Interview with KERMAN ROBOT – Dr. JAFARI

The Iranian team brought some outstanding performance in RoboCup 2006 in Bremen. Although their KERMAN Robot would have been a strong contender at RoboCup 2007, Dr. Jafari arrived in Atlanta with an incomplete team. This was because of immigration problems.

In our interview with Professor Jafari, waziwazi has learned of the difficulties of robotics development in Iran.

RoboCup Atlanta, Jul 06 2007

Waziwazi- What is the significance of the RoboCup to you?

Professor Jafari- Well, I would say that the RoboCup is a very special event to me because it gathers many country’s experts in the field of robotics. They bring their contributions and we share information, like when my students brings a robot with particular capabilities we are able to share the ideas with others and from there the community of roboticist develops.

It is about sharing ideas and networking and I really appreciate that. This event in Atlanta was great because I learned a lot through networking with many top professors in this field, such as Professor Henrik Christensen and also Professor Asada from Osaka University. They really helped me and are particularly nice gentlemen, I almost forgot Professor Tucker Balch, who was the General Chair of this event. Through this networking it was really impressive to me that I could learn so much just from being able to openly observe what others were doing.

Waziwazi- How many times has your team participated in the RoboCup?

Professor Jafari- Different students in my team have participated on different occasions. We were not with each other from the beginning. After completing my PHD in Australia I arrived back home (Iran) and began to gather different students with different experiences in terms of robotics research. So, some of them have already been to different places such as Japan and Germany, but all of us have participated once in the Iran Open April 2007, which was held in Teheran. They ranked first in the Humanoid league (kid sized).

Waziwazi- This year you chose to modify a Bioloid kit, what was your reason in doing so?

Professor Jafari- The first and most important issue was the availability of the platform. Unfortunately, the problem with the other platforms was that due to sanctions even on academic research in Iran, we have this sort of problem. We are suffering because we don’t even have the raw materials. To do research we are not suppose to start from scratch because it takes ages to start from servo motors, build a robot and then start developing our own software and implementing our own artificial intelligence techniques into the robot.

We have to start from some thing ready to build upon. Bioloid was a robot kit that was fairly easy to find. We just started to modify the motherboard and add a camera on the top. This sort of robot was robust. Though not comparable to those giant humanoid robots such as Asimo, in its own particular dimensions and capabilities it is quite nice. We can continue to work with it and explore more in the field of robotics.

Waziwazi- This is the first year that RoboCup has been held in the US. Are there any noticeable differences in media coverage?

Professor Jafari- In terms of media coverage I have to really appreciate the efforts that the media team has made. In fact, it is quite nice that I can see so many people around and they are taking photos and videos. From what I can see the media coverage is a lot nicer than other occasions that I have participated in. Through communication with people I found that Americans are very friendly and they helped me a lot from the beginning. They are very friendly with foreigners. Whenever I had a problem with an address, they quickly and easily helped me. Particularly inside of Georgia Tech everyone was really friendly to us and I appreciated that.

Waziwazi- Earlier this week you had mentioned that your team had not arrived. Has there been any progress on this situation?

Professor Jafari- Well, it is quite sad to see that very nice students with very nice personalities who are extremely intelligent, I can even say much more intelligent than some of my colleagues and myself, were not issued visas. They could have contributed to this event because through this sort of communication with other students they could have told the other students what they have made and how they have implemented their techniques. I am doing that on their behalf, but the difference is sort of in a student-teacher capacity of communication, which is different from a student to student. Obviously they were a little disappointed because they did their best. I have not heard from them up to now. From my experience, I guess we have to forget about this event (RoboCup 2007) unfortunately and look forward to seeing each other in China. I promise to show a nice effort in developing our techniques and to make a better robot for the next event, which will be the RoboCup in China.

Waziwazi- Have you made plans or preparations for next year’s RoboCup?

Professor Jafari- There might be some delays. As I said earlier about the hardware equipment, because we still rely on something which we have to purchase outside of Iran, we still have problems with that, even for academic affairs. It is quite unfortunate, but we have to face the realities. We will still try to prepare something even better than what we have at this stage.

Waziwazi- Do you plan to compete in the teen size in later years?

Professor Jafari- Sure, at this stage the kid sized humanoid league is filled with lots of robots from different countries. In the future we will try to invest more in different areas and see what are the gaps that we can fill. That is the whole idea about science and technology. Find a gap and try to fill that gap in that perspective technology. I can say that I have seen a number of humanoid robots that are more or less similar, so that means that we may need to have a look at other aspects. For example, in terms of dimension or size, we may look at bigger sized robots or much smaller than what we have which is kid size. We have to explore all varieties possible for robots.

Waziwazi- Are Robots readily embraced in the Iranian culture?

Professor Jafari- Iranians are very friendly and are always interested in what is happening outside of Iran. Even in Iran when people look at the progress of robots in America or Japan, particularly, the research development that was made in NASA, which was really impressive to all of us. We really appreciated that as Iranians and really try our best to somehow see what is happening, what is going on, what sort of robots they are developing and then try to bring this technology to our country as well. Apart from traditional culture in Iran that goes back to 3000 years ago, we have this ability to adapt ourselves to new technology. When Iranians hear that a team from Iran has reached a stage where they are able to participate in a worldwide competition or even on some occasions rank higher than other teams, they really feel proud of their sons and daughters. Feeling proud is something that is natural to all nationalities, Iranians as well.

Waziwazi- Where do you see robotics in Iran in the next 10 years?

Professor Jafari- Honestly speaking, it depends on the collaboration with other countries as well. Iran is not an expert in manufacturing sophisticated mechanical parts, so we have to rely on things that are made outside of Iran. If I had to point out the obstacle that is stopping us from building a very sophisticate robot it would be the sanctions. Our academic researchers and our scientist suffer (from these sanctions). It all depends on the future of Iran and its relationship with outside countries.

Waziwazi- As Robots are developed further and are able to take on more tasks that were previously performed by humans, how will that influence a society whose structure is based on a working class hierarchy?

Professor Jafari- To answer your question, I will refer to my own PHD research. I did my PHD in Australia and the application was to develop a companion robot for elderly people named Koyesu. That robot was basically intended to manipulate stuff normally found in a kitchen like different pieces of fruits and vegetables or kitchen utensils. So you see that it is not the case that robots want to replace us, they will cooperate with us. We can take the benefit of this cooperation between machine and human. Some people think of robots as something that can be seen in science fiction movies and that they want to kill human beings, but this sort of thinking is far from reality. We are developing robots and it is up to us to decide what application we use them for. In the majority of our applications the idea is to help, so it is not going to put humans into trouble. We believe that it is not a bad idea to take the tedious work out of our lives and let it be done by robots. Humans are going to be free to create, to do high-level jobs, and to exercise and enjoy life. A machine is not supposed to feel tiresome, take rest or to sleep at night (which can not be said about their human counterparts), so we can place those sort of jobs on the robot’s shoulders, like what is happening at the moment in car manufacturing companies.

This collaboration between human and machine should really be appreciated. I just refer to one example with the Japanese team in the RoboCup 2007. I could see that a ball was kicked by a robot to a Japanese student who then kicked the ball back to the robot. So you see, it is something like collaboration, even in terms of entertainment or in terms of playing soccer. Obviously this form of collaboration applies to real world applications.