MANY ROBOTS SOON
    Hans Moravec

    presented at
    Robotronica
   Vienna, Austria
    June 20, 1998

Title: Many Robots Soon
Abstract:
	Freely-roaming robots to fetch, clean and do other work have
been an elusive fantasy for decades.  Finally, in the 1990s, robots
that understand their surroundings are beginning to prowl ordinary
hallways and offices of research buildings, guided by programs using
ever smaller, cheaper and more powerful computers and sensors.  It
will soon be possible to produce mobile robots that can do useful work
in unfamiliar industrial settings.  Subsequently, smaller, cheaper and
better machines will begin to work in our homes.  The author proposes
a research and business plan that, in about two years, would result in
a "navigation head" able to guide factory vehicles in unfamiliar
territory using a three-dimensional sense of the surroundings.  By
2005, improvements might permit the first mass-market home utility
robots, from specilaized machines like fully automatic vacuum
cleaners, to more capable ones able to manipulate objects as well as
travel.  Perhaps by 2010, these machines will evolve into "universal"
robots that can be programmed for almost any task.  The talk
speculates on the subsequent capabilities of universal robots,
paralleling evolution of biological intelligence, from lizard-like in
2010, to mouse-like in 2020 to monkey-like in 2030 to human-like in
2040.