, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0321-9_5
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Fig. 1 Philippe Ségéral, Athéna et Héphaïstos, Étude no 2 (2009), Private Collection
living beings, including humans, as their research objects. We can however immediately underline an essential difference: the roboticist has to make robots; the neurophysiologist, the bio-mechanical researcher or the psycho-physicist seeks to understand humans and animals. Words have their significance. The missions differ: while the former have to do, and are condemned to innovating, the latter have to understand, and are condemned to producing knowledge. The distinction between doing and understanding is not new in the history of science; Pasteur’s quadrant aims to show that. It was introduced recently from a perspective of management and evaluation of research [1]. It structures sciences, technologies and their relations along two axes: one concerns the more or less fundamental nature of research; the other its usefulness. In this quadrant, robotics would fit in with Edison, under “applied research with a strong societal impact”— an expres
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