Service Robotics Blog

Robot stocks rising steadily; iRobot stock up 9%, iRobot Healthcare

2009-11-09T20:32:00.001-08:00

The past month has seen a number of good headlines:

iRobot announced Healthcare division

Their stock price is up, showing again investors believe in the future of robotics

Robotic stocks in general are rising

(Courtesy The Robot Report)

People are just beginning to glimpse a new market forming...a world wide need, slow but inexorable, for robot helpers in first-world nations. And investors are beginning to take note.

iRobot Jumps Further into Service Robotics

2009-10-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Recently iRobot has been talking up a new division they are forming to create healthcare robotics:

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS155936+29-Oct-2009+BW20091029

This is significant because healthcare robotics is one of the areas where service robots will finally break through to the public eye.

In part this is about money. The United States, Japan, and Europe are in a financial crisis but are facing an even larger crisis. There simply isn't enough money to provide all the health care that is needed for the baby boomers in the next 20 years. Government planners are seeing trillions of dollars of trouble.

So the federal government is writing essentially a blank check to anybody who can provide significant cost reductions for elder and handicapped care. Think of it as an infinite pot of money. Robotics can be a big part of that, and every bit of robotics developed for healthcare has use in consumer, manufacturing, and othersectors. It's a multi-decade long opportunity to build the next high tech superstar industry.

iRobot naturally plans to be part of that, and they are very effective at working with federal grant agencies.

Panasonic Announces Kitchen Robot, Forecasts Billion Sales by 2015

2009-10-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

Wow, the cool announcements are coming fast. Here is a new kitchen-specific robot from Panasonic.

It's not mobile, but still qualifies as a service robot.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/173788/panasonic_has_big_plans_for_robots.html

Jeff Bezos Invests $7 million in Heartland Robotics

2009-08-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

Heartland Robotics is a startup headquarted in Boston, one of the great robotics centers of the world. Heartland was founded by Rodney Brooks, a distinguished researcher from MIT, one of the most influential roboticists of the decade and co-founder of iRobot.

So with those credentials, we expect amazing things from Heartland and apparently, others do as well. The VC investing arm of Amazon's Jeff Bezos (who is also a technology maven of the first order, and according to all accounts, a very nice guy) just announced a $7 million series A investment in Heartland.

This is not only good news for Heartland but for American industry in general. Heartland's stated mission is to revitalize the american manufacturing sector with next-generation, flexible robots that collaborate with human workers.

Congratulations to Heartland Robotics, and we are looking forward some great new advances.

Willow Garage Ramping Up for Production

2009-08-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Willow Garage has been posting pictures of their facility re-build, preparing to begin production of their PR-2 jservice robot.

Here is the building being stripped out.

Here is a bit of production floor tooling.

Heartland, Rodney Brooks, and Manufacturing Robotics

2009-06-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

Heartland Robotics is a startup headquarted in Boston, still in stealth mode. Their stated mission is to build next generation flexible manufacturing robots that will collaborate with human workers intelligently.

Video of Brooks giving speech about manfacturing robotics

Shown above: Rodney Brooks speech at Maker Fair.

This is a crucial mission. The US and other high-wage nations must learn how to compete with workers who make 1/20th the houly wage. The only way to do this is to multiply the efforts of blue-collar workers, in essence, to make them 20 times as effective.

This can no longer be done with only with the high end machinery and mass production lines that American manufacturers have employed so successfully for so long. The markets have changed, with faster product cycles and shorter runs making such "big automation" uneconomical. We simply cannot continue with large up-front costs and long cycle times. The US manufacturing sector needs to change over to much more flexible automation that can turn on a dime and change rapidly.

Chinese manufacturers can undercut our costs because they don't use automated tooling on that scale. They just hire 1000 hard working low-wage workers, give them simpler tooling, and start them working. The human worker is still the most flexible "automation" in the world. If you can get human workers cheap, and deploy them in large numbers, you can drope prices rapidly.

The solution for the US is to leverage our better training and better technology. We need a massive upgrade of the tools provided to our workers. Those new tools should include flexible collaborative manufacturing robots.

Don't think of these robots as replacements for human workers. Think of them as replacements for the older, less flexible tooling.

In fact, it's very likely that the net effect on total manufacturing employment will be neutral. Net jobs will be steady, or will increase, as manufacturing returns to the US from overseas.

Heartland is focused on manufacturing, but we classify their robots as service robots, and look forward to covering them here.

Willow Garage Milestone 2

2009-06-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Willow Garage PR-2 robot, in my estimation the most technologically sophisticated service robot (semi-humanoid) in the world, demonstrated it's stuff recently by navigating around a room and plugging itself into a wall plug.

Amazing!

Partner Robotics, Will Microsoft Bite?

2009-05-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Nice article about partner robotics, from ZDNet:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2828

SME Coffee Break: Robots for Small Businesses

2009-04-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Referred by Frank at The Robot Report

Here is a fine video that describes an easy to program, easy to use industrial arm. Not quite the same as service robots, but it has some elements that are applicable to service robots.

http://www.smerobot.org/download/#video

"Tom and Michael, two stressed workers of an SME, dream of a robot helping them in their daily routine. One idea inspires the next ... until they come up to novel work environments and new and different types of robots, which will be explored in the project."

Race is On: Korea's $750 Million to Become Robotics Leader

2009-04-19T09:35:00.001-07:00

From TMC Net:

SEOUL, Apr 18, 2009 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- The government will spend 1 trillion won (US$750 million) on research and development in the robot sector over the next five years in an effort to develop the local industry into the world's top three, officials said Friday.

News from Robobusiness 2009.

2009-04-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

Here is an article highlighting Tandy Trower, who is a stalwart supporter of robotics:

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/04/13/daily36-RoboBusiness-Natural-controls-to-spark-robotics-revolution.html

------------------------------

RoboBusiness: Natural controls to spark robotics revolution

Manipulation and automation will be key drivers of the robotics market in the near future, according to keynote speakers at the RoboBusiness 2009 conference. Microsoft Corp. general manager Tandy Trower said the robotics market could take off like the personal computer market did after the graphical user interface was introduced -- if roboticists can get their products to manipulate objects safely and nimbly in a manner similar to human hands...

-------------------------------

Robotics Market Size

2009-04-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice view of potential size of the robot market...

http://www.therobotreport.com/images/uploads/Tandy_Slide.png

Via TheRobotReport

In-Person Review of Readybot

2009-04-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

Pros: A unique approach to mobile service robots the yields a potential breakthrough in cost-to-performance and safety. Control paradigm could work for large-scale deployment. The first service robot design that seems commercially viable in the near term.

Cons: Still a prototype. Control software needs more testing and development.

Introduction

When I first saw the Readybot design in the kitchen-cleaning videos, it seemed interesting but not very sophisticated…a boxy robot on wheels with two primitive arms attached. I was a bit more impressed after seeing the unit at the Robo-dev show last year. Then I got a call from a friend who had seen a live working demo of Readybot at the Homebrew Robotics Club in Silicon Valley…he said “wow…people were really excited, we’ve been waiting years for something like this to come along.”

So I called Readybot, and with a bit of persuasion, I was finally invited to their small office. I came away very impressed indeed. As a long-term advocate for robotics, it’s been a long hard wait for somebody to show me a new concept. Readybot gave me that new concept.

A Different “Take” on Mobile Robots

The most important thing about Readybot is that it’s intentionally simple. Other mobile manipulative robot projects use a traditional articulated robot arm attached to a mobile base. Or in other cases, they build a fully humanoid robot that attempts to mimic human form. These designs are attractive and sophisticated looking, but I have a hard time believing that they can be produced in a practical form for a low enough cost.

According to the builders, Readybot was designed from scratch just for mobile 2-armed service applications. The arms and the body act as a single system, useless without each other, but working together in a way that eliminates redundant joints and redundant cost. After seeing it I came away suspecting that the gold standard for the robotics industry – the 6 DOF articulated robot arm with shoulder pitch and yaw – may be redundant and unnecessarily complex on a mobile robot.

Also the device is quite plain. It’s a white box with 2 arms, more of a small home forklift than Rosie the Robot. Yet with this appliance-minimalist approach works well.

The version I saw was intended as a “trainer” unit, said the developers, which they hope is so simple that other robot builders will be able to clone it.

Goal: 1/10th the Cost

The team impressed on me that their overriding focus is on building a robot that is inexpensive. They believe that the only way to launch the future robotics industry and to create a tenfold increase in the size of the robot market is to create entry-level robots that can be purchased by small business and consumer uses

I’ve heard this kind of talk from other people. But the Readybot people make this speech while having at their sides a robot that actually does what they are talking about. It IS a cheap easy to use personal robot. That adds a certain weight to the argument.

There are 3 areas that I looked at in particular: Base mobility, arms, and control system.

Mobility

The Readybot mobile base is a set of inexpensive gear motors hooked to industrial omni-wheels. It uses the Northstar sensor (Evolution Robotics) to determine location in the room, with infrared distance and ultrasonic sensors for fine-tuning and obstacle avoidance. It worked well in a set of 3 test rooms.

Of course this has none of the self navigation that is present in other mobile robot bases from firms such as Mobilerobots Inc. I asked how they could justify a mobile base that can’t navigate around obstacles. I got the following reasoning:

>>It's designed to be upgraded. The Readybot arm/body assembly could be removed and attached to a Mobile Robots Pioneer or Patrolbot bases, or other commonly available self-navigating bases. “If people want sophisticated SLAM then no problem, just upgrade the base” said Tom Benson, the product designer, “but let’s give them something cheap to get started with, that works in a simple environment.”
>>The collaborative cloud control system (which I describe below) gives robot programmers the ability to use the remote human operator as the “obstacle avoider of last resort.” Essentially the robot can switch to a tele-operated mode any time needed.

This gives a very good flavor of the overall design process for Readybot. They are willing to accept less autonomy in return for lower initial cost, but are architecting the system to allow later upgrades to autonomy if desired by the owner.

Cheap, Strong Arms and Base, Virtual Shoulder Joints

The Readybot robot has two arms that can carry about five pounds each (they said, upgradable to 10 pounds with a simple change in gear ratio). These arms are primitive by robotic standards, but again, very inexpensive. Benson said that the arms were the most important component in the whole project: “Two arms on a mobile base, that can reach table top height, are the key to the whole robotics field from now on. We were convinced of that from the start. The problem was to make them cheap and safe.”

The Readybot solution is clever. They are simple extendable linear arms on a rotating shoulders with a vertical lift (otherwise known as a cylindrical robot arms) mounted on each corner of the device, so the two arms have full access to the front, side, and rear of the robot.

Again these are much simpler than the more common articulated arms used in other designs. They have no shoulder joint and no elbow joint, which eliminates the most complex and expensive parts of the arm, and greatly increases the effective weight capacity. The lack of a shoulder and elbow joint creates significant reductions in arm dexterity however this is compensated by the mobile base, which has omni-wheels and can move side to side. This allows the mobile base to act as a “virtual shoulder joint” giving the robot additional range of motion to make up for the loss of the shoulder and elbow.

Intentionally Slow Moving, Imprecise, But Safer Joints

Most robotic designs have stiff, uncompromising, and tightly controlled joints which require powerful motors and gearboxes. They are designed that way intentionally in order to provide high speed, repetitive, and precise placement. This also makes them dangerous since the stiffness requires high-inertia gearboxes that give the robot a tremendous “punch.” Get in they way of a moving industrial robot and you may end up injured or dead.

The Readybot design abandons this entire concept. Their arms are slow moving, relatively sloppy, and in some planes of motion quite weak.

How can this possibly work? Benson’s comment was “a mobile robot that moves from place to place on wheels is inherently imprecise anyway. Trying to put precise arms on an imprecise base is misplaced effort and limits your design options”.

In the Readybot design, the joints that rotate, or swing the arm have almost no torque; only enough to free-swing the 5-lb lifted load. This makes them much safer. But if you want to open a door or push an obstacle aside, don’t you need some strength in the arm to do so? “Not in the swing axis” said Benson “in fact we’ve found in many cases the optimum solution is to allow the arm to swing completely free. Then we orient the robot facing diagonally to the door and pull with the linear extension part of the arm, which is quite strong. It pulls the door handle towards itself and the free swing of the rotating axis allows the door curvature to move freely as it is pulled.“

Collaborative Cloud

Their control software use what they call a "Collaborative Cloud", which is used to control the robot in day-to-day work.

This is a mixture of tele-operation and scripted behavior. The operating system and application platform for the robot is built with the assumption that the robot is connected to a broadband connection at all times. Via that connection, the robot communicates with a “cloud” of remote servers with scripting, set up data, and processing support. And more importantly the robot communicates with, and is controlled by, a “cloud” of human supervisors. What if that internet connection is broken? “The robot stops instantly”.

Benson says this was inspired by work at Nasa, CMU, Idaho National Labs, and a number of other places, all of whom have been working on different types of collaborative control and adjustable autonomy.

The plan is for human supervisors to control many robots at a time by using a customized library of script elements and routines to “build programming on the fly” as the robot works through its day. These supervisors could be on-site or in remote locations. For example a manufacturing facility might have 50 robots run by 4 operators in a local control center. Or 1000 robots taking care of elderly folks in their homes might be run by 100 contractors working from home.

Again, this cuts costs because most complex processing is offloaded to the cloud thus the robot needs little on-board processing. Instead of multiple “cores” on the robot, which is very common for other designs, this one uses a single computer.

Caveats and Quibbles

They made it clear that the system isn’t ready for commercial use yet; version 1 is a prototype, version 2 is under construction. The Readybot team has been working on a tight budget, so their design will continue to be less finished compared to others (for example Willow Garage, who as we’ve discussed earlier, has been generously funded and which I'm eager to see).

But for an old-timer like myself, these quibbles are beside the point. Readybot has a smart, determined team. They have made fundamental advances in cost-performance and control systems. At this early stage such cost reductions are crucial because they indicate that the service robotics market as a whole can be expected to follow the same cost-cutting trajectory of other successful high tech markets.

Another Japanese Service Robot, Looks Great

2009-03-31T20:34:00.000-07:00

Apri-Attenda from Toshiba

Wow. That's a good looking, practical looking unit. Professional finish, basically in same class as Willow Garage/ Readybot/ HarRobot.

The problem, as always, will be the control. So many of these vendors have a robot that appears to do the job but don't explain how they're going to control it in a realistic way.

Robo Business Show Boston April 15-16

2009-03-20T07:49:00.001-07:00

Anyone who can make it, I would encourage to visit the Robo Business show April 15-16:

http://www.robobusiness.com/

Recession Makes Next-Generation Robotics Even More Important

2009-02-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently read speculation that the depth of this recession and job losses will cause service robotics to lose a bit of steam. I don’t agree at all. I think it’s quite the opposite.

As Andy Grove used to point out, there are “strategic inflection points” where the old way of doing things starts to break down, and it’s important to not panic, and look for that path to convert the immediate crisis into that next big opportunity. Clearly the world economy is at a crisis point. We can either panic and collapse, or we can re-focus and aim ourselves at the next big opportunity as a society.

Service robotics is one of the key technologies that leads us to that next big opportunity. Some of the reasons I and others have mentioned many times:

>>Much of the crisis in the US, Europe, and Japan is intensified by the degradation of our manufacturing base, the aging of our population, and the increasing disparity between the highly technological and empowered training our citizens recieve and the mindless menial labor that is required in vast quantities in our economy. Robotics is the key to resolving these social problems.

>>With a recession like this, a lot of wealth has disappeared, and it’s more important than ever to look for cost cutting tools. Robotics is a cost-cutting tool with amazing untapped potential.

>>Robotics and other automation create jobs, because they help industries survive. Without robots, Detroit would have died even sooner.

President Obama has said we should “Innovate our way out of this”.

That’s exactly right. One of the reasons we pulled ourselves out of previous recessions in the 70s and 80s was that we had big technological revolutions that helped boost us out. I think the same thing could happen now, making the current recession much shorter. Yes, it’s a bad recession but we can pull out faster. So here are 4 key points:

1. Service robotics will be one of the key technologies that “leads the way” out of the current recession... an essential productivity tool and new technology infrastructure for the next 25 years

2. Service robotics will certainly be a crucial core technology for first-world nations like Japan, Europe, and the US if they have any intention of maintaining their leadership roles in 5-10 years when big demographic changes hit

3. It’s a known fact that robotics is the cornerstone of future national defense plans in an asymmetric world

4. So no matter how you slice it -- for very real reasons of national defense, the current recession, and our future as a technological leader -- robotics is and must be a top national priority for the US and other first-world nations

In modern society, the commercial sector serves as the great engine of innovation for all of society. That means we (especially in America) must push harder for robotics commercialization.
There are people lined up to start building new robot companies and make a profit. Help them succeed and we all succeed.

Robot-Cub -- Open Source Humanoid Robot

2009-02-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a humanoid (walking, generally human-shaped) robot developed in Europe.

http://www.robotcub.org/

The team has posted their designs as an open-source project. The cost to build one is reportedly about 200,000 pounds (UK) which would translate into, let's say, a half-million dollars US.

Nice product for researchers, but at the high cost such humanoids invariably carry, probably not a lot of practical applications.

More.

Want and Easy One-Stop Place to Keep Up With Robotics?

2009-02-15T20:54:00.001-08:00

I recently saw a blog post that named The Robot Report as the best robot related resource on the web. I second that. Since the poster said it so much better than I could, I'll just be lazy and re-print the post here:

Before I founded RoboDynamics I spent a great deal of time researching the robotics field. Part of that research was of course scouring the web looking for companies, researchers, and other general information. If you've ever done this type of research, then you know that it is a tedious and time-consuming task. However, I just learned a great web resource that has arguably the largest number of (valid) links, broken down into general categories - TheRobotReport.com.

Here's a list of what I like about this website:
Unlike other similar lists, all links are valid and placed in the proper category.
News items that are generally in-depth and relevant.
Someone (or some team) that is committed to keeping the content relevant and fresh.

Another Tokyo University Domestic Robot

2008-12-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a video of a robot arm washing dishes. A nice demonstration of a commercial-looking 6-7 axis robot arm. Now let's see it used in real life!!

Link

Robo Development Show, Santa Clara

2008-11-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

I had the good fortune to attend the Robo Development show this week. It was smaller than one would have hoped...reflecting what seems to be a continued lack of awareness by the mainstream technology community of the promise of personal robotics.

3 highlights:

Willow Garage Speech

Steve Cousins presented a compelling story to a full room. He showed the classic hockey-stick for the coming personal robotics field, describing the light manufacturing and service jobs that could be done by such devices.

The Willow Garage philosophy of “impact first” sounds fine indeed. He discussed the distributed architecture of the system, the processing power, and other great features of the device. With what seems the best team of researchers in the world, Willow Garage is a thrill to see.

Roboware E3 @ Microsoft Booth

Most of the time, I don’t cover the robots that seem like toys. But the E3 robot from Roboware, a Korean partner to Microsoft, is a very practical device. They claim it can pick up .5 kilos in a gripper, and has a internal computer running XP, accessible for external programs, with wireless net access. Scale this up a bit and it could be a much more serious robot.

Readybot Prototype In Person

Although Readybot didn’t have their own booth, one of their suppliers (Allmotion) were kind enough to let them demo. Great-looking robot, higher quality than I expected for a prototype. I spoke to Rand, one of the engineers on the project, and looked at some of their design work. His message was that the Readybot robot itself was not their main focus; the robot is just a test unit built because they couldn’t find anything else to practice on. Well, not bad for a test unit, that is all I can say.

He said the main focus of the group was application software usable on any robot hardware.

My gut reaction: Readybot is a serious contender…their approach is novel and promising.

Totota HAR

2008-11-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

Here is another household/personal robot. Very nice, and sponsored by one of the top manufacturing firms in the world, so yes, we should be taking this very seriously.

http://gizmodo.com/5069122/robot-does-chores-learns-not-to-put-socks-in-refrigerator

Personal Robotics, The Next WWW

2008-09-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

I was trying the other day to convey to a friend why I am so thrilled by the personal robotics field. My friend, a network software guru, was unimpressed…the typical blasé attitude I’ve seen by high-tech people. They consider robotics to be, you might say, a “dud” of a technology. (Those tech gurus can be narrow minded…until they see big money being made, at which point, they convert.)

In any case I was trying to find an analogy to convey to him the promise of this field, and I remembered many years ago, my first introduction to the World Wide Web. Back then, it was this nerdy technology that a few local people were raving about. I remember the Well, an early and influential online community in the Bay Area, where people said silly things like “The World Wide Web is going to change the world in ways you cannot even imagine. Just wait and see.”

I remember being cynical about those comments. But they were right. The new paradigm of the World Wide Web turned into an earthshaking, mind-blowing change in human existence.

That’s what I see in personal robotics. Perhaps not as big, not as fundamental a shift as the Internet. But certainly a very significant change. I think this next phase of robotics will be much larger than the old-style industrial robotics field that I worked in.

Another analogy: you might consider old-style robotics firms, like ABB and Denso, to be the equivalent of Tandem and Wang Computers. The new up-and-coming personal robotics field will spin off the Dells, Compaqs, and Googles of robotics. I see a few startups even now that, with the devices and concepts they are developing, have the potential to be these superstars.

In the robotics field, the biggest is yet to come.

24 inch Humanoid Robot

2008-07-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here is some news from ArXiv blog. It's interesting, but not clear if this device can do any "real" work. Can it use those arms to pick up objects or hold tools? If not, then this doesn't fit the classification (in my mind) of a "service robot". Looking forward to learning more about it!

The French start up Aldebaran-Robotics based in Paris has high hopes for its humanoid robot called NAO. The device is 57 cm high and weighs 4.5 kilograms (about the size of a 6 month old baby) and you may be about to see a lot more of it. The company has sent a simplified version to 16 teams playing in the Robocup humanoid football league this year.

NAO looks an impressive device, judging by the design, which the company has posted on the arXiv today. And others clearly agree. Earlier this year, the company picked up Euros 5 million in venture capital funding to help commercialise the device. The target market is university research labs involved in developing the next generation of software and hardware for robotics.

That’s a smart move because it could make NAO a de facto standard. NAO doesn’t come cheap, however. A single robot will set you back Euros 10K but that is significantly cheaper than most other humanoids. Fujitsu’s HOAP costs $50K, for instance, and Honda hasn’t been able to put price on Asimo.

The company hopes that economies of scale will bring down the price as production scales up. Eventually it hopes to sell NAO to the public for Euros 4K each.

Better start saving.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0807.3223: The NAO Humanoid: A Combination of Performance and Affordability

Care-o-bot robot, from Germany

2008-07-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

Here is yet another entry into the Service Robotics space...from ZDNet...

Care-O-Bot, your future robotic butler by ZDNet's Roland Piquepaille -- German researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute have introduced their third generation of household robots, the Care-O-Bot 3. The previous generations of this mobile robot assistant were designed to assist elderly or handicapped people in daily life activities. But now, this new 1.45 meter-high robot is intended to be an artificial assistant always at your service, even if you're young and in good health. It moves on 4 spherical wheels in any direction and has a large array of sensors to ensure it will never hurt you. With it 3-finger hand, it can handle a bottle of apple juice or champagne put on its front tray. It will then wait until you ask it to pour a glass for you. Sorry, I don't know when it becomes commercially available. But read more...

Best 169 words you'll ever read about robotics

2008-07-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

This article from Wired is short, but if you want to understand the behind-the-scenes deal with the robotics industry, you can do no better:

Why Things Suck: Robots
By Thomas Hayden 01.18.08
Wired Magazine

Automatons work pretty well — if you're looking to weld thousands of cars exactly the same way. But what we really want is C-3P0: a robot that looks, acts, and responds like a human, except is easier to boss around. So why don't we have one?

Well, despite sophisticated mathematics and years of experimentation, we still aren't very good at modeling life... (read more...)

Real-Life Wall-Es in Silicon Valley

2008-06-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

Meet 3 Startups Building Practical “Human Helper” Robots

At the movies this week, an adorable robot named Wall-E, along with an entire spaceship of robots, do all the dirty yet necessary work that human beings no longer want to do. Now, three groups of entrepreneurs in the Bay Area are showing off real robots for just that purpose.

There are plenty of robots being built in other places in the world, but most of them are either expensive science projects like the Japanese ASIMO, or super-simple, super-limited devices like vacuum cleaners or lawnmowers. What developers still haven’t tackled, say industry insiders, is a multi-purpose robot, or so-called “service” robot that can work around human beings in homes and businesses.

These service robots generally aren’t humanoid, with wheels instead of legs, and don’t crack jokes. But they do have 2 arms that reach about as high and far as a human being, allowing them to do basic human tasks – loading a dishwasher for example – yet stay within the budget of average homes and businesses. Talk to a robotics researcher for the timeline for such a robot, and you often hear “20 years away” (which is an academic code-phrase that means “I don’t know”) But as it turns out, the ever-fertile minds of the entrepreneurs are already at work, with announcements of real products that are months, or at most years away. Introducing the real Wall-Es of Silicon Valley.

Willow Garage

Willow Garage is a group of Stanford University roboticists building a device called the PR1 – a “Personal Robot” about the size of a large upright vacuum cleaner with 2 human arms and an array of cameras. Situated in a plush office in a chic neighborhood of Menlo Park, the PR-1 developers say their next model, the PR-2, should be shipped to researchers in test quantities in by the end of 2008. Their software is designated specifically “open source”. Funding is apparently provided by one or more former Google employees...announcements on the Willow Garage website demonstrate the well-funded nature of their project, with the claim that a team of 60 full-time roboticists could be supported “indefinitely” and an $850,000 dollars US donation to the Stanford University robotics program.

Willow Garage Home
Personal Robot Link (new!!)

Anybots

Anybot, located in Mountain View, has developed two separate designs; a humanoid walking robot that apparently competes with the ASIMO, and a wheeled robot that is intended for more practical use. The walking robot, called Dexter, uses what the firm called “Dynamic Balancing” which it says is more flexible and realistic than the static design used by ASIMO and others. Both robots show a mass of tubes, joints, and wires, with no concessions to consumer appearance so far. Unlike most other designs, Anybot uses pneumatic (air driven) pistons for moving arms and legs, instead of electric motors more commonly favored by other designers; they claim pneumatics gives them a more “realistic” feel.

Anybots was founded by a former Yahooo entrepreneur who is also founder of venture capital firm. With cover stories in the local newspaper and visits to art galleries, they appear to be making plenty of marketing headway.

Anybot Home
Anybot Video of Monty

Readybot

The Readybot Challenge is organized as a “non-profit group of veteran engineers” that decided (just for the challenge, they say) to build a kitchen-cleaning robot. They released two videos which show a robot that looks the simplest but most commercial-looking we've seen, complete with chrome trim. The videos themselves are entertaining, with a finger-snapping soundtrack. The most traditional seat-of-their-pants upstart – the group says the robot was built in their founder’s garage – they say their design philosophy is modeled after the historic IBM PC “clone” market, where all the components, arms, video systems, and base, could be made by different specialized vendors and snapped together into different easy-to-upgrade configurations. Sounds good; let’s see if they can pull it off.

Readybot Home
Readybot Video (very enjoyable and consumer-friendly)

Who Will Win?

At this early stage, the question is probably irrelevant. All three of these start-ups appear to have smart people, working on a problem that has a long lead time and significant hurdles. Willow Garage is clearly the best-funded, able to dole out grants to Stanford University and attract attract the best talent, but as many high-tech ventures have found over the years, such largesse can lead to complacency. Readybot is the scrappy competitor, launching geurilla marketing campaigns from the founders living room, but do they have lasting power? Anybots appears to be in the middle, but their designs look highly technical, and not consumer-focused. The reality is, any of these or some combination could succeed, or just as likely, none of them may succeed if the market for such robots never catches fire.

Sit back, grab a box of popcorn. This movie will be fun to watch.

What is a Service Robot?

2008-06-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Service robots assist human beings, typically by performing a job that is dirty, dull, distant, dangerous or repetitive, including household chores. They typically are autonomous and/or operated by a build in control system, with manual override options.

Examples of service robots
PatrolBot
CoroBot
ADAM SGV
HelpMate
Cybermotion
Roomba
DESIRE

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List of Potential Applications

2008-06-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of potential applications for service robots; from http://www.service-robots.org/

Cleaning & Housekeeping
::
Edutainment
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Humanoids
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Humanitarian Demining
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Rehabilitation
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Inspection
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Agriculture & Harvesting
::
Lawn Mowers
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Surveillance
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Medical Applications
::
Mining Applications
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Construction
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Automatic Refilling
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Guides & Office
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Fire Fighters
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Picking & Palletising
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Food Industry
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Search & Rescue

Welcome!

2008-04-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

I created this blog to talk about an exciting new technology ... service, or domestic robots.

Many people know about the Roomba vacuum cleaning robots, and other robots that mow lawns, clean gutters, and provide telepresence. We'll be looking at newer and more powerful robots that are just coming out.