What does it take to lure rambunctious youngsters into a fine arts museum, and then get them to listen quietly to a guided tour of contemporary art?
Robots.
In August 2009, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in the central city of Taichung put two robots to work as guides, providing visitors with audiovisual introductions to artworks and helping them understand the exhibits better.
When the news spread that robots were roaming the museum, schoolchildren could not wait to see them. “The museum people said they had never seen so many kids coming to exhibitions voluntarily,” said Benjamin Jan, creator of the robots, and general manager of Precision Machinery Research and Development Center (PMC), a nonprofit organization specializing in developing solutions for mechanical engineering processes.
Upitor, a robot developed by PMC in 2008, is capable of offering prerecorded guided tours at art exhibitions, business fairs or even hotel lobbies. With the help of built-in cameras and sensors, it can interact with visitors using eye contact (represented by light emitting diode formations) and voice greetings, while moving freely in a crowded venue.
In 2010, PMC redesigned Upitor for the Taipei International Flora Exposition coming up in November. The new model was given the unique name Vanilla Baby by Jay Chou, the superstar pop singer, who in his latest music video teaches the lime-green robot how to dance.
This July, Vanilla Baby acted as an ambassador for Taipei’s pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, where the municipal government showcased its successful recycling and citywide wireless Internet coverage.
“Visitors all went crazy over him when he greeted them in Shanghai dialect,” said Lin Jun-tsun, a PMC engineer who accompanied Vanilla Baby on the trip. “So many curious children crowded the venue, I had to fence the robot off from the groping hands of the audience,” he added.
Although PMC owes its reputation among the general public largely to these robots, the think tank has been known in Taiwan’s mechanical engineering industry for manufacturing precision tools since its establishment in 1993.
In 2000, PMC took on a challenge from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to explore Taiwan’s potential to create a robotics industry, from scratch.
“To design and manufacture robots that are fully functional and interact with their surroundings properly requires input from professionals in electronic engineering, optoelectronics and artificial intelligence,” Jan explained. “Even suggestions from the cultural creative industries can help, if we prefer that our metal friends look less rigid and more friendly,” he added.
Though for many people robots exist only in Hollywood films, Jan is optimistic that they are going to be the next big thing. “As medical care standards advance, the number of senior citizens in developed countries is growing, and the global demand for household service robots will only increase,” he said. “Since Germany, Japan and the U.S. will likely be the first to face challenges like this, they have all started nurturing their robotics industries,” he added.
The International Federation of Robotics has even predicted that the robotics industry will be as big as the automobile sector by 2020, Jan pointed out.
Before Taiwan sees automatic helpers making their way along the streets, however, there is still a long way to go. “Robots have always been a popular topic for school research projects or dissertations,” Jan said. “And sadly, school is where they end up.”
Most parents in Taiwan, Jan opined, see designing and building robots as merely a pastime, rather than a field of study to which students should dedicate their efforts, or even their future careers.
But the truth is, top universities worldwide, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford and Carnegie Mellon, have long had institutes or research groups dedicated to robotics, covering a broad range of disciplines from automatic control and mechanical engineering to industrial design.
To help the industry grow in Taiwan, PMC has set up a showroom at its Taichung headquarters displaying robots designed for the regular household: flat robots that vacuum the floor, humanlike robots that navigate the elderly or disabled around the house, and furry, animal-shaped robots that children can cuddle, and that come when called.
Every day the showroom is crowded with young students eager to get a glimpse of the robots and how they work, Jan said. The company even puts on occasional demonstrations to unveil the secrets beneath the robot’s metal skins. “I was told one student, after visiting the showroom, blogged about how impressive this experience was. That’s really gratifying feedback,” he noted.
Though it might be years before any of these young enthusiasts actually designs a robotic device, Jan is still confident that this dedication will one day pay off. “This is a place for people who want to know more about robots, who like robots or who even want to make robots,” he said. “I can’t wait for these kids to grow up.” (THN)
Write to Kwangyin Liu at kwangyin.liu@mail.gio.gov.tw