The MIT Press publishes Tales From a Robotic World: How Machines Will Shape Our Future, by Dario Floreano and Nichola Nosengo. Floreano is Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He is co-author of Evolutionary Robotics and Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence. Nosengo is a science writer and science communicator at EPFL. His work has appeared in Nature, The Economist, Wired, and other publications. He is the Chief Editor of Nature Italy. The book features stories from the future of intelligent machines – from rescue drones to robot spouses – and accounts of cutting-edge research that could make it all possible...

Chapter titles/subjects include: 'Robots in the Lagoon'; 'The Really Big One'; 'Our First Martian Homes'; 'Drones and the City'; 'Love and Sex with Robots'; 'A Day in the Factory of the Future'; 'The First Nobel For Robotics'; 'Microsurgeons’ Fantastic Voyage'; 'Life as it Could Be'; 'How to Compete with Robots'; 'Inventing an Industry'; and 'What Could Go Wrong, Or the Ethics of Robotics'. The sections incorporate mitigating the effects of climate change, providing health care, reducing traffic, love and companionship, swarm robotics, wearable robots, and even biohybrid robots.

This is an intriguing idea, but I’m not sure the mix of accounts of cutting-edge research and fiction works, as it’s neither one or the other. Initially, I was looking forward to Asimov-like robot stories. Instead, I felt to a certain extent that I was being preached to, with an almost text book scenario and a possible fictional future tacked onto the end. Robotics is a cold subject, and so this feeling extends throughout the book. There is very little dialogue inherent, with even this coming across as very formal. Fiction is all about ‘people stories’ where warmth and familiarisation is necessary amidst change and anxiety. For anyone interested in the advances of robotics there is much to learn here, but the book just doesn’t draw you in – and for that reason I think an average score is fair.

5

Ty Power