Robots and driverless cars: Moscow creates unique robotics center
In the 21st century, robots and unmanned vehicles no longer sound like science fiction.
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The National University of Science and Technology MISIS (NUST MISIS), a leading technology university, has received a unique opportunity to create an international robotic science and production center.
Its specialists will develop not simply next-generation robots but artificial intelligence systems, unmanned vehicles and cutting-edge metal compounds and alloys used in manufacturing various robotic elements and unmanned vehicle components.
University Rector Alevtina Chernikova Russian international news agency Rossiya Segodnya told about the center, its goals and its current and future projects.
Could you tell us about the intelligent robotic technology center that is being established at NUST MISIS? Who is establishing it and for what purpose? What is the price tag?
The decision to establish the center was made in late October 2015 at a meeting in Naberezhnye Chelny, chaired by Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov. The purpose of establishing the center is to develop independent intelligence systems as an essential component of the sixth technological revolution; building a full education-science-business technology development and application cycle; personnel training for the robotics industry; and making Russian education more competitive and enhancing its value and prestige in the world.
Our work is based on an interdisciplinary approach that will make it possible to develop the most advanced robotics projects in Russia: bionics, biometrics, cognitive technology and nanorobots are the center’s key areas of activity.
Companies such as KAMAZ, Tatneft, Soyuz-Agro and Cognitive Technologies are involved in creating the center. The project is supported by the Ministry of Education and Science. Regarding the costs, about one billion rubles will be needed in 2016-2018 to develop the center.
Why is the center being established at your university?
NUST MISIS has an essential set of competences providing a single platform that brings together various technologies – from the development of artificial intelligence to high-tech materials for next-generation robots. In addition, the university’s unique infrastructure is an important factor here. In particular, projects of this kind require the use of various kinds of experimental equipment and prototypes to test and corroborate research results. This objective is effectively addressed by university engineering centers. For example, the high-complexity prototyping engineering center that was created this year will have an array of advanced processing systems that can create digital complex functional prototypes in sizes from one micron to 20 meters.
Could you tell us about your research priorities?
Work is currently underway on the center’s principal project: the creation of a driverless vehicle on the basis of KAMAZ [trucks]. It is a joint project of KAMAZ, Cognitive Technologies and NUST MISIS. A project called Virtual Testing Grounds will soon be carried out at the university’s robotics center with support from the Ministry of Education and Science. Testing and fine-tuning the mathematical apparatus is a major problem for the unmanned vehicle manufacturing industry. Our partners have proposed a unique solution: building so-called virtual testing grounds, which is software that allows developers to model complex traffic situations, from traffic under difficult weather conditions to traffic accidents. This is a challenging task that, among other things, will also help reduce the cost of testing and simulating various real-life traffic situations.
What will be the practical applications of the technology used in the KAMAZ driverless vehicle project?
Obviously, driverless technology will be used in the housing maintenance and utilities sector: cleaning the streets, mowing lawns and such. The agricultural sector is also showing interest in these innovations. Self-driving tractors and combine harvesters, which can, for example, plough fields or harvest crops without human intervention, can become a reality in the near future. I would mention the public transit system as another promising area. We have already created designated lanes for buses and trolleybuses; their routes are strictly regulated, so the prospects are very good. There are plenty of practical applications for unmanned technology, such as closed off or rarely visited areas like airports, warehouses, terminals, etc.
Still, in the popular imagination, robots are not narrowly specialized systems (roughly speaking, digital program control tools) but universal, "anthropomorphic" complexes similar to the famous R2-D2 droid from Star Wars or Wall-E the robot-cleaner. Will NUST MISIS ever develop robots of this kind?
Here, it’s essential to consider the expediency of such projects – the purpose of creating automatons of this kind. If it is to create toys, they already exist. What’s more, these robots can imitate not only human but, say, also canine behavior. If they are designed to perform serious practical functions, narrow specialization is more practical. It is far easier to create a specialized system than a universal one. So, real breakthroughs have been made in some areas of human activity, and robots are already close to sidelining humans, if not replacing them completely. For example, at the end of last year, the BBC started using text-to-speech software and automatic translation technology to generate an audio file of the broadcast using a synthesized voice for the non-English-speaking segments of its audience. In fact, broadcasts of Britain’s largest media corporation today are translated and delivered by robots.
This, however, is not to say that when robots master all types of human activity they will be combined into a kind of a universal super-robot, like a copy of a human being. This is simply unnecessary. Most likely, various devices will, in a manner of speaking, start communicating among themselves without human participation. For example, a phone using geolocation understands that you are coming home after work and sends a command to the kitchen to heat up dinner. Or a refrigerator refuses to open at night because the sneakers "told" it that the master has not run the scheduled seven kilometers today.
Applied projects are usually based on fundamental research. What fundamental research projects underway at NUST MISIS could lead to technological breakthroughs in the foreseeable future?
A key problem of modern robotic systems is their autonomy. If a robot is not wired to a power source, then a lighter shell and electrical power sources become the most pressing issue. NUST MISIS is a leader in developing this kind of materials: thermoelectric modules, hydrogen fuel cells and various composite and hybrid materials for stronger and lighter shells, among other things.
Regarding software, first and foremost I should mention the computer vision technology that we have developed in partnership with Cognitive Technologies. This is, without a doubt, our forte.