My nephew did not query how the machine works the first time that he watched a video of a warehouse robot.
He asked something simpler.
“Who tells them what to do?”
This was an innocent question, and it hung longer than I supposed. The video demonstrated dozens of robots relocating shelves, scanning products, and modifying their paths upon a product obstructing aisle. Nothing seemed to be chaotic. But behind that silent efficiency was a stratum of decision making that no one ever notices, who delegates work out, who checks the work done, and who determines whether a machine performed its work properly or not.
In the majority of the modern robotics, the solution has been quite simple: everything is organized by companies. The hardware, the software, the updates, the economic systems, all of it is controlled within a centralized platform. It can be efficiently used in the situation when the robots are used in the ecosystem of one company. However, with the growing scope of robotics outside to logistics networks, agriculture, infrastructure inspection, and city services the question is bigger than any single organization.
That is what initially prompted me to take a closer look at Fabric Foundation. The project is not attempting to construct robots per se. Rather, it is looking into the ways of how robots could work within a shared coordination layer the layer on which they could be able to check tasks, to be paid and to engage with each other in an economic way without being absolutely dependent on the work of one centralized controller.
On an academic level, the concept is both intriguing in that it puts a new spin on how we conceptualize machines. Fabric does not consider robots as mere tools, as in a system, but as participants. All robots may possess verifiable identities. Every performed task can be justified. And the economic incentives in connection with that work can be connected by decentralized infrastructure driven by ROBO.
This is a lesson to students and engineers joining the robotics profession. Technology does not have a tendency to develop alone. Innovation in hardware is not the entire picture. The mechanisms that organize technology the rules, incentives and checking systems tend to form the actual effect of the technology itself.
Think about the internet. The thing that opened up the world to global connectivity was the protocols that organized communication rather than the physical cables or the computers. Fabric is asking the question of whether or not someday robotics may need a similar coordination layer that enables machines made by other manufacturers to work in a common economic and verification network.
Naturally, this principle provokes significant debates. Robots work in the physical environment where the issue of safety, regulations and reliability are crucial. Any coordination system should take note of such realities. The models of governance that are effective in pure digital networks might require modification to enable the functioning of fleets of autonomous machines around the human population.
Nevertheless, the idea is an important one in terms of education. Fabric challenges developers, researchers, and students to have more than just robots in their minds, but to think about the larger systems in which machines can work in a responsible way. It provokes a further discussion of transparency, accountability, and trust in the world where automation will have a significantly bigger role.
In case my nephew wanted to know who orders the robots around, the simple fact is that humans do it. However, with the increase in automation, humans can start to create systems in which coordination occurs by open infrastructure, but no longer by centralized control. Such projects as Fabric belong to that exploration.
And the best technological concepts have started, sometimes.not with complicated formula but with a simple human question:
What kind of system should govern machines should they be employed to work with us?
@Fabric Foundation #ROBO $ROBO
