Robots are already a part f our lives. They do jobs that are too dirty, boring, risky, difficult or impossible for us: they are vacuuming the floors in your home and exploring the surface of Mars. Industrial robots are widely used in manufacturing Military and police organizations use robots to assist in dangerous situations.

“Within the next 10 years,” says Joanne Pransky, a scientist who calls herself the world’s first robotic psychiatrist, “we’re going to see a transformation between the industrial kind of robots, to personal robots. I will be the proud owner of a domestic robot that will do household cleaning, and prepare and serve my meals, and will also carry me to the bathtub if I can’t walk, monitor my vital signs, and if I need a medical specialist from a distant town, will remotely become his or her eyes, hands, and ears.

”The 10th annual RoboCup soccer tournament will take place in July 2007, with as many as 500 teams from more than 60 countries and universities participating. Teams composed of autonomous robots (no joysticks or remote controls) will pass, kick, and shoot against each other according to official soccer rules. RoboCup’s mission is to develop a robotic team that will play head-to-head with the World Cup soccer champions by the year 2050. Will the robots win? We’ll have to wait and see.

Within a few more years we will build machines that not only equal but surpass human intelligence – we’ll see cyborgs (machine-enhanced humans like the Six-MillionDollar Man), androids (human-robot hybrids like Data in Star Trek), a future we can’t even imagine. Many scientists think the robots of science fiction will soon become a reality. We will use the abilities of our machine creations to enhance and redesign ourselves. But… what role will those machines play in human society? Cultural and ethical values will be as important as the available technology in developing future robots. Will robots become man’s new best friends or our rivals? Or, worst scenario, our enemies?

(Adapted from “Robots: The Future is Now”, by Michael Bay and Matt Ford, in <http://cnn.worldnews>; “Robo-Nation”, by Lee Gutkind, in <www.theamericanscholar.org>;

Das afirmações seguintes:

I – Robots do Jobs we don’t like, don’t want to do or simply cannot do.

II – Some future robots will be more intelligent than we are.

III – Joanne Pransky is the scientist who will use a robot to explore the surface of mars.