A new robotic frontier

0Hazrul Azhar Jamari • 11th Feb 2008 • My Notes • camel jockeys, ethics, nano technology, robots

I’m a big fan of National Geographic, Discovery and the History Channel. And I’ve been swept by robotic documentaries this week. Some of the stories are human civic issue pieces, while others are ethics vs science features.  And all this just points to one thing: Humans have reached the beginning of a new robotic world.

Robots replace child camel jockeys in Middle-East

The middle-east have practised a sport of kings, called Camel Racing. Racing is a sport that has existed since men knew how to run. And while the conventional form of animal racing has been to use horses, the middle east uses Camels. However, Camel Racing has been plagued with human rights abuses. Children are used as jockeys because of their light weight, allowing the camels to gallop faster. These children are often abducted from South Asian countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh.

I find that Arabs have had a close affinity with racing, and they have put in money to all forms of racing on Earth. From F1, to A1, to horses, to camels. Thus, as Sheikh Mansour bin Zahed Al Nayan, a minister from the UAE aptly describes it as an “indespensible sport”, for the Arabs.

Pressure from UNICEF and other humanitarian groups have forced Arab countries to outlaw the use of children as camel jockeys. It began in the Mediterranean gulf State of Qatar, the first Arab country to outlaw children camel jockeys. Considered as an outrageous decision by the government, Camel owners were upset of having to lose their lucrative business. But in Qatar as with other parts of Arabia, racing is not just a business, it’s a culture. And most ancient cultures have had repressive pasts. It is time for Arabia to move forward and keep their culture in a modern landscape.

To solve their jockey problem, Qatar turned to robots. $1.3 million was offered to a Swiss robotics firm called K-Team to engineer a camel jockey robot that would completely replace child jockeys. The development took 3 years and it’s still being improved on due to incompatibilities with the parts and camel racing itself. Prototypes of robot jockeys were problematic when shipped to the gulf to be tested. Faced with these challenges, Camel owners in the UAE decided to engineer their own robots using everyday materials. Unlike the space-age smart robots in Qatar, the Emirate robots were rudimentary, housed in a metal casing, fixed to a common drill. The drill would be activated by car remote control and in turn rotates the axle and whips the camel. This basic robot proved a hit among camel owners due to its light weight and simple controls, allowing UAE to outlaw children jockeys as well with immediate effect.

While Qatar has been struggling with their robots, they had paved the way to eradicate the abuse of children in the Gulf’s sport of kings. Along with the UAE, Bahrain and Oman have also banned children jockeys in their camel races.

Bionic humans no longer fiction

In the 80′s, I liked to watch a show called the Six Million Dollar Man. It was probably the first of such science fiction derivative works on human bionics, a man who died, and brought back to life by piecing parts of his body through artificial intelligence. He became a top secret agent for the CIA.

Recently, the film Bionic Woman, a remake of the popular 80′s show of the same name reignites that nostalgia with much cooler special effects and stunts. But these shows will no longer be mere fiction.

Bionic human beings will be a reality with the advent of nano technology. A club in Netherlands have a VIP room that can only be accessed by scanning an arm using Radio waves (pdf). A tiny chip was inserted into the arms of these VIPs that contain their membership details and to access the lounge, their arms will be scanned for identity.

These present day application of technology makes it entirely possible to allow scientists to make nano-chips that facilitate the brain in thinking. Scientists predict that it is very possible to inject a chip into our brain thereby increasing its capacity to process data. This would be a huge advancement for human beings as we progress into an age where our potential will no longer be limited by our natural abilities.

End of human race?

But wouldn’t these advancements mean the end of the human race? Wouldn’t chips inside our head make us less human, and more robot? Nanotechnology has a lot of benefits for all of mankind. But with it comes a multitude of ethical issues. From privacy, to theological acceptance. Would chips in our brain help us perform better? What if the chip short circuits? Will it make our brain crash? Technology needs to be guided by faith and ethics in order for humans to take advantage of advancements responsibly. Otherwise, Scientists who only wish to advance their research and their quest for a super human, will only unearth the Frankenstein in us.