ROBOTICS AND VIRTUALITY

How The Future Will Be Transformed By Robotics And Virtual Reality

By Lavirrealista

“We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics...” [1] and we also know that we cannot defeat them, true, but we can trick them.

We and the world around us are tangible, real in our understanding.  Matter, however, is not only what we touch but it is also what we detect with the rest of our senses, such as colour, taste, sound and odour...  Ultimately matter is data and thanks to our brain we can replicate the whole world in our minds where everything becomes an abstract representation of reality, a fake reality, a virtual reality.

However, to use objects and things in reality we still have to make them in a palpable way and in order to satisfy our senses we must “cover” them.  An apple to taste good has to be red for many of us.

Now covering a shape, which in itself may be basic and boring but yet functional, could be expensive if we want to please everybody's taste, and what is good today may not be good tomorrow.  It is a waste of resources and given the exponential growth of our species which is constantly multiplying demand, we are heading for a planet of refuse.  But this coverage of shapes also limits the imagination and pins us to a fixed reality.  “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black” [2].

Fortunately we are fast approaching a society which is more and more able to live in a mixed environment made of both virtuality (i.e. virtual reality) and reality and by wearing devices which augment reality (or virtuality) we are beginning to merge these two different environments.  In addition we are building, in an unprecedented way, sophisticated automata that can act for us in the real world while we may immerse ourselves deeply into the augmented virtual one.  Robots and robotic machines are beginning to become substitutes for us.  And this is where it gets more interesting.

Robots out of necessity are made of real matter, and in this sense they cannot escape physical reality whereas our virtual selves cannot seamlessly interact with it.  Therefore the bond between robotics and virtuality seems to be becoming inevitable or rather one might say that it will form a new relationship, a renewed dichotomy between thought and action.

In mixed virtual and real realities, augmented by reciprocal devices, one discovers an enormous range of environments and applications ranging from the creation of pretty avatars who are busy developing all sorts of virtual social interactions, to simulators assisting building design and construction in urban development projects , remote land surveying (terrestrial and non), route optimisation, medical applications both for studying as well as preparing full surgical intervention in operating theatres and many other usages.

In a similar way robotic technology is an exciting growing field branching out in all human activities and needs.  The use of the plough is being systematically replaced in agriculture by semi-intelligent tools, “swarms of little robot tractors in the rice-fields” [3], capable of sowing, nurturing and harvesting.  Matter is becoming “smart” and out of this new material we are learning to carve armies of waiters, nurses, cleaners as well as farmers, doctors, surveyors, builders and so on.  Think of a fast aging country like Japan, which is also in the forefront of technological development.  Robotic technology there will soon not only be able to assist the elderly by, for example, perfecting the mobility and design of the old concept of a wheel chair but also, by having an analytical capability, responding and intervening directly on an aging body by let's say strengthening targeted muscles to optimise mobility.

The question now arises as to whether the human race will be replaced by swarms of robots resulting in Earth becoming a planet of mechanics, for the lucky ones who manage to survive the dominance of robots.  Although the abilities of robotic tools is continually and dramatically improving even to the extent of the first steps towards a truly intelligent response, that will not be our last action and the prospect of becoming a race of beings only born to repair and maintain machines we made in the first place is not our future because soon enough we will create new machines to do that.

So where are we headed?  Is there something that a mechanical object, as smart as we have made it, cannot do for us?  As ever, this is where a touch of science fiction may be able to help.  In the world of fiction it is easy to conceive of a real virtual environment where physical objects, such as robots or anything else, may be enveloped so as to be perceived in any desired shape or design.  New technology will be needed to enhance natural brain capacity, of course, and the seeds have already been planted.

***

In the forthcoming novel “Change of State – First Phase” [4]  entire Centres are populated with digital entities, truly virtual intelligent creatures, capable of sophisticated interactions, up to a point, with humans: “As he jogged out of the Tunnel the perfect athletic form of his personal trainer, Body, had been immediately captured by his artificial senses, the rëceptors, which he had just reactivated together with his real senses.”

“Digital Entity Life Form” – Artistic impression by Lavirrealista - virrealismo.com

In these Centres there are also automata, which are functional robotic machines, with some basic intelligence: “He stopped at a small stall on the edge of the road where an automaton was busy handing out protein bars to passers-by.  It was just standing there in the middle of the torrent of bodies and things that seemed to be spinning around it as if it were a boulder in the middle of the stream. .. As soon as he activated his rëceptors it became a pleasantly plump, rosy faced female form...”

Envisaging a future where “reality is not limited by the barriers of matter” [5] and the laws of physiology and physics have been superseded is where the most exciting science fiction will soon lead us.

Image left: “Bare Automaton” – Artistic impression by Jamie Noble, 2D artist and animator Thenobleartist.com

Image right: “Automaton enveloped in a virtual shape” – Artistic impression by Lavirrealista virrealismo.com

***

NOTES:

[1] “We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them.” Stanisław Lem, Solaris, 1961

[2] Henry Ford, Remark about the Model T in 1909

[3] “Far below, the emerald-green landscape was waking into life.  Like brightly-coloured beetles, a swarm of little robot tractors was heading towards the rice-fields.” Arthur Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise, 1979

[4] “Change of State First Phase”, Lavirrealista, January 2016

[5] “Real Virtualities”, Lavirrealista, 2011

Author's note:

Lavirrealista, pen name of Maria Pellegrini, has been an indie author-publisher since 2010.  She has published two novels, Real Virtualities and Change of State First Phase, and a collection of short stories, Tales from the Mother Galaxy.  Her latest book, Change of State First Phase, to be published also in Italian at the end of April 2016, is the first part of two and is set in a future of virtual worlds and robotics.

She publishes both in English and Italian.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Robotics and Virtuality – How The Future Will Be Transformed By Robotics And Virtual Reality

Lavirrealista

Published by Virrealismo Publishing

© VIRREALISMO PUBLISHING

All rights reserved

Front Cover:

“Digital Entity Life Form” – Artistic impression by Lavirrealista, on background image: “Abstract Virtual Technology”, Dreamstime.com

Other Images:

“Bare Automaton”, Jamie Noble, thenobleartist.com

“Automaton enveloped in a virtual shape” – Artistic impression by Lavirrealista, on background image: “Bare Automaton”, Jamie Noble, thenobleartist.com

ISBN: 9781909078260

Published by Virrealismo Publishing

By the same author

Fiction

– Change of State First Phase

– Accidental Warrior

– Real Virtualities

– Tales from the Mother Galaxy that includes:

Tuméng

Planets Under Glass

Borrowed Brains

Zetana the Disconnected

The War of the Plutonidians

Non Fiction

Intelligent Technology 2.0 Presages the End of Global Corporations