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Nature inspires maker of 'Robosapiens'

By Kevin Voigt
For CNN

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HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Mark Tilden was an iconoclastic figure in the world of robotics before he left the laboratory to find a mainstream market for his inventions.

The 45-year-old Canadian physicist has built small, simple robots "all my life" -- at one point, he had more than 100 robots in his home doing simple functions such as vacuuming the floor and doing the dishes.

Tilden found fame as head of robotics research for the Los Alamos National Research Lab in the United States, doing robotic designs for NASA and mine-sweeping robots for the U.S. military.

Frustrated that his work was largely placed in storage "or crashed into the surface of Mars," Tilden left in 2001 to head research and development for Hong Kong-based game maker WowWee after company executives saw a show about his creations on the Discovery Channel.

He has gone on to develop the most popular line of high-tech toys in recent years: Robosapiens, interactive robots that react to their environment and even communicate -- and spontaneously attack -- one another.

"When we brought out the first Robosapien (in 2004), we thought it would sell 50,000 or so," says Tilden, whose robot-line has sold 30 million units and rising worldwide. The success of the toys isn't just kid-stuff: "We've found half of the buyers are adults," he says.

Tilden talked to CNN about his newfound toy success and the future of robotics.

CNN: Your designs borrow less from the Silicon Valley and more from insects and crustaceans. How has nature inspired your creations?

Tilden: If you look at most robots, they look like something that has been designed on a drafting table -- all squares and blocks. How many squares and blocks do you see in nature? Nature's designs are more like crystalline structures: 15-degree, 30-degree angles.

In most of the early 20th century, advances such as building the (atomic) bomb were made with analog technology -- the science of waves, the math most of us just started to learn in high school before we gave up math. Then, Isaac Asimov came along and started the idea of a digital, "yes-no, 0 or 1," idea of a positronic brain (in books such as "I-Robot"). Now, I mean no offense to a dead science fiction writer, but that started a revolution in thinking and in the later half of the 20th century digital has overshadowed the whole art of analog electronics.

The positronic assumption is that a good brain can beat a bad body. If that were true, Stephen J. Hawking would be starting center for the Lakers right now. But nature shows us a good body and a bad brain can get you far in life -- just look at ants. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

CNN: So less mind, more body is best in robot design?

Tilden: Tons of people are building better AI (artificial intelligence) but no one thinks about bodies. Look at Honda's ASIMO robot -- it's been in development for a decade, they're touting it all around the world, it costs $2.2 million apiece, and just last week one fell down the steps at a demonstration in Japan. You can watch the fall on YouTube.com. It's a bad application of resources, in my view: So you build a $2.2 million robot that can clean your toilet? For $2.2 million you could probably hire Bill Gates to be your pool boy.

Bio-mimicry copies Mother Nature, to evolve from a lesser to a higher state but to keep it as simple as possible. My designs are built on nervous nets -- head and neck are optional. About 98 percent of animals have very little brain, but good nervous nets through the body. Half of our nervous system is below the neck: Our brains are neural nets, the rest of the body is nervous nets, but they are not just connections ... usually our bodies only use our nervous nets when we're drunk dancing and our body takes over from our brain.

How is it that hydrogen, given enough time, will develop into a human being? They say if you shake a bag of parts long enough, you should be able to shake out a 747. Nervous nets operate like that: you can put together 12 transistors that undergo a chaotic situation and send different signals, but put a pair of legs under them and they start working together.

My robots work on three principles: feed your ass, protect your ass and find better real estate.

CNN: Will your robots grow smarter in the future?

Tilden: All of our robots are completely hackable. We have designs that make robots walking, talking and seeing -- but thinking? I'm hoping my smart AI friends or someone out there will find a way to marry the two.

CNN: As toys become more interactive, do they threaten to limit the imagination inspired by more traditional playthings?

Tilden: It's the other way around. I came into the toy market just as toys were starting to die ... conventional toys have been losing out to video games for the past 10 years. The "Piped Piper of Digitalis" has come along and marched all the kids into the sea ... when was the last child you saw who has had a screwdriver in their hand? Every kid has a dead Walkman or calculator around you can turn any of those into a robot. That's what I did.

CNN: What are you working on in the future?

Tilden: We are working on a 5-foot tall robot ... the first time we tried it out, it crashed through the plate glass window of a neighboring office. The robot is life-size, but its feet are massive. It has a battery life of 168 hours, which means it can go down to the supermarket, pick up a pack of cigarettes and get back without dying half way through the trip.

The problem is, how do we sell this? (Consumers) have gotten used to our entertainment robots, but larger robots scare people -- this is something that technically can't be considered a toy. Unfortunately, it looks too much like the robot from "I-Robot."

Robots have a bad rap, they're either evil creatures in movies or something you blow up in video games. We're hoping the Robosapiens will change that attitude and pave the way for larger robots.

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