{"id":837,"date":"2011-07-01T14:21:24","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T19:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/?p=837"},"modified":"2011-07-08T20:23:25","modified_gmt":"2011-07-09T01:23:25","slug":"open-robotics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/2011\/07\/01\/open-robotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Robotics"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>I would like to convince you of two things.\u00a0 The first is that robotics will follow computers and the Internet as the next transformative technology.1<\/a><\/sup> The second is that, for the first time in recent memory, the United States runs the risk of being left behind.\u00a0 I explain why we lawyers are to blame, and offer a modest, non-Shakespearean solution.<\/p>\n As William Gibson once said: \u201cThe future is already here\u2014it\u2019s just not very evenly distributed.\u201d\u00a0 Transformative technologies have their early adopters.\u00a0 One is the military.\u00a0 The United States military was among the first organizations to use computers.\u00a0 It also created the ARPAnet, the Internet\u2019s precursor.\u00a0 Today, the military makes widespread use of robots, as Peter Singer catalogs exhaustively in his 2009 book, Wired for War<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The numbers are incredible; Air Force drones recently reached a million<\/em> combat hours.<\/p>\n Other early adopters include artists and hobbyists.\u00a0 Computer-generated music began as early as the 1950s.\u00a0 Frank Herbert, the author Dune<\/em>, was an early convert to personal computing.\u00a0 He wrote one of the first home computer guides — the ominously titled Without Me You\u2019re Nothing<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Today, hobbyists and \u201cmakers\u201d are using Arduino<\/a> and other platforms to build their own robots.\u00a0 The editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine<\/a><\/i> is a noted DYI drone enthusiast.\u00a0 This summer there was an entire film festival<\/a> devoted to robotics in New York City.<\/p>\n There is a sense in which robots are already mainstream.\u00a0 Your car was probably built by a robot.\u00a0 If you have ever purchased shoes from Zappos.com, a robot likely fished them out of the warehouse<\/a>.\u00a0 Robot assistance is more common than not in certain surgeries<\/a>.\u00a0 Sales of iRobot\u2019s robotic vacuum cleaner<\/a> are in the millions.<\/p>\n Look closely at headlines and you\u2019ll begin to see robots there as well.\u00a0 Robotic submarines<\/a> helped assess the extent of the BP oil spoil.\u00a0 A robot defused the bomb in Time Square<\/a>.\u00a0 We sent robot ground units and drones<\/a> to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.\u00a0 Robots helped rescue the trapped New Zealand miners<\/a>.\u00a0 More telling still: In the wake of a mining accident in West Virginia, a journalist asked<\/a> why we were still sending real people into dangerous mines in the first place.<\/p>\n It is for these reasons and more that I believe Bill Gates\u2019 vision<\/a> of \u201ca robot in every home\u201d; I can see where Honda comes up with the estimate that it will sell more robots than cars by 2020; and I can understand why the Computing Community Consortium would entitle their 2009 report<\/a> (PDF) to Congress \u201cA Roadmap for U.S. Robotics: From Internet to Robotics.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n <\/a>Yet for all its momentum, robotics is at a crossroads.\u00a0 The industry faces a choice — one that you see again and again with transformative technologies.\u00a0 Will this technology be essentially closed, or will it be open?<\/p>\n What do I mean by these words?\u00a0 “Closed” robots resemble any contemporary appliance: They are designed to perform a set task.\u00a0 They run proprietary software and are no more amenable to casual tinkering than a dishwasher.\u00a0 The popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner<\/a> and the first AIBO mechanical pet<\/a> are closed in this sense.\u00a0 “Open” robots are just the opposite.\u00a0 By definition, they invite contribution.\u00a0 An open robot has no predetermined function, runs third-party or even open-source software, and can be physically altered and extended without compromising performance.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Consumer robotics started off closed.\u00a0 Which goes part of the way in explaining why it has moved so slowly.\u00a0 A few years ago, only a handful of companies — Sony and iRobot, for instance — were in the business of making consumer robots or writing robot software.\u00a0 Any new device or functionality had to come down from the top.\u00a0\u00a0 As introduced to the market, Sony\u2019s AIBO dog could only run two programs, both written by Sony.\u00a0 At one point, consumers managed to hack the AIBO and get it to do a wider variety of things.\u00a0 A vibrant community arose, trading ideas and AIBO code.\u00a0 That is, until Sony sued them<\/a> for violating the copyright in their software.<\/p>\n Compare the early days of personal computing, as described in detail by Jonathan Zittrain in his book, The Future of the Internet<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Personal computers were designed to run any software, written by anyone.\u00a0 Indeed, many of the innovations or \u201ckiller apps\u201d that popularized PCs came from amateur coders, not Apple or IBM.\u00a0 Consumers bought PCs, Zittrain recounts, not for what the machines did, but for what they might<\/em> do.<\/p>\n The same is true of open robots.\u00a0 They become more valuable as use cases surface.\u00a0 (It can fold laundry<\/a>!\u00a0 It can walk a dog<\/a>!)\u00a0 That open robots are extensible or \u201cmodular\u201d constitutes a second advantage.\u00a0 Versatile and useful robots are going to be expensive.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the technology continues to change.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say there is a breakthrough in sensor technology or someone invents a new, more maneuverable gripper.\u00a0 The owner of a closed robot will have to wait for the next model to incorporate these technologies.\u00a0 The owner of an open robot can swap the sensor or gripper out.\u00a0 As Barbara van Schewick argues in another context<\/a>, this encourages consumers to buy personal and service robots earlier in the product cycle.<\/p>\n The open model — best exemplified, perhaps, by the Silicon Valley robotics incubator Willow Garage<\/a> — is gaining momentum.\u00a0\u00a0 Five years ago, iRobot\u2019s co-founder Colin Angle told The Economist<\/i><\/a> that robots would be relatively dumb machines designed for a particular task. \u00a0Robot vacuums will vacuum; robot pool cleaners will clean the pool.\u00a0 This year at the Consumer Electronics Show, the same company unveiled a robot called AVA<\/a> designed to run third-party apps.\u00a0\u00a0 Following a backlash over its copyright lawsuit, Sony released a software developer kit for AIBO, which continues to be used by classrooms and in competitions.\u00a0 Microsoft recently gave open robotics a boost by developing an SDK (software development kit)<\/a> for its popular Kinect sensor.\u00a0 So far, so good.<\/p>\n Enter the lawyers.\u00a0 The trouble with open platforms is that they open the manufacturer up to a universe of potential lawsuits.\u00a0 If a robot is built to do anything, it can do something bad.\u00a0 If it can run any software, it can run buggy or malicious software.\u00a0 The next killer app could, well, kill someone.<\/p>\n Liability in a closed world is fairly straightforward.\u00a0 A Roomba is supposed to do one thing and do it safely.\u00a0 Should the Roomba cause an injury in the course of vacuuming the floor, then iRobot generally will be held liable as it built the hardware and wrote or licensed the software.\u00a0 If someone hacks the Roomba and uses it to reenact the video game Frogger<\/i> on the streets of Austin (this really happened<\/a>), then iRobot can argue product misuse.<\/p>\n