About Robotics

TECHBREAK inputs

In addition to the methodology definition report

provided by ISI Fraunhofer, two main inputs

into the foresight exercise were commissioned, to

the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI – Ms

Christina Gianopappa) and to ESA’s Advanced

Concepts Team (ACT).

These two reports were helpful in

framing the exercise, and deciding which technological

areas, and at which level of granularity, the

foresight exercise should focus on. It was decided

that the project would make use of the classification

of disciplines under the broad headings of ‘Key

Enabling Technologies’, as identified in 2009 by the

European Commission, i.e., nanotechnology,micro

and nano-electronics, photonics, advanced materials,

and biotechnology.

Other areas such as energy, robotics, biomimetics

or advanced propulsion and, more generally,

materials science were also addressed. These KETs

are relevant at various levels for EU’s ‘Grand

Challenges’ (Energy, Healthcare and Security).

Those key technologies already have a strong or a

developing industrial base, should receive considerable

funding in the future and would be the target

of the bulk of Horizon 2020 funding. Therefore,

strongties between ESA and the main players and

innovators in those key fields would be of signifi -

can't benefit. The Key Enabling Technologies will

be defined in the main part of the report.

A summary of the key findings of the ESPI

report is presented here and should be considered

by ESA, and even the EU:

 The Key Enabling Technologies identified

by the EU as being nanotechnologies, micro

and nanoelectronics, advanced materials and

biotechnology, should be considered comprehensively

by ESA’s research and development

programmes. In this regard, Information and

Communication Technologies (ICT) should

also be considered, creating the ‘ESA Enabling

Technologies’ concept. These categories are

essentially very broad and specific subcategories

should be identified, in consultation with space

and non-space experts in these fields, in order

to identify the ones most relevant for the space

sectors to be able to develop coherent roadmaps.

 At low Technology Readiness Levels, such new

technologies do not need to be developed exclusively

by space funding schemes. This may allow

the utilisation of funding from the non-space

sector by jointly investing in the KET’s building

blocks.

 Public and private partnerships should be set

up for co-financing research and development

in Key Enabling Technologies, since they require

large investments that ESA alone would not be

able to afford.

 ESA should proceed to apply for participation

in research and technology development under

the non-space components of the Framework

Programme. This participation, by performing

research and development in ESA laboratories,

should be enhanced.

 An effective technology watch ‘Technowatch’

mechanism is necessary in order to be able to

identify new and disruptive technologies early

enough, a Technowatch that can facilitate

spin-in, spin-out and spin-together. ESA does

currently have mechanisms which are used as

observatories for following science that is likely

to produce technology. This could be institutionalised

with clear targets and responsibilities in a

more integrated model. The possibility of having

a Technowatch independent from ESA or

jointly with other technology watch institutions

should also be considered. It is suggested that                                                 

a Technowatch should be an independent body

as these are seen as more credible when they are

not governmental agencies or those that conduct

the research.

Changing the World by Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Changing the World: Why “Steve Jobs” is a Must-Read for Anyone Living in the 21st Century  Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” is the new work in American Studies to read. As the authoritative biography of one of America’s most innovative and successful entrepreneurs,

“Steve Jobs” offers a profound case study of the sort of enterprising spirit that Americans see as a definitive element of their country’s history and identity. Jobs’ trajectory, from messing around with wires and circuit boards in his father’s garage to redefining the world’s interaction with technology, is undoubtedly an incredible success story. Yet it is more than that. From the original Macintosh to Pixar to the iPad 2, Steve Jobs revolutionized culture, not only in the United States, but around the world. One only has to walk down the street to see people listening to their iPods, snapping photos to upload to Instagram, and navigating with their mobile devices. Jobs’                     innovation went beyond responding to the desires of consumers,he predicted consumer needs before the consumers themselves, creating the very desires that would drive buyers around the world. Steve Jobs did not just create successful products, he created culture itself. For scholars of American Studies, that is something worth studying.

When Steve Jobs approached Walter Isaacson in 2004 and asked him to write his

biography, Isaacson was hesitant. He had recently published a biography of Benjamin Franklin and was working on one for Einstein, and his first thought was wonder if Jobs saw himself as the logical next step (Isaacson xvii). He did not know, at the time, that Jobs was dealing with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas, a fact which Jobs had kept secret from all but a few trusted friends. By 2009, when Isaacson agreed to become the official biographer, Jobs’ cancer had grown severe. He knew he did not have much longer to live, and it fell to Isaacson to accurately capture the innovator’s life and legacy.

The author accomplishes this task masterfully, allowing the reader in to “the rollercoaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing” (xx-xxi). Isaacson stresses the fact that Jobs had no oversight over the book’s content. The innovator wanted an unbiased account that did not hide his drawbacks, such as his irrational fits of rage that could result in blunt and even brutal treatment of his employees. Isaacson suggests that Jobs’ obsession for control and his tendency to be cold and unfeeling towards his co-workers, friends, and family might have resulted from his abandonment by his biological parents. Yet it was Jobs’ almost pathological need for control and perfection, along with his intense ambition and drive, that led

to Apple’s astounding success, making it one of the most powerful corporations in the world. With the clean and methodical precision of an accomplished journalist, Isaacson takes us through the various stages of Jobs’ life. The spark of innovation was kindled when he and his college friend, Steve Wozniak, invented the Blue Box, a device which enabled people to make long-distance calls for free. Wozniak was the brains behind the technology, but it was Jobs who figured out how to make the device attractive and user friendly, and it was he who began selling it for a tidy profit to other students. Before long, Jobs dropped out of college to form Apple, which began as a two-man show in his father’s garage. Wozniak’s programming skills, along with Jobs’ passion for design and business savvy, soon led to the creation of the Apple II, one of the first highly-successful microcomputers to be mass-produced. By the time Apple went public in 1980, Jobs was only 26 years old, and his company was expected to have profits of $600 million (Isaacson 107). Apple sales only increased under Jobs’ leadership, especially after the

creation of the first Macintosh, with its famous and staggeringly successful 1984 advertisement.

When Jobs was removed from leadership at Apple in 1985, due to company in-fighting,

he was furious. But as he would describe at the Stanford University Commencement ceremonies in 2003, getting fired proved to be one of the best things that happened to him. Without the security of success, Jobs attacked his work with a new zeal, founding NeXT and Pixar. As Apple sales declined, Jobs applied his creative energies in new fields. When Apple brought him back in 1996, he spearheaded a number of revolutionary projects, such as iTunes, the iPod, Apple Stores,

the iPhone, and the iPad. Jobs’ obsession with aesthetic perfection and seamless, end-to-end integration were manifested in his products. It was because of Jobs that Apple managed to stay on the cutting edge of technological innovation, revolutionizing world culture in the 21st  Century. Isaacson’s biography is informative, funny, and at times moving. His extensive interviews with Jobs’ family, friends, and coworkers allow for a thorough and balanced account of a genius who could be both intensely loving and frigidly cruel. By smoothly and methodically chronicling the important developments in Jobs’ career, as well as his fierce rivalry with Bill Gates, the author offers us a profound look into the accomplishments of one of the world’s most revolutionary entrepreneurs. So for anyone who has used an Apple product, listened to digital music, or read a New York Times article on a tablet, Walter Isaacson’s book is a must-read. “Steve Jobs” shows us what it means not only to influence, but to produce, consumer culture, by

telling us the story of one of the most influential innovators of our time.

English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage

English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage (December

26, 1792 – October 18, 1871) was one of the most original and

innovative thinkers of his time. He almost deserves the title

“Father of Computing” that some have hung on him. This splendid

Victorian eccentric was born at a time England was rushing madly

towards industrialization. Unlike his contemporary Charles Dickens, who wrote so passionately of the evils and misery brought on by the industrial revolution, Babbage saw only its promise in predicting and controlling the definite order of the universe. He was the leading advocate of the systematic application of science to industry and commerce. His interest in compiling accurate mathematical and astronomical tables led him to design a mechanical computer or “difference machine”

which would both perform calculations and print the results.

Because of practical and financial difficulties neither this machine nor a subsequent “analytical engine” was completed. Nevertheless he is considered a computer pioneer for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his Analytical engine, which possessed all the essential logical features of the modern general-purpose computer. There is no direct line of descent from Babbage’s work to the electronic computers invented in the 1930s and 1940s as his work had been forgotten. In 1991 British scientists completed Difference Engine No. 2 built to Babbage’s specifications, one month before the 200th anniversary of his birth. It weighs 2.6 tons and consists of 4000 separate parts.

Babbage was born at Teignmouth in Devonshire, London, the son of a prosperous banker and his wife. As a child he displayed a keen interest in knowing how things worked. As he recalled, “My invariable question on receiving a new toy, was, ‘Mama, what is inside it?’” At Forty Hill School in Enfield, Middlesex he showed a passion for mathematics but a dislike of the classics. He studied at home with an Oxford tutor before attending Trinity College, Cambridge, but graduated from Peterhouse in 1814 and received an MA in 1817. He found that he knew more mathematics than his teachers and concluded that English mathematics was lagging far behind Continental standards. British mathematics was still suffering from the Newton-Leibniz controversy. On the continent mathematicians used the differential notation of Leibniz for the derivative, while English mathematicians clung to Newton’s clumsy fluxional notation. With George Peacock and John Herschel, Babbage established the Analytic Society, which campaigned to introduce the Leibniz notation in England to supplant that of Newton. To facilitate this the trio translated S.F. Lacroix’s Sur le calcul différentiel et intégral into English.

Realizing that his friends were better mathematicians, Babbage didn’t compete for honors at Cambridge, which led to Herschel being the first Wrangler and Peacock the second. Babbage moved to London where he wrote two major papers on functional equations. He questioned the organization and usefulness of learned societies, criticized the unprogressive ones, including the Royal Society, to which he was elected a fellow (1816). He helped establish new ones such as the Astronomical Society (1820), the British Association (1831), and the Statistical Society of London (1834). From 1828 to 1839,

Babbage held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (a position he did not seek, once held by Sir Isaac Newton and currently by Stephen Hawkins). During his 12-year tenure, Babbage never gave a lecture or did any teaching of any kind. Despite having an abiding interest in pedagogical reform he had too many interests to find time to teach.

Babbage was drawn to the problem of the number of errors introduced into astronomical and other calculations through inaccuracies in the computation of tables. To deal with this, he spent much of his life in an attempt to build his two calculating machines. The “difference engine” was intended for the calculation of the lengthy tables needed for navigation and astronomy. It was called a Difference Engine because the mathematical principle on which it was based was the method of finite differences.

It functioned by repeated addition performed by trains of gear wheels. In 1823 the government agreed to grant funds for the enterprise, but as Babbage kept coming up with new innovations so that the process that was supposed to take three years dragged on to ten, the government finally withdrew its financial support.

Babbage’s better idea was the revolutionary Analytical Engine. If he had been successful in building it, his machine would have been the first general-use programmable computer. It would not be limited to solving one particular mathematical problem, but to perform a range of operations. Loops of punched cards were to control an automatic calculator, which could make decisions based on the results of the previous computations. The cards would be similar to the loops of Jacquard punched cards used in weaving with the Jacquard loom [Figure 10.9]. The Analytic Engine was designed to be driven by steam and had it been built would have been the size of a locomotive with thousands of intermeshing clockwork parts. It was to have “a library of its own,” in which 1000 numbers each of 50 digits were to be stored. The machine was meant to use several features subsequently found in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping. Babbage never was able to build the Analytical  Engine, not because the principal was wrong but because the project was too ambitious to be realized with the limited mechanical devices available at the time.

 Babbage’s unfinished version of the difference engine, and the drawings for the complete machine are located in the Museum at King’s College in London and in the Science Museum, London. The assembled portion is about one-seventh of the complete engine. Babbage’s major ally in the analytic engine project was Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron. She engaged in a life-long correspondence with Babbage about the analytical engine. In 1843 she wrote an article that not only gave descriptive, analytical, contextual, but metaphysical information about the engine.

Babbage had an extraordinary range of achievements to his credit. He dabbled in cryptanalysis, probability, geophysics, astronomy, altimetry, ophthalmoscopy, statistical linguistics, meteorology, actuarial science, and the use of tree rings as historic climatic records. He compiled dictionaries for word-puzzlers, constructed a multipurpose surgical pump, and studied the transmission of light signals and submarine navigation on the diving bell. He pioneered lighthouse signaling, wrote a consumer 

guide to life assurance, proposed “black box” recorders for monitoring the conditions preceding railway catastrophes, developed mathematical code breaking, advocated decimal currency, highlighted the neglect of science and the status of scientists, and recommended the use of tidal power as a source of energy once coal reserves were exhausted. His other inventions included the cowcatcher for railroad engines, the dynamometer, an instrument for measuring the mechanical power of an engine, the standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, and heliograph ophthalmoscope, an instrument used to examine the interior of the eye.

Babbage made significant contributions to political economy. In his On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832) he pioneered the field now known as operations research, the scientific analysis of business problems aimed at giving managers information that will allow them more effectively to run their businesses. Babbage offered a highly original discussion of the development of production technology. His views on the effect of the development of production technology on the size of factories were fundamental to Karl Marx’s theory of capitalist socio-economic development. For 25 years, Babbage was a leading figure in London society, with hundreds of Europe’s leading intelligencia gathering at his home to share ideas. He certainly earned his reputation as an eccentric. He nurtured an almost pathological hatred of organ grinders, which he wrote about with great seriousness in“Observations of Street Nuisances” in 1864. He had a fascination with fire, once submitting to being baked in an oven at 265 degrees Fahrenheit for five or six minutes without any great discomfort. Helooked into biblical miracles and calculated the chance of someone rising from the dead as one in 1012. Wishing to quantify everything, he proposed to the Smithsonian Institution that an effort be made to produce “Tables of Constants of Nature and Art,” to contain all the facts which could be expressed by numbers in the various sciences and arts. He offered some of the measures he had taken, including the heartbeat of a pig and the breath of a calf. Babbage’s autobiographical Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) relates the crucial role of one of the key figures in the period in which Britain established itself as the most industrialized country in the world. In his autobiography, he wrote that in the creation of new tools he was guided by the principle that “inquiry should not be made whether that which is a defect as regards the object in view may not become a source of advantage in some totally different subject.” Although a sociable and gregarious man who possessed a fine sense of humor, as he grew older the death of his father, his wife Georgiana Whitmore and two of his children combined with his frustration over his calculating machines turned him into a disappointed and embittered man. He died at his home on October 18.

1871.

As long as one is not the target of their abuse one can appreciate the eccentricities of great men. Someone remarked that Babbage was the mathematical Timon of his time, as he hated mankind in general, Englishmen in particular, and organ grinders most of all. In his obituary, the Times of London reported that he had lived to almost eighty “in spite of organ-grinding persecutions.”

Quotation :     “Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all".

= Charles Babbage