• What are the most important inventions in our daily lives in the past 20 years?
• Which one of these inventions is the most useful? Why? 

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A feeding machine designed to make life easier for older people has won a top prize at an award ceremony in Japan.

The "My Spoon" feeding robot received one of 10 prizes at the Robot Award event, which was held in Tokyo. The machine helps elderly or disabled people to eat with a special arm that shovels food from a plate to the person's mouth. The arm is controlled by using a small joystick.

My Spoon is already on sale in both Europe and Japan and is particularly useful because it doesn't force feed. The spoon arm stops at a position in front of the mouth so users can easily bite and swallow.

Another award-winner was "Paro" a furry seal which has sensors beneath its fur and whiskers. When the seal is stroked it responds by opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers.

About 800 of these seal robots are now used for therapy in Japanese nursing homes and also by children with autism and physical disabilities.

A further winner at the ceremony was a giant vacuum cleaner-on-wheels. The automatic vacuum cleaner can use elevators to travel on its own between the different floors of a building. The robot already cleans office suites at several skyscrapers in central Tokyo.

The Robot Award was started by the Japanese government to promote research and development in the robotics industry. Ten robots won prizes out of a total of 152 entries from across the country.

Robots are seen in Japan as one way to deal with a rapidly ageing population and a future labour shortage. According to the Japanese government, the population of 127 million is expected to fall by 30% by 2055. People over 65 will then make up around 40% of the entire population.

Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories. Robots make sushi, plant rice and tend paddies. There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter away at public technology displays.

The government estimates the industry could increase to $26 billion in 2010 and nearly $70 billion by 2025.

Find words or phrases in the text that are the antonyms of the following. They appear in the same order.

1. young

2. behind

3. with difficulty

4. above

5. loser

6. manual

7. few

8. slowly

9. excess

10. decrease

Answer the following questions.

11. Which invention is used in several places in the Japanese capital?

12. Which invention is used by children with disabilities?

13.  Which invention can travel around alone?

14. Which invention is sold in Japan and Europe?

15.  Which invention responds when people touch it?

16. Which invention is controlled by a joystick?

17. Which of these inventions do you think is the most useful? Give a reason for your answer.

18.  Why did the government start the Robot Award?

19.  Why are robots important for the future of Japan?
20.  What will happen to the population by 2055?

21. Write down any 4 types of work that robots are already doing in Japan.

Types of Robots

• What kinds of robots have you seen in films or television or books or in real life?
• What kind of work are robots used for at present?
• What kind of work would you like a robot to do for you?

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Today, over one million household robots, and 1.1 million industrial robots, are in use worldwide. Robots are used for tasks that require great accuracy or are repetitive and boring. Many also do jobs that are dangerous for people, such as exploring shipwrecks, helping after disasters, studying other planets and defusing bombs or mines.

In the future, robots will act as carers, medics, companions, entertainers, security guards, traffic police and even soldiers.

Until very recently, the majority of robots worked in factories. However, a combination of increased computing power and advances made in the field of artificial intelligence, or AI, have now made software smart enough to make robots much more useful.

While a large portion of the household robots were made up of robotic vacuum cleaners, mops, lawn mowers, pool cleaners, security bots and even robotic baby-rockers - the real boom was in entertainment robots. Suddenly people were happy to pay for robots such as Sony’s Aibo robotic dog and its robo-pups that served as robo-pets and companions.

Whether they have two legs, many legs, or no legs at all, a lot of progress has been made in robot movement, including bipedal walking, crawling, rock-climbing, bouncing, and swimming.

There are also wheeled bots that work as independent vehicles, such as the desert racers that compete in the DARPA Grand Challenge to be the fastest to cross a desert without any human control.

One area where even more advances have been made is the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. These are remotely-controlled spy planes that are able to fly themselves if they lose contact with their pilot. These planes can also be used to monitor forest fires.

Space agencies such as NASA have developed many space exploration robots. For example, the robonaut is a remotely-operated robot, designed to perform dangerous space walks in the place of an astronaut.

Robotic submarines, also known as remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, have now become an important way of exploring the deep ocean or ice-capped waters, while heat resistant robots are now used to monitor the activity in volcanoes.

Operating on the human body requires high skill but also great control, something robots can provide. Robots now assist surgeons. The most successful of these is the da Vinci robotic surgical system, which is used for keyhole surgery, to operate on anything from gall bladder removals and brain surgery to heart bypasses.

Similarly, tiny, wireless and robotic camera-capsules have been used diagnostically, by allowing them to pass through a patient’s digestive system. Others have been designed to move about by remote control in the abdominal cavity, sending images back to the surgeon, or even taking biopsy samples. Such life-saving robots have proved so successful that dentists are considering using robotic dental drill to make dental surgery cheaper, quicker, and less painful.

But despite all the successes, there are still many challenges in robotics. These include producing better actuators (which control how robots move), sensors (which allow them to be aware of their environment) and ultimately making bots much smarter. Current motors and actuators are either too weak, or too big and noisy.

The ultimate test perhaps is robot soccer. This is driving development in almost every area of robotics from the ability to run and kick a ball to communicating and demonstrating teamwork. The grand aim is to have a team of humanoid robots that can beat the best human soccer team in the world by 2050.

Until then the question remains that if robots are ever made smart enough to do our ironing will they also be smart enough to refuse to do it for us?

Are the following statements True or False? If there is no information in the text, write Not Given.

1. Most of the robots in use today work in factories.

2. Robots are used for work that people do not like to do.

3. Sony’s Aibo robotic dog is still very popular all over the world.

4. UAVs can fly without a pilot.

5. The robonaut is operated by remote control.

6. ROVs can be sent under the ocean.

7. Dentists now use robotic dental drills.

8. Robots can walk upright, crawl, climb rocks, bounce and swim.

9. There will be a soccer match between robots and humans in 2050.

10. Robots in the future will refuse to iron our clothes.

 Answer the following questions.     

11. How many robots are in use around the world?

12. What kinds of jobs can robots be used for?

13. What are Aibo and da Vinci?

14. What are the full forms of UAV and ROV?

15. Why are the motors and actuators used today not good enough?

Sources:

Hardy-Gould, J. 2007, ‘TEFL Update Jan Part 1’, viewed 16 March 2008, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/teflupdate/0,,1993555,00.html>

Associated Press, 2008, ‘Robots Enter Japan’s Daily Life’, viewed 4 March 2008

<http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/03/03/robot.nation.ap/index.html>

Graham-Rowe, D. 2006, ‘Instant Expert: Robots’, viewed 28 May 2007,

<http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/robots/dn9973>