JOHN MARKOFF Moving its hands as if it were dealing cards and walking with a bit of a swagger,a humanoid robot named Atlas made its first public appearance last Thursday. C3PO its not. But its creators have high hopes for the hydraulically powered machine. The robot is seen as a new tool that can come to the aid of humanity in natural and man-made disasters. Atlas is being designed to perform rescue functions in situations where humans cannot survive. The Pentagon has devised a challenge in which competing teams of technologists program it to do things like shut off valves,open doors,operate power equipment and travel over rocky ground. The challenge comes with a $2 million prize. Some see Atlass unveiling as a giantthough shakystep toward the long-anticipated age of humanoid robots. A new species,Robo sapiens,are emerging, said Gary Bradski,a Silicon Valley artificial intelligence specialist. Gil Pratt,a programme manager at the Defence Advanced Projects Agency,said,A number of us see (disasters),and the thing that touches us deeply is a kind of feeling which is,cant we do better? I think the answer is yes. Pratt equated the current version of Atlas to a 1-year-old. A 1-year-old can barely walk; it falls down a lot, he said. The event Thursday was a graduation ceremony for Atlas; a machine that looked like a metallic bodybuilder,with an oversized chest and powerful long arms. Although Atlas is hydraulically powered,its pump gave off a loud buzzing noise as it flexed its limbs and spun its arms in circles in a very un-human motion. Experimental robots have been on the scene at least as far back as the Japanese Wabot-1 in 1973,but researchers said that the field was now evolving rapidly. The Atlas robots will take part in the Pentagon contest. The contest involves programming the robot so that it is able to climb into a vehicle,drive to a destination,cross a rubble field,open a door,use a tool and turn a valve. Pratt said that the nuclear crisis at Fukushima had inspired the idea to hold a contest focused on robots that could operate in environments hostile to humans. Even before the Fukushima disaster,Marvin Minsky,a pioneer in artificial intelligence research,castigated the nuclear power agency for being unprepared for disasters. Three Mile Island really needed telepresence, he wrote in 2010. I am appalled by the nuclear industrys inability to deal with the unexpected.
