Automaton

...and dirty dishes, house cleaning, and other domestic chores. That's the goal of Anybots, a Silicon Valley startup founded by Trevor Blackwell. The company has been in the news before, but the whole thing is so intriguing we dispatched Automaton correspondent Anders Frick to get more details on the technology. Here's his report:

Economists like to say that the one kind of work you can’t move offshore is personal service, but what if remote-controlled robots become practical?

Trevor Blackwell loves robots, the humanoid kind that populate old sci-fi movies, and like many other roboticists, he thinks there may be a role for them to play around the house. He differs from most, however, in the economic rationale he offers.

Blackwell sees a future in which a low-paid worker from India might remotely control a robot in your kitchen, taking on tasks that today might be assigned to a servant. Blackwell believes that this is the Next Big Thing, and that thousands of homes will be using his robots to clean, cook, and serve meals. This scheme would effectively allow rich countries to import labor -- without the laborer.

To realize that vision, Blackwell founded Anybots in Mountain View, Calif., in 2001, after his last company, Viaweb, was bought by Yahoo for US $45 million in 1998. Blackwell is also a partner in the startup funding firm Y Combinator, which has invested in nearly 60 different startups during the last three years.

He is currently testing both a legged robot, named Dexter, and a wheeled one, named Monty. They now perform only a few, limited tasks, such as serving coffee and operating a hammer drill. It turns out Monty’s the nimbler of the two. “Robots with wheels are both faster and more stable,” Blackwell says.

Each robot has a built-in gyroscope in the torso, position- and force-sensors in the joints and fingers, and magnetic motion sensors in the arms. Their moving parts are actuated by pneumatic plungers and valves, powered by electricity from carbon aerogel ultra capacitors that can go half an hour on a charge.

The 16 cameras carried on different parts of the robots’ bodies supply video to 10 remotely placed monitors. In the beginning, Blackwell says, engineers and technicians will use the robots to steer in particularly dangerous environments -- say, the site of a nuclear or chemical accident. Such work should get the kinks out. That way, when robots go into mass-production for the consumer market, they will be sufficiently reliable, and perhaps also toxic waste-proof, which might come in handy when dealing with some people's dirty socks.

On July 26th, the MIT Museum here in Cambridge, Mass was full of some of the best and brightest roboticists in the area. The Boston chapter of TiE partnered with Robotics Trends to bring together experts to talk about the robotics industry and where it was headed.

Neena Buck, an industry analyst at MIT, and Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends, introduced the robotics industry to the audience of mostly software entrepreneurs. Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot, gave a keynote about her company and the lessons learned over the last fifteen years. Finally, a panel spent some time answering questions from moderator Dan Kara and the audience. The panel was comprised of a Media Lab PhD candidate named Cory Kidd, also the founder of company Intuitive Automata; Joe Jones, CTO and Co-Founder of Q Robotics and also one of the inventors of the Roomba; Rory MacKean, R&D Manager at Mobile Robots (formerly ActivMedia); and Chris Wallsmith, CKO at Bluefin Robotics (he also has the dubious honor of being my boss).

The panel was fascinating, not just in terms of the answers they gave to the questions, but also to see what sorts of questions were asked by the not-necessarily-roboticist audience. A few interesting points and observations:

• Asia vs the US: there's a well known split in the attitudes toward robots in the US versus in Japan and South Korea. In Asia, it goes, robots are often humanoid (or canine-oid, in the case of Aibo), are meant to interact directly with people, and are thought of --and designed to be -- as pets or companions. In the US, robots are for "dull/dirty/dangerous" tasks like manufacturing or defense and are generally thought of as tools. This may be changing in the US, though. Helen Greiner had stories of Roomba customers asking for *their* Roomba to be repaired, not a replacement unit. Military PackBot operators give awards to the robots as though they are part of the human team and, like the Roomba owners, want their own robot repaired, not to have a new one sent to them. It will be interesting to see how these attitudes drive designs of the next generation of US robots, and whether the US and Asia begin to converge on their designs.
• The "killer app": there were many questions from the audience about what the panelists thought the "killer app" was for the robotics industry -- not a surprising question from those who work in software. What was surprising was the panel's almost unanimous response: there is none, because robots will literally be everywhere. Chris Wallsmith pointed out that robots are much like computers; that is, computers are everywhere -- your laptop, your cell phone, your car, your calculator -- but people don't call them computers. Similarly, he said, your car will be robotic, your kitchen will be robotic, your personal fitness trainer will be robotic... but they'll be called cars, kitchens, and trainers. Not robots.
• Training for robotics: a hypothetical investor in the audience asked what one should look for in evaluating the experience of people proposing a new robotic technology to VCs. The panelists all had different answers -- a background in psychology may help with the design of interfaces and interactions; a broad engineering base is needed to build up the electrical, mechanical, and software systems of a robot; membership in the target customer base lends credibility to the design. The only agreement seemed to be that a broadly experienced group is necessary for success.

So where is the industry headed? Everywhere, it seems. The good news is that not a single person in the room seemed at all pessimistic about the robotics industry; there's funding for startups, a healthy US defense research funding source, rapid growth of new technologies and new ways for people to interact with machines, and growing acceptance of robots working for and with humans. It's an exciting time.

iRobot just released their new line of Roombas today. They look awesome -- a lot more like the space-age robots I expect to have in my home. It looks from the new specs that they've added some great new features, too, like onboard scheduling and voice interaction.

Although some people claim their mouths operate independently of their brains, that's not usually the case. The brain sends neurological signals to the larynx, which converts them into sound. Now, what if we could use those larynx nerve signals to control things?

That's exactly what a company called Ambient is doing. Its Audeo technology basically converts "unspoken speech" (neurological signals flowing through larynx nerves when a person thinks about speaking) into control commands that can be used to guide a motorized wheelchair (video above) or synthesize speech. Pretty amazing!

The company apparently stole the show this month at National Instrument's NI Week in Austin. Ambient's founder and CEO, Michael Callahan, gave a demonstration of the company's "thought-controlled" wheelchair and "thought-to-speech" translation system. (You can see the demo at the NI Week video page; it's the last segment, called "Algorithm Engineering," on the August 7 list.)

To use the system, a person wears a lightweight sensor band around the neck. The band picks up the larynx nerve signals and transmits them wirelessly to a remote computer (don't worry about "mind wiretapping" -- the transmission is encrypted.) The remote computer uses NI LabVIEW and signal processing algorithms to interpret the nerve-impulse patterns and translate them into the right commands.

The system is not plug-and-play. It does require some training until its algorithms learn to "read your mind" (accuracy is above 70 percent). But at least it doesn't require Matrix-style brain interfaces or a tangle of EEG electrodes wrapped around your head.

Callahan, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, hopes to commercialize the technology to improve the lives of severely disable people with spinal cord injuries or such neurological disorders as ALS and cerebral palsy. (The company is backed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.)

OK -- not exactly related to robotics, but very cybernetic nonetheless. I wonder what things we might control with this technology one day. Any guesses?

Meet Zeno, a humanoid robot built by the founder of Hanson Robotics. Hanson Robotics is famous for their robotic humanoid faces -- among them Albert Einstein -- but many folks (including yours truly) find them pretty darn creepy. Despite the amazing technological achievement of detailed facial expression, Zeno is no exception to the uncanny valley.

Zeno is modeled after AstroBoy and the inventor's goal is to eventually have it on the consumer market to consumers for a few hundred bucks. Zeno has his very own blog here to keep you updated on his progress.

And to add to the creepiness, a fun fact: the inventor named his newborn son after his robot.

Great robotics article this month in Spectrum. Senior editor Jean Kumagai and photo editor Randi Silberman traveled to a cactus-studded ranch in Mexico to find out how a research group is using an underwater robot to explore deep sinkholes.

The researchers, led by Bill Stone [above], best known for his daring cave diving expeditions, were field-testing DEPTHX, a 1.3‑metric-ton autonomous underwater machine that can draw 3D maps of its surroundings and also collect solid and liquid samples. (And as Kumagai notes in the article, the robot, encased in pebbly orange syntactic foam, "looks kind of like a giant tangerine.")

From the article:

There’s never been an aqueous robot quite like DEPTHX. Most autonomous underwater vehicles look the same, Stone says. “Some have fat midsections, some are more elongated, but they pretty much all look like weird torpedoes.” [...] “Their design is dictated by their mission: traveling in straight lines at relatively high speed to survey the ocean floor or gather bathymetry data,” he continues. But for exploring uncharted territory, that shape can get you in trouble. You can back yourself into a tight spot where you can’t turn around. [...] DEPTHX, by contrast, is designed not for high speed but for complicated maneuvering in unfamiliar environments. Hence its shape: a squashed sphere with no protruding parts to catch on things.

Read the full article, titled "Swimming to Europa," to learn how DEPTHX performed in Mexico. Oh, and don't miss the intrepid Spectrum correspondents' account of their encounter with Toilet Frog.

For anyone in the Boston, Mass area, you might be interested in this event at MIT tomorrow (Wednesday) night, a session called "Robots: The Next Wave of the Robot Revolution" that will "explore the advancing robot invasion across all of those sectors." There's a panel of speakers from a few robotics companies, networking receptions, and recruiting (I'll be there representing Bluefin). There's a small registration fee, though it's free for students.

NASA today announced the recipients of their SBIR ("Small Business Innovation Research") grants, among which were quite a few robotics projects. Lots of them have to do with power sources or sensors, but one I found particularly interesting is the DC brushless motor that can withstand the harsh atmosphere of Venus. From the proposal:

Honeybee Robotics proposes development of high temperature scoop and joint; and continued development of an extreme temperature brushless DC motor and a resolver. All hardware will be demonstrated in simulated Venus surface conditions. During Phase I, a first-generation prototype BLDC motor and resolver were designed, built and tested in Venus-like conditions (460oC temperature, mostly CO2 gas environment). The Phase I tests demonstrated the feasibility of the design through verification that the motor and the resolver can operate at 460oC for an extended period of time. A further developed and optimized version of this motor and resolver could be used to actuate sample acquisition systems, robotic arms, and other devices outside of an environment-controlled landed platform on the surface of Venus.

460 deg C? For the non-metric among us, that's 860 deg F. Wow.

The rest of the robotics-related SBIR grants can be found here and here.

"If you don't dress up your Roomba, it's just a naked vacuum," quotes the website of MyRoomBud.com. MyRoomBud is a company run by a group of siblings that makes costumes for your Roomba and Scooba. I met two of the team at an MIT event two weeks ago and got the chance to ask Tyler, the CEO, some questions about their business.

How old are you guys? How long have you been in business?
myRoomBud is a company that my brother, Niles (13) and I (16) started about two and a half years ago, a few weeks before Christmas. We first began to sell the covers on eBay to earn some extra money in order to pay for Christmas gifts, particularly a pair of cowboy boots for our mother. After Christmas, however, we found that we had made so much money that we decided to continue the myRoomBud business. We employed the help of your younger siblings, Isabelle (10 years old) and Griffin (8 years old).

Do you all have different jobs?
Niles and I used to cut the cloth to be sewn by our parents into the RoomBud covers. Isabelle and Griffin helped sorting the cloth that we had cut into different piles so we would always know where everything was. Niles and I were also in charge of shipping the RoomBuds. Nowadays, we all cut and ship. We have also hired students from my high school to do the sewing of our costumes. The longer we continue the company, the less physical work we end up doing. Now, we mainly focus on running our company and finding new ways of lessening the work that needs to be done.

I see you do costumes for both Roomba and Scooba -- do you have any plans to expand to other robots, either that iRobot makes (like the new Looj or ConnectR) or from other companies (the Aibo, Robosapien, etc)?
Although we have considered making costume covers for the iRobot Looj and ConnectR, we have not actually put these ideas into production. We try to stay away from other companies.

What got you interested in dressing up your Roomba?
We originally got the idea of dressing up the Roomba while we were watching my youngest brother, Griffin, follow the Roomba around as it cleaned the floors. At first we just taped paper ears to the vacuum, but soon the paper became felt, and the next thing we knew we were going to Joanne Fabrics to buy cloth that had animal print on it for the sole purpose of making a RoomBud cover.

Why do you think people like to dress up their Roombas and Scoobas, but not their normal vacuums or mops?
Niles and I both agree that what probably causes people to dress up their Roombas, and not their normal vacuums, is the lifelike way that the Roomba feels its way around a room cleaning the floor. It is the same thing that first enthralled Griffin when he first saw the Roomba at work. And of course, there's the obvious answer, our company motto: If you don't dress up your Roomba, it's just a naked vacuum!

Photos courtesy myRoomBud

I enjoyed this Forbes article that asks if robotics is going to be the next tech bubble:

Robots will be a very big thing, and soon. What holds them back is what stunts most technology: a walled-garden approach to their systems. Robots currently do what the designers want them to do and that's it. Gadgets and gimmicks and concept robots from huge corporations all presage the moment that open-architecture robots will catapult robotics out of its niche. [...]

There is actually no technical barrier to start this wave. All that is required is the right marketing idea at the right moment. There have already been a series of near misses, from the Tandy Armatron years ago to Lego Mindstorms--a Lego set that combined electric motors and sensors with programmable Lego bricks.

They compare robotics to the computing industry: computers of course started out as large, highly specialized tools that weren't accessible to the average consumer, then the PC arrived and sparked an entire industry as users got their hands on them and developed the useful applications that make computers essential to today's lifestyle. So will this happen to robots?

Compare this to the computing industry analogy that was brought up last year at an MIT Museum event: the idea that just as we don't think of our ovens and cars as computers, they are; and just as we may not think of the kitchens and cars of the future as robots, they will be.

So is "open architecture" the answer, as the article suggests? Should I go ahead and establish the OLPC (One LEGOMindstorm Per Child) program to see what the budding robot geeks can do? Maybe more specialized component platforms -- Microsoft's Robotics Studio, for example -- will be the key, just as so many Web 2.0 services depend on AJAX. Who are the killer apps going to come from?

Given what I last wrote about, this article from Network World is well timed: a startup called Willow Garage out in California is working on an open-source personal robot. From the article:

One of its immediate goals is to build 10 robots and make them available to university researchers as a common platform that can be tinkered with and improved. Willow Garage will also supply "an open-source code base integrated from the best open-source robotics software available"

Cousins reminisced about the time when a teenager might spend all day tinkering with his car. Stricter automobile-safety rules have made that practice a bit risky, but anyone with enough expertise will be encouraged to build on the Willow Garage robotic platform and find new uses for it, just as software developers constantly find new uses for the personal computer.

"We don’t know what the killer applications will be," Cousins said.

This sounds exactly like what the Forbes article was talking about: a personal robot that will enable hackers to find the new uses and abilities that will define the next decades of robotics. This is a more directed approach than other "hacker" robots like the iRobot Create or the LEGO Mindstorm, which are more about education and learning than they are new applications.

Willow Garage looks like an interesting company even beyond this program -- in addition to this personal robot, they're working on autonomous cars and surface craft. That's a pretty broad range of research, but there are enough similarities between the technologies that if they've got the right team of experts, I think some really cool stuff will come out of this.

Image from willowgarage.com/

In the US, the three big robotics centers are Boston, Pittsburgh, and Silicon Valley, all in large part thanks to the great universities in those areas that have spun their research out into industry (for that reason, Georgia Tech is growing the industry in Georgia). Yesterday Boston business news site Xconomy took a look at the Boston industry and gave an overview of all the robotics companies in the greater Boston area.

From the article:

What’s more, the greater Boston area has clearly established itself as one of the world’s leading centers for robotics. There are more than 150 companies, institutions, and research labs that deal in robots or robot components here. That adds up to more than 1,500 workers, $150 million in government contracts, and $250 million in annual sales[...]

Looking at the list, a few things leaped out at us. The majority of firms (at least 13 out of 24) get substantial support from defense contracts, while most others serve niche markets. Local companies are strong in mobile robots and vehicles, growing in medical robots, and not as strong in industrial applications.

That company list is a great resource and the industry overview is really interesting. I wonder if this kind of analysis and overview exists for the other major cities?

Thanks, Janet!

Photo: Joel Eden Photography/Kiva Systems

There's been a lot of press about Kiva Systems, the Boston-area startup that developed mobile robots to automate pick-and-pack warehouse operations. No article, however, has really explained the technology that lets the Kiva robots do what they do -- swarm a warehouse by the hundreds and in a highly coordinated bot ballet deliver inventory to workers, racks of products arriving one after another in seconds, flawlessly.

In other words, there have been few or no details about the robots' control system, their mechanical design, and the overall resource-allocation algorithms. Until now. Spectrum has filled this gap with an in-depth article ("Three Engineers, Hundreds of Robots, One Warehouse") by yours truly in the July issue.

The two things that most impressed me about Kiva's technology were the distributed control and the robots' mechanical design.