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.

Not Leonardo the artist. No, not the ninja turtle, either. Leonardo is a gremlin-like robot at the MIT Media Lab who was the main attraction in a series of user studies a couple of weeks ago, one of which I got to participate in.

Leonardo was built for the Personal Robots group (I seem to recall them being called "Robotic Life" at one point), headed by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, to study social interaction with robots. Leonardo can't walk or talk, but he can make a few facial expressions and manipulate a few objects with his eerily lifelike (though not very dextrous) little hands.

The study I was participating in was part of post-doc Andrea Thomaz's research into how humans understand the learning process and how machines can learn from them. She asked me to see if I could teach Leonardo (and if I recognized when I had taught him) to perform a few tasks on a toy box in front of him: pushing a button to change light colors, flipping two switches, and trying to learn the right combinations to open and close the box. Working with Leonardo was a little strange. I'd seen pictures before, but was surprised to find him almost three feet tall (well taller than me when he was standing on a desk). Interacting with him at first felt awkward, but soon I was learning forward on the desk gently urging him to learn what he needed to learn, much in the same way as I might teach a toddler to tie his shoes. He could only respond to a limited set of commands like "Try to flip the switch right, Leo" and to feedback like "Not quite!" or "Good job, Leo!". In the end, I sent him into an infinite loop of switch-flipping (ah, bugs), so my robot-teaching prowess remains unknown. But it was my first time personally interacting with a "humanoid" robot.

And I just noticed now I've been calling him "he" throughout this whole entry. They must have done a good job anthropomorphizing him for me...

At any rate, the study was less about robots than it was about cognition and learning, but I was thrilled to have the chance to check Leonardo out. His command set is limited to whichever program a Lab researcher happens to have loaded on him for the day, so we won't be seeing Leos in our homes pushing buttons and flipping switches for us any time soon. But it was a fascinating glimpse into how I might some day interact with a robot in my house. Hopefully the infinite loops will have been fixed by then.

I finally had time to read Robin Marantz Henig's 8000-word piece on sociable robots in the New York Times Magazine. In the article, Henig, a contributing writer for the magazine, describes what scientists mean when they talk about "sociable robots," how such robots were designed to learn by interacting with their environments, and what are the issues involving robot learning, robot emotion, and robot boyfriends.

Henig does a great job explaining how the robots work, sometimes by "peeking behind the curtain" -- the robots are mostly MIT robots, old and new, including the metal torso Cog, the bushy-eyebrowed Kismet, the talkative head Mertz, the mop-topped Autom, the Gremlinlike Leonardo, the skyscraperish Domo, and the rubbery bulgy-eyed Rodney (OK, joking about this last one).

More interesting, perhaps, Henig describes instances in which the robots misbehave, or work in a somewhat disappointing way, and hey, that's how engineering happens in the real world, so it was neat to see that in the article as well (by the way, I loved the cover headline, which to me captures the essence of this emerging field: "It Understands (Sort Of)." An excerpt:

Today’s humanoids are not the sophisticated machines we might have expected by now, which just shows how complicated a task it was that scientists embarked on 15 years ago when they began working on a robot that could think. . . . They are, instead, hunks of metal tethered to computers, which need their human designers to get them going and to smooth the hiccups along the way.

But these early incarnations of sociable robots are also much more than meets the eye. Bill Gates has said that personal robotics today is at the stage that personal computers were in the mid-1970s. . . . In much the same way, the robots being built today, still unwieldy and temperamental even in the most capable hands, probably offer only hints of the way we might be using robots in another 30 years.

After reading the article, I wanted to see some of those machines in action, and it's just great you can find so many videos of them (the Times posted a bunch on the article's web page). But as a writer myself I also wanted to know more about Henig's experience writing the article. Having just returned from vacation, she was kind enough to promptly answer my questions -- thanks, Robin! (Follow the link below to read the Q&A.)

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.

One of my coworkers, Mike Cimpher, built this little biped in 2001. He says it consists of "12 servos, 2 ICs and an accelerometer." Being an artist as well, his video does a really neat job of showing the transition of development -- from something that falls apart all the way to something that stands up and walks.

MIT grad student Conor Walsh and the leg exoskeleton he and other researchers have developed. [Photo: Samuel Au / MIT News]

MIT researchers have created a wearable robotic exoskeleton to help soldiers carry heavier loads on their backpacks. Powered legs like those could one day help elderly and disabled people gain more mobility and carry things around more easily, but since this is DARPA funded work soldiers have priority. Sorry, grandma.

The MIT exoskeleton consists of a pair of mechanical legs with a mounted backpack frame. The mechanical legs strap to the user's own legs and support much of the pack's weight by transferring it to the ground. The MIT researchers, led by Hugh Herr at Media Lab's Biomechatronics Group, report in the September issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics that their prototype can take on 80 percent of an 36-kg load carried on a person's back.

And how does it work?

I've had it in my mind for some time that my grandparents could really benefit from a robotic companion -- someone to let them know when one of the grandkids has emailed, to remind them to take their meds (even to go get the pills for them), to keep an eye on their health and safety, and so on. And I knew Japan, among other Asian countries, has really been at the forefront of this research.

But I wasn't expecting to learn today that robots seem to be less exciting to the elderly than expected. Apparently, the Ifbot in question spent a month entertaining the residents of a nursing home before they got bored with it. What has been successful, however, are lower-tech products like the i-pot send an update to family every time someone makes tea with it, to show that Grandma or Grandpa is up and around. Really interesting reading for anyone considering the elder care market.

Thanks for the tip, Gui!

Paleo-Future, a wonderful blog that offers a "look into the future that never was," unearthed a 1986 article in The Futurist magazine about the future of personal robots. The future as envisioned in 1986, that is.

The Futurist article, which includes a photo of an Omnibot carrying snacks to a smiling couple [right], makes for an entertaining read, saying at one point that "future robots will be complete home-entertainment centers, able to sing and dance and tell jokes..."

Well, unfortunately a future of pervasive snack-fetching, dancing robots roaming around the house is is not quite here yet. It appears that one big obstacle has been making the darned machines autonomous, capable of doing things -- entertaining the kids, loading the dishwasher, or whatever -- all by themselves.

Maybe the way to go is using humans to control the robots? iRobot's new ConnectR "virtual visiting" robot is one example. It's a kind of mobile teleconference device to be remote controlled by that absent parent always on a business trip. Another example are Anybots humanoids, also designed to be operated remotely by a person (in this case an outsourced servant in a faraway country).

Check back in 20 years to see which personal robots made it to the living room.

PS: On a forecasting-the-future related note, Spectrum has its share of brilliant and embarrassing predictions, many of which you can see in the "Write & Wrong" article that appeared in our 40th anniversary special issue.

Thanks, SKM!

An article in PC magazine last week called "Robot Consumers, Grow Up!" explains why US consumers just aren't ready for the kinds of robots that Asia will be producing. The conclusion is that the consumer robotics market will not take off with things like Roomba or Aibo. Instead, robotic technology will be embedded into everything we use every day and the consumers will never notice that "the robots have won." I think the article is overall a little pessimistic, but here are a few interesting comparisons:

Part of the problem is the Western world's relatively short history with robots. Most people point to Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), a science-fiction play that premiered in 1921, as the first use of the term and America's introduction to robots. We should take a cue from the Japanese. In the book Loving the Machine, author Timothy N. Hornyak explains that robots (or at least automatons) have been part of the Japanese culture for hundreds of years. They're seen as friends, helpers, entertainers, and companions. They've always resembled their creators.

American consumers fixate on anthropomorphism and generally find androids and even android pets grotesque. You won't find a lifelike robot receptionist in the U.S., but there are already many at work in Japan.

If iRobot had made a 4-foot-tall Roomba with a face and a hand to hold a vacuum hose, the company wouldn't have sold more than ten units. Instead, it sold more than two million Frisbee-shaped, personality-free bots.

There's also an interesting statement later in the article that "American robot consumers have yet to comprehend the cost of the programming and mechanical complexity necessary to create effective, realistic, interactive robots." So that's something to think about, especially when, as a robotics geek, I'm always so involved with how cool the thing I'm making is that I don't stop to think whether others appreciate how it came to be. And it also leads me into another article...

Network World talks today about a robot "amusement park" opening in South Korea. From the article:

"[O]fficials said they consider robotics to be one of South Korea's key growth industries, emphasizing "service robots" that can clean homes and offer up entertainment. The robotics industry has grown about 40% a year since 2003, officials said. ... The parks will feature a number of attractions that let visitors interact with robots and test new products."

So the first question is whether or not this would be successful in South Korea -- obviously, the government and a group of investors think it will be no problem. But if we step back and consider the first article about American robot consumers, would something like this ever fly in the US (or in the Western world, for that matter)?

Cars aren't enough for Toyota -- just like Honda, they're making robots. Both Honda and Toyota, based in Japan, are trying to address the concerns of the aging populace and relatively low birthrates that will result in lots of elderly needing care, and not enough people to provide it. Both companies are focusing on development of humanoid robots with a lot of dexterity, which Toyota consistently demonstrates by having the robots play musical instruments.

The newest addition to Toyota's line of Partner Robots is a violin-playing bot that demonstrates new developments in manipulation and dexterity, which are essentially to working with small objects in a standard human environment. Many of the partner robots can walk, though one is wheeled, and some can carry on simple conversations. Eventually the goal is to have these piloted in nursing homes and hospitals with the elderly to see how they do, and Toyota says they want to have them in homes in 2010.

How realistic is that? The Partner robots (and Asimo) are both still largely tele-operated and incredibly expensive. So much work goes into recreating human balance, manipulation, size, shape, and aesthetics that getting a product to market is delayed perhaps much further than a robot less humanoid and more specialized -- is that the right path to be taking? Will the humanoid form make adoption easier or more difficult?

Here's a video with a good closeup of the robotic hand on the violin. It is definitely impressive. Incidentally, it may not be as much of a robot, but I have to say also that the way the wheelchair deals with the bump in the road is amazing as well.

Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year is almost upon us. Time for a look at the past year’s new robots and to pick some winners!

Candidates include, among many others, WowWee's Dragonfly, Roboquad and Elvis robots, the iRobot Create, the Sony Rolly only available in Japan, Ijspeert's salamander robot locomoting in and out of water, Dean Kamen's prosthetic robotic arm, the SARCOS exoskeleton doubling as a remote controlled android, Honda's Asimo with its latest skill of serving tea as well as countless humanoid toys like the i-SOBOT.

The Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has already gone ahead and named their robot of the year 2007: A handling system by FANUC Ltd with M-430iA robot arms and visual tracking (check out a video clip). Their runner-ups include a host of industrial and service robots.

I've decided to give naming a "Top 3 of 2007" a shot and held a long debate - mostly with myself as I will admit - to pick my personal favorites. My kinds of robots are not those on the factory floors, but those you and I can see and interact with out on the streets, in offices or in our homes. And after some consideration, all the new humanoids didn't make my list - they may have the greatest potential, but I think they are still very far from being useful beyond amusement and are simply way too expensive. Here are the 3 that did make my list of favorite robots in 2007:

3. BeatBot's Keepon
The toy robot Keepon developed by the BeatBots project, Keepon dances to music (make sure to check out the video). Similar to last year's hilarious Tickle Me Elmo robot, Keepon is based on a simple idea, a simple design, but is fantastically well done. Somebody please tell me why they won't sell it!

2. Ugobe's Pleo
Another toy – but hey, that’s where consumer robotics stands in 2007. But the Pleo is an exceptionally cool toy: The baby dino uses an impressive sensor suite in combination with an AI that allows it to develop distinct personalities according to user interactions. Pleo performs a large range of actions, including trembling in fear, wagging its tail and dancing with happiness, playing dead and sneezing - and you can train it! With the long awaited Pleo, the people at Ugobe have reached a new level of user interaction and - as some people claim - intelligence for a robot toy.

1. The DARPA Urban Challenge Robots
For me the title for robot of the year 2007 goes to the winners of the Urban Challenge. Winners, because three robots performed exceptionally well: Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing robot Boss, Stanford racing team's Junior and Virginia Tech's Victor Tango. Although their times in the race differed, all three robots far exceeded expectations. And thinking back to the first Grand Challenge in 2004, it is truly unbelievable how far robot technology has advanced in this field.

Miss a robot in the list? Disagree with my judgment? Or ready to compile your own top 3, 4, 5, ... 10? Feel free to post your comments!

I've long been a little skeptical of Wowwee, makers of the Robosapien. Their black and white toys seemed rather basic and the little dog I have didn't appear to be much advanced beyond the walking and mooing cow I had when I was a toddler (my first robot. It annoyed my parents so much they removed the batteries and told me it died. I've never gotten over it). Frankly, they just seemed boring.

I am very pleased to report that I have been proven wrong. Wowwee's next generation of robot toys on display here at CES are, in a word, awesome.

My favorite is Robosapien's newly developed girlfriend, the Femisapien.

PLEN is "the world's first desktop-sized humanoid robot", according to its creators at Systec Akazawa in Japan. PLEN comes in a kit full of parts to assemble your own little humanoid, including accessories like rollerskate feet, and with software that allows you to develop, save, and upload your own unique motions. You then control PLEN through Bluetooth-enabled devices like cell phones or PDAs. Below, PLEN demonstrates his skating prowess. (Here's another video of him, kicking a ball)

Spiegel Online reports on an EU DEXMART-funded research project at the University of Naples to design and build a robot that makes coffee and picks up clothes. The robot, named Justin [the Spiegel article incorrectly calls it "Justine"], is supposed to be one step in developing a multitasking household robot. From the article:

The €6.3-million ($9.3 million) project aims to develop robots that can use two arms simultaneously and in harmony, as opposed to current robots, which only have the technological complexity to handle "one-armed" tasks.

This goal is interesting to compare with the predictions of iRobot cofounder Colin Angle, who predicts that we will instead see more specialized robots like the Roomba -- an armless, not at all humanoid robot. Will Justine control Roomba some day? Or is one more likely to take off as a new paradigm than the other?

Of course, we should really be focusing on the important question, which is: is this coffee-making robot programmed in Java?