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BC-ROBOT 2takes
(ART MAY BE AVAILABLE)
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
c.1977 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - It resembles a five-foot-two aerosol can on wheels. It is
said to be a highly intelligent being, unlike anything seen before.
It can speak 250 words and understand 50. It can vacuum the house,
serve dinner, babysit with the little ones and answer the door.
''Well, how do you do?'' it might say.
    But is it for real, or isn't it?
    ''May God help me if it isn't,'' says Anthony Reichelt. He is the
president of Quasar Industries Inc. Quasar insists it will start
selling a household robot, a sort of mechanical butler, within 20
months. Put down $4,000, and you can take one home.
    ''I think it's a preposterous fraud,'' says John McCarthy. He is the
director of Standford University's Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory. ''The state of the art is nowhere near this - not in
voice recognition, vision recognition or motion.''
    Along with quite a few others in the robot field, he doesn't think a
household robot is possible for many years, and certainly not at such
a low cost.
    So the controversy goes. The artificial intelligence community has
spent many millions of dollars since about 1960 trying to produce a
sophisticated robot. Industrial robots that execute repetitive tasks
have come into being, but nothing close to what Quasar claims it has.
Thus, when the company proclaimed its development during the summer,
everyone wondered what Quasar was.
    Quasar is a small company based in Rutherford, N.J., that doesn't
have a listed phone number. It was founded 10 years ago by eight
technicians committed to creating a household robot. To keep the
company afloat while they invented it, they have leased promotional
androids to companies to clatter through department stores answering
questions.
    Now, however, the company claims it has struck gold. It says it has
a working prototype of the household robot. It gave the press a look
at it last summer, and says a more refined version will be displayed
next March. Starting in mid-1979, Quasar says it will be churning out
125 a day, 45,000 a year.
    The mechanical butler has attracted voluminous news coverage. Quasar
has been flooded with thousands of inquiries. It says a Chinese man
appeared one day with $20,000 cash stuffed in a suitcase, wondering
if he could please have five robots. It says spies from other
companies have shown up at the company's headquarters, posing as
reporters to try to wrest away Quasar's secrets.
    Meanwhile, some vigorous criticism has been directed at the robot.
    ''I don't think there's a ghost of a chance that a mad scientist
could come up with this, no less Quasar,'' says Marvin Minsky, a
science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who
has been on getting machines to see since 1963.
    ''What happens if I sell a thousand robots and they don't work?''
retorts Quasar's Reichelt. ''I'll be in jail. I'll be sued to high
heaven. I tell you I've got the finished robot to prove our claims.
I've got the goods.''
(MORE)
    
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BC-ROBOT 1stadd
NEW YORK: goods.''
    At any rate, Quasar doesn't seem to have scored many points in robot
circles with its promotional androids. There are 32 of them. Quasar
claims they can speak 4,800 words and recognize 250. They are able to
roll around and pass out literature. They travel to their appearances
in first-class airline seats, and, according to Quasar, they tend to
scoot after stewardesses.
    However, a number of robot researchers (including some from
Carnegie-Mellon University and from General Motors' Research
Laboratories) say they have attended appearances and found these
robots to be run by remote-control by two men who try to remain
inconspicuous. One man handles the voice, the other the android's
motion. The robots themselves, they say, are rather crude.
    Quasar is hazy about this. The company says it sometimes uses remote
control for certain purposes, but insists it doesn't have to. It says
that the promotional androids are in some ways similar to the
household robot, and can be programmed to do many of the same chores,
but they're not really the same.
    ''With the promotion robot, what we're doing is putting on a magic
show and entertaining the public,'' Robert Doornick, Quasar's
marketing director, says cryptically. ''Whether we have simply a
magic act or a true technological development is not important.
That's got nothing to do with our domestic android.''
    Besides the mechanical butler, Quasar says it will also turn out in
the next couple of years a mannequin robot that will move and talk, a
paramedic robot intended as a therapeutic tool for mental patients
and a surveillance robot that will act as an artificial night
watchman.
    Meanwhile, everyone waits to see what happens.
    ''They put Marconi down,'' says Reichelt. ''They put Newton down.
Every major scientist has been put down. To everyone who has put us
down, I say, 'Just wait and see, buddy.'''
    
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