Arturo Hilario
El Observador
Machines and human beings have had an incredible relationship. From the first mechanical creations that used human power to move to the steam engine and now the silicone chip, technology has allowed these assistants to humanity a greater depth of technical functionality and abilities that would make Leonardo da Vinci faint.
Honduran robotics engineer and educator Walter Martinez with his favorite robot creation, an educational technology kit that helps students understand the fundamentals of robotics. Photo Credit: Walter Martinez
Recently we spoke to an expert in robotics, who helped us understand the past, future and movie versions of robots in a recent interview to help promote the 20th Century Studios film, The Creator, which is out now.
Director Gareth Edwards first film since the Star Wars epic Rogue One, The Creator is an incredible looking sci-fi action thriller that takes place in a dystopian future amidst a war between human beings and an army of artificial intelligence beings. The film boasts an all-star cast, including John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and Allison Janney.
Walter Martinez Marconi is a robotics engineer and IT professional who was born and raised in Honduras, but now calls Southern California home. By day he is an IT professional and lecturer at California State University Long Beach, where he has worked on managing projects, creating budgets, and system analysis related to programming and robotics for over 22 years.
And of course for fun he builds robots, he has many of them on display during the interview including an educational robot kit that he created that is used by students around the world to begin to learn about robotics fundamentals. He also participates in his hobby business, SoCal Robots, where he has built and created robotic props and working droids for the film and television industry, giving him a vast array of knowledge of robots in media as well. He also attends many Comic Cons, being part of the Star Wars cosplay club 501st Legion, which is dedicated to the construction of screen accurate replica suits of armor and robots like R2-D2 and C-3PO.
In the following, Martinez disassembles the many questions we have about the relationship between man and machine, and how his lifetime of love and knowledge of robots gives him a unique perspective on the machinery around us and the future of robots, and the circumstances of how it may end up good… or dystopian.
Can you talk a little bit about what your work as a robotics engineer entails?
Sure. So it all depends on the robot, there’s so many robot fields out there. But my specialty is robots for movies and television. So it’s more of the animatronics and show type of robots. So you got to have a lot of different knowledge, knowledge of electronics, programming, and then there’s an art component to it. So there’s a lot of painting that has to happen and weathering and things like that. So there’s quite a bit of different knowledge areas, 3d printing and machining, all kinds of things.
How did you become interested in robotics and the idea of bringing the mechanical to life? What were your inspirations to get into that?
Yeah, so when I was a kid in the late 70s, I saw the movie Star Wars and I told my mom, “when I grow up, this is exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to build this robot,” and that’s what I focused on. And that’s what I’ve been doing all this time.
I wouldn’t be afraid of a Terminator-like robot because it’ll last probably like a few minutes and then it will just die because there’s no more power.
But yeah, just watching different movies, a lot of 80s movies as well. That’s why I’m looking forward to this one here because it’s got that cool esthetics of robots. Especially this producer, Gareth Edwards, he’s got this cool idea of how robots should look like and I’m very fascinated by that look. I can’t wait. It’s going to be good. You’re going to enjoy it, it’s out September 29 in theaters.
And Gareth actually has that connection with Star Wars. And you yourself have gone to Comic Con and other events with machines you’ve built and with the 501st Legion Star Wars group.
Yeah so, the 501st is Star Wars costuming club. And yeah, we do a lot of events, but I do a lot of events at Comic Cons and things like that. I bring all kinds of robots. I have garages full of robots.
Do you have a favorite that you’ve built?
I do, actually. It’s actually this little guy right here. This is an educational robot. So this is a kit that’s been used worldwide, by the way. Many countries use it in their high schools and it took a while to design and put together. But yeah, you can learn the basics of robotics with something like this. This is my favorite aside from my Artoo that I built.
So National Robot Day is on September 26th every year and just happened this week. What does that day represent to you and other people in the robotics world?
So it’s a day to pay attention to a robot, kind of like Bring Your Kid to Work Day. It’s a day that, if you have a robot, bring it to work. If you have a robot, spend a day programming it or putting more things on it or building one. So it’s a day just basically to dedicate to any robot that you might have or that you want to start.
The film The Creator, based on what you’ve seen so far, footage and trailers, what do you think of the film overall and the robotics and AI that’s represented in there so far?
Yeah, like I said, I love the aesthetics of it. The idea of having anthropomorphic robots right, robots that look like us, that really fascinates me. I mean, just the look of it and the idea that we can work alongside one day, but hopefully they won’t turn on us.
I’d say don’t be afraid of it. So AI is nothing more than coding, and coding is dependent on humans. So what are we doing with this coding? The only thing that is lacking right now is hardware. As you know, battery life is pretty low still, so I wouldn’t be afraid of a Terminator-like robot because it’ll last probably like a few minutes and then it will just die because there’s no more power. So, yeah, don’t be scared. We use AI every day anyway, since the 50s, we’ve been using AI.
In this modern day, how can artificial intelligence change robots? And is there any recent examples that you can talk about?
Yeah, there’s a couple of them. One of them is in the medical field. So, for example, through prompts, you can just say, “hey, this is what I feel right now,” through a tool like Chat GPT, that can look at and read millions of books all in seconds. And then it can give you kind of like a result of what it thinks that you have based on all these books that it read in seconds.
A doctor has to train for many years, but these tools that we have, these AI tools that we have can do it in a matter of seconds, so that’s pretty incredible. I also just read that AI bots are going to be allowed to invest in the stock market. For example, there’s a ruling that’s passing right now that if you create your own AI bot, you can actually have it go and invest for you.
Like the Tesla cars, they’re being trained every day to drive better, and so this is where the autopilot comes in. And AI took over because it did some machine learning. It knew exactly how to drive from point A to point B, and it recorded it from millions of drivers. So now the car knows exactly what to do to go from point A to point B. There’s no need to program every line of code, but the line of code writes itself. That is the amazing part about it.
On the other hand, in the film The Creator, it’s a dystopian future where robots are more of, like, an antagonist for the human race. What do you envision as a future with advanced robotics and AI living amongst us?
I think the only thing that robots are lacking right now is well, actually, a couple of things. One is creativity, and the other one is emotional intelligence. So once robots start to become creative, like human creative types, that’s when we need to be scared, I think. But for now, that’s not going to happen.
I mean, it can create art. You can see now, you can see the tools that create art nowadays, but we don’t get the same feeling when we look at that art, as if we look at an art that was created by da Vinci for example. But I think that’s the only thing when robots become creative on their own and have some kind of emotional intelligence, that’s when we need to be scared. Not now.
