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.

iRobot announced two new products today, adding to their already pioneering line of home robots.

First up is the Looj, a gutter-cleaning bot. It's remote-controlled; that is, a user puts it up in a gutter, steps down the ladder, and from there directs its movement along a gutter, moving both forward and backward. From the website:

iRobot Looj uses a powerful 3-stage auger, spinning at 500 RPM, to break up sludge and clogs, lift out debris and brush your gutters clean. The hard plastic disruptors break apart clogs, while natural rubber ejectors lift and throw the debris from your gutters, finally, sturdy polypropylene bristles brush your gutters clean.

Gutter cleaners are all well and good, but I am REALLY excited about this next one: ConnectR, the Virtual Visiting robot. Thus spake iRobot:

ConnectR enables real-time virtual visits over the Internet. Equipped with high-quality audio and a video camera, the robot is located on-site in the home of the “host” party. Using a computer keyboard, mouse or joystick, the remote (“visiting”) party can drive the robot around and interact with those on-site, virtually participating in activities at home or wherever the device is located (for example, in the home of your grandchildren). The on-site host party can also direct the robot’s movements with a remote control.

The Looj is available now, but ConnectR isn't out yet -- and robot aficionados have the opportunity to be part of a pilot program this year. They'll choose pilot users from a pool of applicants here -- sign up!

Looj currently sells from $99 to $169, depending on the accessories. ConnectR will be $200 for those involved with the pilot program, and "just under $500" once it's on the market.

Images from irobot.com

A few months ago, I moved to an apartment with a backyard, and I was excited about barbecuing. But one thing stood between me and my kebabs: an unruly thicket of grass all over the yard.

I had never mowed a lawn, and I must say I wasn't thrilled about pushing a machine with rapidly spinning blades under a scalding sun. Then I found something that would do it for me.

No, it's not a goat—it's Robomow.

Last year for Christmas I got my parents an iRobot Scooba and Roomba kit, which they have insisted to me is possibly the best thing I have ever gotten them. In particular, they're crazy about their Scooba. I'd seen them use it once or twice, and I thought it was cool, but never ended up with one of my own. After a Black Friday Woot refurb deal for $99, though... well, I couldn't pass that up.

And so, my friends, let me tell you about why my Scooba is my new best friend. Review is after the jump.

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!

As a kid growing up in a pretty snowy area, part of the wintertime ritual was building a snow fort. Not being talented snow sculptors, one year my friends and I decided to make "bricks" by packing snow into recycling bins, pouring cold water over it, and using the resulting molded ice bricks to construct our forts. (Being kids, our patience for this lasted all of one brick, so the forts weren't a lot to write home about)

But behold! Japan brings us the robotic answer to not just your snow shoveling woes, but snow fort brickmaking as well!

Thanks, Rex!

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?

Professor Bruno Siciliano, of the Robotics and Automation Group
at the University of Naples, Italy, tells us that the autonomous two-armed robot his team is using to demonstrate such dexterous manipulation tasks as making coffee is a German creation.

The humanoid manipulator, he says, was developed by a team at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, which is part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Wessling, Germany.

Oh, and the robot is called Justin, not Justine -- "so it's a 'male' robot eventually," Siciliano adds.

Siciliano is the coordinator of the DEXMART project, an ambitious European Union-funded initiative to improve robotic dexterity and related fields. He says that DLR's Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, headed by Gerhard Hirzinger, is a partner in the project, which started this month.

Siciliano's team is using Justin "as one of the experimental platforms for dexterous and autonomous bimanual manipulation tasks." One of those tasks involves using the robot as a barista.

So, yes, the bot makes great coffee. But a more important question, raised by my blog colleague Mikell, remains unanswered: is it programmed in Java?

The world's robot population has reached 4.49 million, and that number should nearly double by 2010 to 8.37 million. That's one automaton for every person in Austria, whatever that means! But we've written about that already: we put together these numbers based on data from the latest edition of World Robotics, a survey by the International Federation of Robotics released late last year.

Now we're looking again at this number-filled report and highlighting some of its best stuff. We want to know: What kinds of robots are out there? Where are they toiling around? And how fast are the silicon-brained things multiplying?

First, a recap: The World Robotics study divides robots in two main categories: industrial robots and service robots. The first category includes welding systems, assembly manipulators, silicon-wafer handlers—you know, that kind of heavy, expensive, several-degrees-of-freedom stuff. The second category is divided in two subcategories: professional service robots (things like bomb-disposal bots, surgical systems, milking robots) and personal service robots (vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, all sorts of robot hobby kits and toys).

Below you'll find 10 statistics about the world's robotics market we thought you'd want to know. (All data from the World Robotics study except the world robot population figures -- see note [1] at the end.) The stats after the jump.

A Japanese friend pointed me to an article on the history of the Actroid robot series. I don't speak Japanese, but the article features 9 video clips showing the robot's incredible progression since 2003. The clip below shows a video of the actroid Repliee Q1 from April 2007.

The Actroid series is jointly developed by Japanese entertainment firm Kokoro and Hiroshi Ishiguro, well known for building a robot doppelgänger of himself. Kokoro offers the Actroids for rent to greet customers and provide information in up-market coffee shops, office complexes, and museums or "old houses".

Will life-like robots like these make for more cases like 33-year old Zoltan, who fell in love with and married a robot? [Editor's note: The previous two links lead to pages that contain adult material and language.] If the comments on the youtube page are any indication then that's a yes.

Thanks, Mototaka!