TE||Miniature Robotics
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导读
11月底，在日内瓦举办的联合国特定常规武器公约会议上，一段可怕的视频公诸于众。主角就是令人毛骨悚然的—Slaughterbots。
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Miniature Robotics
微型机器人
本文英文部分选自经济学人Science and Technology版块
Miniature Robotics
微型机器人
ON NOVEMBER 12th a video called “Slaughterbots” was uploaded to YouTube. It is the brainchild of Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, and was paid for by the Future of Life Institute (FLI), a group of concerned scientists and technologists that includes Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal. It is set in a near-future in which small drones fitted with face-recognition systems and shaped explosive charges can be programmed to seek out and kill known individuals or classes of individuals (those wearing a particular uniform, for example). In one scene, the drones are shown collaborating with each other to gain entrance to a building. One acts as a petard, blasting through a wall to grant access to the others.
11月12日一个叫“屠杀机器人（Slaughterbots）”的视频上传到了YuTube,这是美国加州大学伯克利分校人工智能教授斯图尔特·拉塞尔(Stuart Russell)的想法，并由“生命研究所”(Future of Life Institute,FLI)资助。该研究所由一些相关的科学家和技术专家组成，其中包括埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)、斯蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking)以及英国皇家天文学家马丁·里斯(Martin Rees)。视频设定在不久的将来，小型无人机会配备面部识别系统和聚能炸药，通过程序设定来搜寻和杀死已知个体或某些群体(比如穿着特殊制服的人)。视频中有一幕，无人机相互协作，进入一座大楼，其中一个作为爆破装置炸开墙体，让其他无人机通过。
“Slaughterbots” is fiction. The question Dr Russell poses is, “how long will it remain so?” For military laboratories around the planet are busy developing small, autonomous robots for use in warfare, both conventional and unconventional. In America, in particular, a programme called MAST (Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology), which has been run by the US Army Research Laboratory in Maryland, is wrapping up this month after ten successful years. MAST co-ordinated and paid for research by a consortium of established laboratories, notably at the University of Maryland, Texas A&M; University and Berkeley (the work at Berkeley is unrelated to Dr Russell’s). Its successor, the Distributed and Collaborative Intelligent Systems and Technology (DCIST) programme, which began earlier this year, is now getting into its stride.
“屠杀机器（Slaughterbots）”是虚构的，罗素博士提出的问题是:“还要多久才能实现这一构想呢（言下之意，?” 。因为世界各地的军事实验室都在忙于研发战争用的常规与非常规小型自动机器人。特别是在美国，美国陆军研究实验室(the US Army Research Laboratory)在马里兰州运营的一项名为“微型自主系统和技术(Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology)”的项目，已经成功运行10年，本月即将圆满收官。MAST项目协调一系列实验室组建的联合体，并由该联合体提供经费。其中知名实验室包括马里兰大学、德克萨斯农工大学和伯克利（伯克利的工作与罗素博士无关）大学的实验室。今年年初开始的后续项目“分布式协同的智能系统和技术“(DCIST)项目，现在正在步入正轨。
In 2008, when MAST began, a spy drone that you could hold in the palm of your hand was an idea from science fiction. Such drones are now commonplace. Along with flying drones, MAST’s researchers have been developing pocket-sized battlefield scouts that can hop or crawl ahead of soldiers. DCIST’s purpose is to take these autonomous robots and make them co-operate. The result, if the project succeeds, will be swarms of devices that can take co-ordinated action to achieve a joint goal.
微型自主系统和技术（MAST）项目始于2008年，当时掌上侦察无人机仅是科幻小说里的一个概念。 现在这样的无人机已经很普遍。除了飞行无人机，MAST的研究人员也在开发袖珍的战场侦察兵，它们可以跳跃或匍匐前进，用于在士兵前面打头阵。DCIST 的目的是使这些自主机器人协同作战。如果这一项目成功，其结果是成群的设备（微型机器人）互相协调行动，以实现共同目标。
A hop, skip and jump away
跳，跳，跳
At the moment, America’s defence department is committed to keeping such swarms under human control, so that the decision to pull a trigger will always be taken by a person rather than a machine. The Pentagon is as alarmed by the prospect of freebooting killer robots as the FLI is. But, as someone said of nuclear weapons after the first one was detonated, the only secret worth keeping is now out: the damn things work. If swarms of small robots can be made to collaborate autonomously, someone, somewhere will do it.
目前，美国国防部致力于将这些成群的设备控制在人类手中，这样将由人类，而非机器来决定是否扣动扳机。五角大楼对像FLI一样的强盗杀手机器人的前景非常警惕。但正如有人在引爆第一枚核武器时所说的那样，唯一值得保守的秘密现在泄漏了，那就是：这该死的东西的确有用。如果成群的小型机器人能够自主协同作战，那么一定有国家或者组织这么做。
Existing small drones are usually polycopters—helicopters that have a set of rotors (generally four or six) arranged at the vertices of a regular polygon, rather than a single one above their centre of gravity. Some MAST researchers, however, think they have alighted on something better.
现有的小型无人机通常是多旋翼直升飞行器--即搭载一组旋翼（一般4或6个）的直升飞机分布在正多边形的各个顶点上，而不是在重心位置上安装一个设备。然而，一些MAST 研究人员认为他们已经找到了更好的方式。
Their proposed replacement is the cyclocopter. This resembles an airborne paddle steamer. Though the idea of cyclocopters has been around for a while, the strong, lightweight materials needed to make them have hitherto been unavailable and the computing tools needed to design them have only recently been created. Now that those materials and tools do exist, things are advancing rapidly. Over the course of the MAST project the researchers have shrunk cyclocopters from being behemoths weighing half a kilogram to svelte devices that tip the scales at less than 30 grams. Such machines can outperform polycopters.
他们提议用滚轮推进式飞行器取而代之，该种飞行器就像是会飞的明轮船（滚轮推进）。虽然这个构想已经存在一段时间，但是设计所需的材料（质地坚硬且重量轻）直到最近才出现，而所需的计算工具也是最近才开发出来。既然有了所需的材料及工具，一切工作也正在飞速。在MAST项目的进行过程中，研发人员已经大大减轻了飞行器的自重，从原本的重达500克的庞然大物演变成如今不到30克的玲珑之身。滚轮推进式飞行器的性能优势远远超过多旋翼直升飞行器。
Cyclocopter aerodynamics is more like that of insects than of conventional aircraft, in that lift is generated by stirring the air into vortices rather than relying on its flow over aerofoils. For small cyclocopters this helps. Vortex effects become proportionately more powerful as an aircraft shrinks, but, in the case of conventional craft, including polycopters, that makes things worse, by decreasing stability. Cyclocopters get better as they get smaller.
滚轮推进式飞行器工作的空气动力学原理更像是昆虫而非传统的飞行器，因为它是通过将气流卷入涡流从而不是依靠气流产生升力。这一点对小型滚轮推进式飞行器来说十分奏效。当飞行器体体积变小时，涡流效应相应地也更加强大，但对于包括多旋翼直升飞行器在内的传统飞行器而言，涡流效应相反会降低飞行的稳定性，对飞行不利。而滚轮推进式飞行器的体积越小，其性能越好。
They are also quieter. As Moble Benedict of Texas A&M, one of the leaders of the cyclocopter project, observes, “aerodynamic noise is a strong function of the blade-tip speed”—hence the whup-whup-whup of helicopters. The blade-tip speeds of cyclocopters are much lower. That makes them ideal for spying. They also have better manoeuvrability, and are less disturbed by gusts of wind.
同时，此类飞行器也更加安静。正如来自得克萨斯州A&M的莫伯尔本尼迪（Moble Benedict）（滚轮推进式飞行器项目的其中一位带头人）所说：“气流噪音能够反映叶片圆周速度的快慢”，这也是为什么直升飞机（叶片圆周速度快）的噪音非常大。 相比之下，滚轮推进式飞行器的叶片圆周速度要小得多，因此非常适合用于监视。与此同时，其操纵性也更加好，并且不太容易受到大风的影响。
Dr Benedict reckons cyclocopters are about two years away from commercial production. Once that happens they could displace polycopters in many roles, not just military ones. But they are not the only novel technology in which MAST has been involved. The programme has also worked on robots that hop.
本尼迪博士（Dr Benedict）认为两年后滚轮推进式飞行器便可投入商业生产，届时，包括军事领域在内的很多其它领域将会放弃使用多旋翼直升飞行器。然而，这并非MAST所参与的唯一一个创新技术研发项目。MAST还在研制可以跳跃的机器人。
One of the most advanced is Salto, developed by the Biomimetic Millisystems Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Salto (pictured) is a monopod weighing 98 grams that has a rotating tail and side-thrusters. These let it stabilise it- self and reorient in mid-leap. That gives it the agility to bounce over uneven surfaces and also to climb staircases.
最成功的项目之一就是弹跳机器人（Salto），由加州伯克利大学仿生微系统实验室（Biomimetic Millisystems Lab）开发。弹跳奇迹人是一个98克，有着可旋转末端和侧部推进器的单腿。这些装置可以让它自我稳定以及在跳跃中保持重心。这就给予了机器人灵活性去跳过不平的路面以及爬楼梯。
Salto’s speed (almost two metres a second) puts huge demands on its single leg. Ron Fearing, one of the electrical engineers developing it, puts things thus: “imagine a cheetah running at top speed using only one leg, and then cut the amount of time that leg spends on the ground in half.” As with cyclocopters, the materials and processing power needed to do this have only recently come into existence.
弹跳机器人的速度（几乎2m/s）对它的单腿提出了更高要求。开发它的工程师之一，Ron Fearing这么说“想象一下尽力奔跑的猎豹只用一条腿，然后减去腿在地面上花费的一半的时间。”同滚轮推进式飞行器一样，解决以上问题所需的材料和解决能力也是最近才出现的。
Dr Fearing says Salto and its kin are quieter than aerial drones and can operate in confined spaces where flying robots would be disturbed by turbulence reflected from the walls. They can also travel over terrain, such as collapsed buildings, that is off-limits to wheeled vehicles. Salto still needs work. In particular, it needs to be able to cling more effectively to what it lands on. Dr Fearing uses the analogy of a squirrel leaping from branch to branch. Arriving at the next branch is only half the battle. The other half is staying there. Once that is solved, though, which it should be in the next year or two, small non-flying robots that can go where their wheeled, or even track-laying, brethren cannot should become available for practical use.
Fearing博士说，弹跳机器人和它的同系产品都比无人机更安静，还能在飞行机器人会被墙面反射的气流所干扰的狭窄的空间里操作。他们能穿越一些区域，例如一些倒塌的房屋，那里车轮式的车辆禁止进入。弹跳机器人仍需改进。特别是，它需要对于它着陆的地方更多的附着力，Fearing博士用了松鼠枝桠上跳跃举例。抵达下一个枝桠只是成功了一半，另外一半是停留在上面。一旦这个问题解决了（应该在一到两年内），小型的非飞行机器人应该可以去一些车轮式、履带式同伴们应用不了的地方。
Bouncing over the rubble of a collapsed building is not the only way to explore it. Another is to weave through the spaces between the debris. Researchers at the Biomimetic Millisystems lab are working on that, too. Their solution resembles a cockroach. Its body is broad and flat, which gives it stability but also permits it to crawl through narrow spaces—if necessary by going up on one side. Should it tip over whilst attempting this, it has wing-like extensions it can use to flip itself upright again.
在倒塌的建筑物废墟中弹跳并不是探索的唯一方法。另一种方式是在碎石之间的缝隙中穿梭。仿生微系统实验室的研究人员也正对此进行研究。他们的解决方案仿生于蟑螂。它的身体又宽又平，不仅能保持稳定性，还能使它可以在狭窄的空间内爬行-必要时能侧翻穿过。如果在尝试这一动作时发生翻倒， 它可以使用翼状延伸部分使自己翻转回来。
Getting into a building, whether collapsed or intact, is one thing. Navigating around it without human assistance is quite another. For this purpose MAST has been feeding its results to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), America’s main federal military-research organisation. According to Brett Piekarski, who led MAST and is now in charge of DCIST, the Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) programme at DARPA will continue MAST’s work with the aim of developing small drones that can “ingress and egress into buildings and navigate within those buildings at high speeds”. Some of that has already been done. In June DARPA reported that polycopters souped up by the FLA programme were able to slalom through woodlands, swerve around obstacles in a hangar and report back to their starting-point, all by themselves.
进入一座倒塌的或完好无损的建筑物是一回事，在没有人为帮助的情况下进行导航是另一回事。为此MAST一直在为美国主要的联邦军事研究组织-国防部高级研究计划署（DARPA）提供研究成果。 根据DCIST 现任负责人 Brett Piekarski （之前领导过MAST）的说法，DARPA的高速轻量自主飞行程序（FLA）将会继续MAST的工作，研发“能自如的进出建筑物，并高速在这些建筑物内进行导航”的小型无人机。有些无人机已经做出来了。六月份，DARRPA报告称经FLA程序升级过的正多边形直升机能够在林地里进行回转，在飞机库里转弯避开障碍物，并反馈给他们的出发点，所有动作完全自主进行。
The next challenge—the one that people like Dr Russell particularly worry about—is getting the robots to swarm and co-ordinate their behaviour effectively. Under the aegis of MAST, a group from the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania did indeed manage to make drones fly together in co-ordinated formations without hitting each other. They look good when doing so—but, to some extent, what is seen is an illusion. The drones are not, as members of a swarm of bees or a flock of birds would be, relying on sensory information they have gathered themselves. Instead, GRASP’s drone swarms employ ground-based sensors to track individual drones around, and a central controller to stop them colliding.
下一个挑战是让机器人重组并有效协调它们的行为，罗素博士对此尤为担心。在MAST的支持下，宾夕法尼亚大学GRASP实验室的一个小组,在协调编队中设法让无人机相互飞行却不碰撞。这个想法虽然看起来不错，但在某种程度上，所看到的只是一种幻觉。雄蜂不是一群蜜蜂或一群鸟的成员，它们依靠自己收集的感官信息。相反，受控制的无人机群使用地面传感器跟踪周围的无人机，依靠中央控制器来阻止无人机相撞。
That is starting to change. A farewell demonstration by MAST, in August, showed three robots (two on the ground and one in the air) keeping station with each other using only hardware that was on board the robots themselves. This opens the way for larger flocks of robots to co-ordinate without outside intervention.
这种情况正在开始改变。八月微型自动系统技术一次最终演示表明，在只使用机器人上的硬件条件下，三个机器人（两个在地上和一个在空中）可以维持相互位置不变。这为更多的机器人在没有外界干预的情况下协调工作开辟了道路。
Moreover, as that demonstration showed, when drones and other robots can routinely flock together in this way, they will not necessarily be birds of a feather. “Heterogeneous group control” is a new discipline that aims to tackle the thorny problem of managing units that consist of various robots—some as small as a postage stamp, others as large as a jeep—as well as human team members. Swarms will also need to be able to break up into sub-units to search a building and then recombine once they have done so, all in a hostile environment.
此外，正如演示所表明的那样，当无人驾驶飞机和其他机器人能够经常以这种方式聚集在一起时，它们并非毫无差别。“异质群控制”是一门新的学科，旨在解决由各种机器人组成的管理单元的棘手问题，这些机器人有的像邮票那么小，有的像吉普车那么大，也有人类团队成员。蜂群也需要分解成子单元来搜索一个建筑物，然后再重新组合，所有这些都在恶劣的环境中进行。
Such things are the goals of DCIST. The first tranche of grants to these ends, some $27m of them, has already been awarded to the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. When DCIST itself wraps up, probably in 2022, the idea of Slaughterbots may seem a lot less fictional than it does now.
分布式协同智能系统与技术以解决群体的分解与重组为目标。第一部分的拨款截止至结束，有2700万美元，已拨给了宾夕法尼亚大学，麻省理工学院，乔治亚理工学院和加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校。总结一下分布式协同智能系统与技术，也许在2022，关于slaughterbots（屠杀机器人）的想法会比现在现实很多。
翻译组：
Xingyi，男，小硕，经济学人爱好者
Coco，男，物流民工，经济学人铁粉
Joel，男，产品运营，科技类外刊爱好者
Helga，女，笔译民工，经济学人爱好者
Cyrus，男， 口译民工，经济学人爱好者
Grace，女，卫生民工，经济学人爱好者
校核组：
Yifei：女，英专硕士，专八，catti二笔
Vambie，女，互联网民工，经济学人粉丝
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观点 |评论|思考
文中一开始就提到了slaughterbot,屠杀机器人看了youtube视频后非常震撼，利用人工智能(人脸识别技术)加上无人机，配合聚能炸药，就可以轻而易举的攻击任何想要攻击的目标，尤其是如果能应用到劫持人质事件以及斩首恐怖分子行动，肯定好评不断，但是理想很美好，现实往往是困难重重。
这让小编想起了去年看的黑镜第三季第六集提到的人造蜂ADIs,他们利用太阳能，自带视觉传感器，设计之初只是为了缓解自然蜜蜂逐渐减少，利用人造蜂给花授粉，然而文中政府官员宣称是为了监视坏人的行动（实际上你懂的）。但是事与愿违，设计初衷不是为了杀人，但是文中女猪脚问人造蜂设计者，一旦出现功能障碍又或者被反社会人格的黑客或者恐怖分子利用，即使用了最高级别的军事加密，又有何用？设计者无言以对，后来发生的种种杀人时间也确实应证了这一点：任何系统的设计都不是完美的。
当然文中的蜜蜂只是一个比喻，主要是暗指无孔不入的社会舆论。我们每天都深陷各种各样的舆论中，微博，qq，朋友圈等等，每天都有热搜话题，热点话题。很小的问题一旦上了社交媒体，就会被无线放大，不管背后真正的原因是什么。比如，某年轻女子公交车上不让坐，道德沦丧之类的。一旦视频被放到网上就会千夫所指，然而很少有人会去关注背后的实际原因，可能是她身体不舒服，又可能是来大姨妈等等，我们每个人都知道不能以点概面的看待问题，可是每次一旦类似事情发生，我们只会随着舆论的大流一边倒，很少会去思考为什么？所以这也是希望大家可以加入经济学人群一起讨论问题的原因之一，我们做不到像专家那样去分析问题，但是我们只要深入一点点，这就足够了。（请注意，此一点点，非彼一点点，一点点有毒）
每次当我们将不喜欢的人推向了舆论中心，我们每个人都是置身于其中的，也需要为此承担后果。视频中是用社交媒体“Death to 不喜欢的人”，一旦这个不喜欢的人在社交媒体中投票最高，就会被杀人蜂杀死。虽然这些人确实会有不令人喜欢的地方，但是当我们这么做的时候，我们不是也是置身其中，成为杀人犯中的一个了吗？ 最后曾经参与过”Death to XXX”活动的30多万人都被人造蜂杀死了,这不得不说是莫大的讽刺.
联系到AI,其实我们上次在TE||Going places感想部分有提到，有兴趣可以看看 。最近关于“AI是否会取代人类”这个问题反复被提及，小编的想法是：能不能取代真不好说，但是如果任其野蛮生长，没有任何的约束，尤其是应用到军事领域 又或者真的被恐怖分子利用，那后果肯定是不堪设想的。
这让小编想起8月份FT times 发过的一篇文章，
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001073947/ce
文章主要讲的是很多机器人和人工智能企业的创始人呼吁禁止使用致命自主武器LAWS，“The development of lethal autonomous weapons systems is unwise, unethical and should be banned on an international scale.”“发展致命自主武器系统(LAWS)是不明智、不道德的，应该在全世界被禁止。”
可是半年不到，上个月屠杀机器人的视频就放到了YouTube，其实这又说明了致命自主武器系统技术已经存在，所以小编认为禁止技术的发展肯定是不可行，当然也禁止不了。我们唯一能做的是完善法律和伦理层面的规定，就像无人驾驶技术，只会一往无前，从L0到L5不断发展。那么各位亲看完这篇文章后对于AI又有什么新的看法呢？欢迎留言!
PS:黑镜第三季女主就是大西洋帝国和猜火车女主，强烈推荐这三部剧，都是小编超爱的，哈哈哈，女主的苏格兰口音真的很好听，留言小编会回复高清无码资源。
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