Кафедра английского языка №2 Дубовская О. В., Кулемекова М. В

Mar 29th 2014 | The Economist

ON THE OUTSKIRTS of Odense, a small city in southern Denmark, Enrico Krog Iversen shows off the building he has bought to serve as the new headquarters and assembly facility for Universal Robots, a company of which he is both the chief executive and a big shareholder. It is about ten times the size of the company’s current headquarters, a five-minute drive away. Universal Robots, founded in 2005 by academics from the nearby university, is growing pretty fast. In the past four years, says Mr Iversen, its sales have increased more than 40-fold. By 2017 he hopes for a turnover of DKr1 billion ($190m).

Universal Robots makes robot arms that are light and easily programmed, and hence well suited to use in small manufacturing businesses. At €22,000 ($31,000) each, plus a similar amount in set-up costs, they are also affordable. Universal’s website is stuffed with case studies to demonstrate to potential buyers that the robots’ cost can be recouped in less than a year.

The advent of robots that are cheap and safe enough to be used outside big factories is one reason for a resurgence of interest in robotics over the past few years. Rethink Robotics, a Boston-based company founded by one of the most respected researchers in the field, Rodney Brooks, has attracted a lot of media interest because it sells a particularly appealing and innovative two-armed robot, Baxter, designed for this market.

Whereas Rethink and Universal focus on smallish customers, others are planning to go big. Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that manufactures and assembles electronic kit, says it is aiming to roboticise much of its operation with hundreds of thousands of its own relatively cheap Foxbots.

Affordable does not necessarily mean simple. UBR-1 is a robot arm sitting on an autonomous body that can navigate from place to place. It was developed by Unbounded Robotics, a four-person startup which, like a number of others, was recently spun out of Scott Hassan’s Willow Garage, the hothouse that developed the PR2 robot mentioned in the previous article. UBR-1 is a sort of pared-down, one-armed and less capable PR2, if a much more attractive piece of industrial design. But then, starting at $35,000, it is only about a tenth the price of its older sibling.

This is all a long way from the high-value industrial-robot market served by big manufacturers like Germany’s KUKA, Sweden’s ABB and Japan’s Fanuc and Yaskawa. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), between 2008 and 2012 industrial-robot sales increased by 7% a year, to $8.7 billion. The business is concentrated in Japan, South Korea, Germany, China and America, and on specific industries like cars and electronics. Car companies use the lion’s share of industrial robots; in 2012 they accounted for 52% of robot installations in America. The country with the most robots per person is South Korea, which takes the technology very seriously.

Cheaper robots should be able to move into fields in which today’s big beasts have shown only passing interest, such as food processing. But that is not the only reason for the buzz around robotics. In academia, robotics, which has been a slow developer compared with booming areas like biotechnology, is on a roll.

The most obvious spur to progress has been the increasing amount of computing power and sensor technology that can be bought for a given price. “Everything built out of silicon is taking off,” says Chris Atkeson, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon. Many of the benefits come in the clever things that people operating in bigger markets have found to do with better, cheaper chips, which can be useful to robot-makers.

Take the Kinect sensor developed at Microsoft for the company’s Xbox 360 game console, released in 2010. An array of microphones and cameras are artfully combined with high-powered chips and well-tailored software to sense players’ movements from a distance and apply them to the game.

Used in robotics, the Kinect sensor is a cheap, easy and fairly reliable way to provide both a sense of depth and a kind of “person-detector”, which is a great help to robots that need to map and navigate their surroundings. Most robot laboratories have some version of it, either bolted to a robot or mounted on the wall or ceiling. A shopping mall in Osaka is wired up with the sensors set up by Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International to tell robots where they are and how to spot the shoppers to whom they are learning to give leaflets and directions.

As well as having access to better sensors and processors from other fields, robotics has devised its own new ways of making software for them. The PR2 was a test bed for the Robot Operating System (ROS), a uniform way of passing messages between the various software routines that run a robot. ROS, now looked after by a not-for-profit spin-off from Willow Garage, the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), is free to use and easily customised, and is being taken up by more and more researchers, many of whom happily share their fixes to the software. Using an ROS navigation “stack” and a Kinect, it is now relatively easy to build a rudimentary robot capable of finding its way round a building—call it a “trundlebot”—though making it robust and reliable is a lot harder.

S.K. Gupta, a robotics researcher at the University of Maryland who is currently running the National Robotics Initiative at America’s National Science Foundation (NSF), sees ROS and the like not just as solutions to specific problems but as developments that are reshaping the field. Robotics used to be hard to do because to make even a poor robot you had to be good at a whole lot of different things: artificial intelligence, building manipulators, engineering joints and wheels, electronics and so on. As a result, academic robotics research has generally been concentrated at universities that already have a flourishing robotics programme with capabilities across the board, such as Carnegie Mellon, MIT and the University of Tokyo. Now a small team with a fresh insight in a single area—making hands, say, or machine-learning—can use ROS and reasonably cheap hardware to put together a robotic system on which to try out its ideas without being expert in any of the other areas involved. Perhaps as a consequence, the first funding round for the initiative Mr Gupta oversees produced applications for $1 billion in grants, more than 20 times the amount eventually awarded.

Sometimes there is no need to build a physical robot at all. Many of the teams that used Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot at the DRC had no real-world experience in getting bipedal robots to nip around without falling over. They were chosen through a preliminary competition in which the software they had developed for the trials was used to animate a virtual robot in a simulated environment called Gazebo, which had been developed by the OSRF and hosted in the cloud. Being able to try out robot software in real time this way, says DARPA’s Mr Pratt, is a big deal. He draws an analogy with the early days of integrated circuits on silicon chips in the late 1970s. At first the only way to see how well a circuit was going to work—if at all—was to build it. It was only when simulators became available that designers could ensure in advance that the circuits would work, which vastly sped development in the field.

Back in the physical world, 3D printers—almost as ubiquitous as Kinect sensors in robotics labs—are another technology that is making research faster. Anders Billesø Beck of the Danish Technological Institute says they have greatly sped up his team’s efforts to find ways for small businesses to use robots. Instead of being sent out for manufacture, items like new designs for manipulators or little gizmos to hold a part being worked on can be cheaply produced in-house overnight.

Like Universal Robots’ premises, the Danish Institute’s robot labs are in Odense. Both can trace their origins to research at the city’s university decades ago, as can a number of other robot companies and consultancies in the area. Such clusters take time to come into their own, which may be another reason why robotics research feels as though it is entering a new stage of development. There was very little academic research before there were undergraduates who had seen “Star Wars” as kids; those former fans have now had a professional lifetime to build academic research groups and spin off companies.

The biggest cluster, that around MIT, is home not only to Boston Dynamics, to date supported mostly by military R&D contracts, but also to iRobot, which has shown the way in developing a profitable service-robotics business aimed at consumers. The company was started in 1990 by Mr Brooks (now at Rethink Robotics), Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, all robotics researchers at MIT’s artificial-intelligence lab. They knew they wanted to make a business out of robotics, but not what that business should be. It was not until 2002 that they came up with the two products that have made the company’s reputation: the Packbot, which has helped soldiers deal with improvised-explosive attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Roomba, which cleans floors. The company has sold more than 8m of these; last year home robots, mostly Roombas, accounted for 88% of its sales.

The company not only makes a profit; it has also rewarded its original investors by going public in 2005, something which no other robot startup has done. However, in the past few years a number of them have been bought up for tidy sums. In 2012 Amazon, a retailing giant, took over Kiva Systems, a company based near Boston which makes robots for warehouses. Google’s robotic acquisitions followed in late 2013. “Great news for the industry,” says Mr Angle.

Such proof of viable exit strategies should inspire further investment, which a new French fund, Robolution, hopes to tap. Its boss, Bruno Bonnell, explains that ten years ago he was unable to persuade the company he ran, Infogrames/Atari, to get into robots. He left to become the French distributor for iRobot’s Roombas. In 2006 he sold 800; last year the figure had risen to 100,000. In early 2014 he closed the Robolution fund for early investment in robot companies at €80m, admittedly most of it put in by the French government and the European Union. Pointing to a sharp increase in American venture funding for robots—he puts it at $400m last year—he is convinced a lot of talent can be got out of European labs too.

Another potential source of money may be entrepreneurs who have done well out of other technologies at a young age and for whom the science-fiction feel of robotics is a turn-on, not a danger signal. The space business points the way. Elon Musk is shaking it up, using some of his internet-derived riches to create SpaceX, a disruptively good rocket-maker; Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has a rocket company too, and Google’s Larry Page takes a keen interest in such things. Robots offer a similar attraction; witness Mr Hassan’s creation of Willow Garage with some of the money he made from Google. Or, indeed, witness Google itself. The company’s recent acquisitions in the field are being supervised by Andy Rubin, who has long been fascinated by robots. When he developed the operating system Google uses for mobile phones, which became a great success, he named it Android.

Google’s expertise at dealing with huge amounts of data will almost certainly play a key part in its plans. By drawing on the computing power of cloud-based systems, its robots, and others, should be able to do much more than they are currently capable of. The self-driving car demonstrates the idea; it can mesh information on its whereabouts from its sensors with maps of the world held in the cloud, with various programs using the comparison to generate instructions for the cars’ motors, steering systems and so on. Ken Goldberg of the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that a similar use of “cloud robotics”—a term coined by a Google employee, James Kuffner—could make it much easier for robots to recognise objects for what they are and act accordingly.

The cloud already houses libraries and programs that can help computers work out what an image is of, and robots to work out from the shape of an object how to pick it up. The European Union’s “RoboEarth” project imagines a cloud-based system that would contain all sorts of such information in a form that robots could use, and that would let robots learn from each other, both about the world around them and about successful ways of tackling tasks in that world.

Far better computers, on board and in the cloud; good, cheap sensors; maturing industrial-academic clusters; a broadening and speeding up of the field’s research base; expanding markets; exciting hardware; and a newly encouraging investment outlook: all of these have helped stimulate interest in robotics. The collapse of another science-fiction dream at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in 2011 gave it an extra push. Mr Pratt traces the genesis of the DRC to the day after a tsunami hit Fukushima, when it became clear that the robots needed for such emergencies, widely believed to exist already, were nowhere to be found. Mr Inaba at Tokyo University suggests that some day emergency robots will become mandatory at big industrial installations, just as fire extinguishers are required in offices.

And a final reason why interest in robots has taken off is that some of the machines have been doing so themselves, in a very high-profile way. The greatly expanded role of aerial drones in warfare shows what such machines can achieve—and raises both hopes and fears about what they may do next.

MILITARY TECHNOLOGY
2a
Japanese arms firms

Late starters

It will not be easy for Japan’s weapons sellers to win foreign orders

Jul 19th 2014 | TOKYO| The Economist

Mr Abe’s policy change is designed, in part, to help Japanese firms achieve economies of scale, so they can supply Japan’s own arsenal more cost-effectively. For years, domestic contractors have made small numbers of pricey submarines, tanks, fighter jets and other weapons for one customer: the country’s Self-Defence Forces. For example, each of the handful of Soryu diesel submarines built by Mitsubishi and Kawasaki, another industrial giant, is said to have cost around $2 billion.

The two groups hope, now the ban is lifted, to sell some of the technology developed for the Soryu, such as its ultra-quiet propulsion system, to Australia’s navy. ShinMaywa, another Japanese firm, wants to sell an amphibious rescue aircraft to India’s navy. Japan hopes that now its firms can make more parts for the F-35 fighter jets being sold around the world, it will gain a greater say in the consortium of countries overseeing the hugely expensive project, says Narushige Michishita of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

Japanese firms wanting to sell weaponry abroad will still need their government’s permission. At first it will be cautious in what it allows, predicts Robin Wilson of the European Business Council in Japan, who represents European defence firms that sell to the Japanese. The biggest Japanese contractors, such as Mitsubishi, may be itching to sell whole weapons systems—submarines, fighter planes, helicopters and land vehicles. But Mr Wilson thinks that at first, most exports will be of specialised components and of things that also have civilian uses, such as radars and optical sensors.

Satoshi Tsuzukibashi of the Keidanren, Japan’s main business lobby, agrees that those of its members that make arms will think carefully about selling them abroad. Many are already exporters of civilian products, and would be wary of the image problems associated with being a weapons-maker—and in particular about the risk of a backlash in China.

In any case, Japan’s 67 years of pacifism mean that its weaponry is not battle-tested. This is a disadvantage compared with, say, American or Russian kit, notes Robert Dujarric of Temple University Japan. Furthermore, when American firms sell arms, they often come as part of a package of American military assistance. Japan cannot offer that sort of protection, says Mr Dujarric.

Missing in action

Mar 8th 2014 |The Economist

WHAT kind of armed forces does Britain need? In a dangerous and unpredictable world, how should the country spend its shrinking defence budget? Worryingly, it has put off answering these questions—and time for thinking is short. The next 18 months could determine whether the country remains a global military power or settles for inexorable military decline and growing irrelevance to its French and American allies.

In 2010 a new Conservative-led coalition government took an axe to defence, as it did to much other state spending. The Ministry of Defence’s budget was trimmed by 8%. On top of that, the department had to close a £45.6 billion ($76.2 billion) hole in the equipment budget, which had been mismanaged by the previous, Labour, government. Then the Treasury shifted the costs of running and upgrading Britain’s nuclear arsenal to the ministry. All told, the defence budget had to be cut by about a quarter—while Britain was still maintaining a large force in Afghanistan.

Along with this savage pruning came a hopeful vision of the armed forces. By 2020, it was hoped, Britain would have fewer infantry but a bigger, more potent reserve force. Though armoured vehicles and artillery would be cut, the country would have some fine equipment, including two new aircraft carriers and stealthy F-35 fighter jets to fly from them.

What the military establishment did not do—hardly surprisingly, given the urgent challenge of hacking back the defence budget—was to think seriously about the threats Britain was likely to face and what it could realistically accomplish. A national security strategy, published at the same time as the spending review, boasted that Britain’s strategic ambition was in no way diminished by the savaging of the defence budget. This seemed Panglossian at the time and has become more so as the Treasury continues to nibble at spending.

Strategy is not about having a perfect, comprehensive plan—an impossible goal. Rather, it involves working out the likelihood that the country will face various threats, and reshaping the military as far as limited resources allow so that it can adapt to deal with them.

Threats there are aplenty. Since the Arab spring, the arc of instability that is the Middle East and north Africa has worsened, menacing Europe. Meanwhile America is pivoting towards Asia. The Pentagon increasingly expects Europe—meaning mostly Britain and France—to look after security in its own neighbourhood.

Britain is little prepared for this. Like other Western countries, it continues to give too high a priority to fighting a war against a sophisticated adversary—something it is unlikely to have to do, Russia’s thuggish behaviour in the Ukraine notwithstanding. Britain gives too low a priority to the dangers posed by failing states and religious and ethnic struggles across Africa and the Middle East that are far more complex and wide-ranging than simply the export of terrorism.

Cuts to the armed forces have been strategically incoherent. David Cameron, the prime minister, promises to increase funding for military equipment by 1% a year in real terms after 2015. But the deep reductions to the Ministry of Defence’s budget, combined with the ever-rising cost of training and equipping a soldier, mean manpower is being slashed. The chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Houghton, has warned that Britain could end up with what Americans call a “hollow force”—an exquisitely equipped military that is short of trained men.

The political background is just as troubling. The British public admires its armed forces but seems increasingly reluctant to use them. Engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan have convinced people that interventions abroad are likely to turn into bloody, expensive failures. A vote in the House of Commons last August rejecting British participation in an American-led air strike on Syria reflected that mood. Political leaders have little appetite for trying to persuade the public that capable armed forces are essential to Britain’s future.

So there is an urgent need for a serious restatement of national strategy that could create a political consensus and inform Britain’s next strategic defence and security review (SDSR), due in 18 months. According to Paul Cornish, professor of strategic studies at Exeter University and an adviser to Sir Nick, this has yet to start. Nor is there much sign of direction from the top.

James Arbuthnot, the Tory chairman of the Commons defence committee, worries about government foot-dragging on the national security strategy. He says there is a “crisis of misunderstanding” about the value of the armed forces to the country. Mr Arbuthnot’s committee has urged the government to publish the new national security strategy well in advance of the SDSR. But Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, warns of the dangers of setting strategy without knowing how much money will be available to carry it through.

That points to another problem: political timing. The general election is scheduled for May 2015; the SDSR should be published five months later in October. Any work undertaken now will have to be finished off by a new government which might not feel bound by its predecessor’s decisions. Yet if the review does not start soon, it will be rushed and more likely to reach ill-considered conclusions.

The big problem, says Sir Hew Strachan, professor of the history of war at Oxford University, is that Westminster and Whitehall do not think strategically. Following the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the concentration on terrorism as the principal existential threat facing the nation robbed British defence policy of coherence and credibility.

The solution should have been the national security council, established in 2010, which now has a secretariat of about 200 people sitting in the Cabinet Office. It is led by a national security adviser, Sir Kim Darroch, a foreign office mandarin. But critics say he and his team default to a civil service mentality that tends to be tactical rather than strategic.

Sir Hew argues the national security council has been a disappointment. In a recent book, “The Direction of War”, he argues that it fails to tackle crucial issues like the restructuring of the British army, and “prioritises the short-term and operational over the long-term and strategic.” Its secretariat lacks military expertise. Andrew Dorman, professor of international security at King’s College London, thinks the national security adviser should be a big-hitting political figure with cabinet rank rather than a civil servant, even though departmental ministers might not like it.

For now the process seems rudderless. When Mr Cameron was asked a few weeks ago who would be in charge of the strategy review, the man known as the “essay-crisis prime minister” for his tendency to take decisions at the last minute said that he would lead it. But he has shown no inclination to start the process.

With its geography, history and open economy, Britain knows that its prosperity and security depend on the rules-based international order and being willing to uphold it when it is threatened. The 2015 SDSR is an opportunity to bring together the elements required for a modern national strategy to do this. As things stand, it seems likely to be squandered.