Robot prepares tea at CeBIT

Fair visitors look at the humanoid robotic system "Rollin' Justin" preparing a tea on March 2, 2009 at the world's biggest high-tech fair CeBIT in Hanover, central Germany.

Twendy-One demonstrates robo-dexterity!

Twendy-One demonstrates its ability to hold delicate objects by manipulating a drinking straw between its fingers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering laboratory in Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009. The sophisticated robot has been developed by the university's team, led by Dr. Shigeki Sugano, in hope of supporting people in aging societies.

Welcome to the robot revolution

Much like the then-fledgling PC industry in the late 1970s, the robotics industry is on the cusp of a revolution, contends the head of Microsoft Corp.'s robotics group.

Today's giant, budget-bending robots that are run by specialists in factories and on assembly floors are evolving into smaller, less-expensive and cuter machines that clean our carpets, entertain us and may someday take care of us as we grow old. The move is akin to the shift from the mainframe world of the 1970s to the personal computers that invaded our offices and homes over the past 20 to 25 years.

"The transition is starting," said Tandy Trower, general manager of Microsoft's 3-year-old robotics group. "It's like we're back in 1977 -- four years before the IBM PC came out. We were seeing very primitive but very useful machines that were foreshadowing what was to come. In many ways, they were like toys compared to what we have today. It's the same with robots now."

Trower said many countries are making significant investments in robotics, and advances are beginning to multiply. Robotic aids and companions -- some looking like an updated version of R2-D2 and others more humanoid -- will begin moving into our homes in three to five years as technology advances and prices drop, he predicted.

"Robots are really an evolution of the technology we have now," Trower said. "We're just adding to our PCs, really. We're letting them get up off our desks and move around. They're evolving into something you will engage with and will serve you in your life someway."

Some, experts though, are hesitant to talk of revolutions, especially in an industry that has seen many promises made that have yet to materialize.

James Kuffner, an associate professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, warns that any revolution could be lengthy, as robots likely won't soon be doing dishes and walking dogs for about 20 years.

"People ask me when they'll have a Jetsons-like robot walking around their house," Kuffner said. "I tell them the first gas-powered engine was built in 1885, but it took until 1915 before a large segment of the population could afford a car. When that happened, society was transformed. In the 1950s, the first computers were built, but it wasn't until the early '80s when the personal computer came on the scene. And, of course, it completely transformed society."

Kuffner said the he believes the robot revolution countdown should start in 1996 when Honda Motor Co. released the P2, a self-contained, life-size humanoid machine. Going by historical example, a good portion of the population could have a robot in the home by 2026, he said.


"The Roomba vacuum cleaner is often seen as the first successful home robot, but it's pretty limited," Kuffner added. "So, sure, you can say we have robots in our homes. But a humanoid robot like you see in Hollywood movies, designed to perform a large number of tasks without special programming or tuning? In about 20 years."

Neena Buck, an independent robotics analyst based in Cambridge, Mass., said agreed that the robotics business will take off, but that it will be some time before humanoid robots are washing cars or dancing. First, she said, there will be single-task robots for house cleaning and the like, and exoskeletal robots to help people with infirmities.

"A Jetsons robot -- I don't think that's how it will happen," she said. "Maybe people need to change their vision of a robot."

Trower told Computerworld that robotics has been slow to grow in recent years because of the lack of a standard software platform -- the very thing Microsoft Corp. mandated he create.

The Microsoft robotics group, which is tasked with generating profits within three to five years, is now updating its Robotics Studio software, which includes a tool set and a set of programming libraries that sit on top of Windows. The studio also includes a programming language and a simulator, so that developers can first try out programs in a virtual world. The latest version of the studio platform is slated to ship by the end of this year, according to Trower.

"The robotics industry needs portability," said Trower. "There's been no standard. We wanted to make it easy for the industry to bootstrap itself. I truly think software is holding the robotic industry back."

Software was definitely holding back graduate students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in their quest to build a new version of the school's uBot robot.

Bryan Thibodeau and Patrick Deegan are both graduate students who have been building the fifth generation of uBot, dubbed uBot-5, a two-wheeled, two-armed robot that can maintain its balance.

The developers said they expect to save significant time during the development of uBot 6 due to the use of Robotics Studio in their current project. "We can transfer applications we've written before for this to other robots," said Deegan. "This is the fifth generation, and we had to write code from scratch every time. The next time, we won't. It'll save us tons of time -- probably six months minimum. Now, we can start from here and keep going."

During a demonstration of the uBot-5, Thibodeau said that the developers will spend a lot less time simply reinventing the wheel. "Now we can focus on doing more, instead of doing the same thing over again," he added.

Deegan and Thibodeau noted that they hope the uBot will eventually be used to help care for the growing elderly population, helping them stay in their homes longer and more safely.

With two arms that one day could open a door, two wheels to move it about a home, and a rotating torso and touch screen that could enable it to "look" about its environment, Trower called uBot-5 is a good example of what's likely the next generation of in-home robots.

"The idea of dexterous manipulation makes a difference," said Trower. "It would be able to interact with things in the home environment, load the dishwasher, fold clothes. Once it has two arms, it opens up a huge variety of possibilities."

A touch screen that sits on the uBot-5's shoulders could act, for example, as a sort of portal for an elderly woman living alone. If the woman fell and was unresponsive, the robot could be programmed to recognize the problem and alert emergency response services. Her doctor could access the robot through his computer, see what the robot sees and speak to the woman through the robot. His face could appear on the screen, making it more natural for the two to talk to each other, using the robot as the conduit.

Richard Doherty, research director at The Envisioneering Group, a market research firm n Seaford, N.Y., said progress in the robotics industry could be limited or slowed because people will be afraid of losing their jobs -- such as a home care assistant -- to robots.

"In this country, people are afraid for their jobs. They don't want to see a robotic coffee maker or robots that could change your oil … or take care of the elderly," said Doherty. "It's job inertia. … We need to see robots in a different light. We need people to understand that this machine could help care for their grandmother."


This is exactly the kind of aid and companionship that one artificial intelligence researcher expects to see from robots in the coming years. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher whose book, Love and Sex with Robots, was released last November, said in a previous interview that robotics will make such dramatic advances in the coming years that humans will be marrying robots by the year 2050.

"Robots started out in factories making cars. There was no personal interaction," said Levy, who is also an international chess master who has been developing computer chess games for years. "Then people built mail-cart robots, and then robotic dogs. Now robots are being made to care for the elderly. In the last 20 years, we've been moving toward robots that have relationships with humans, and it will keep growing toward a more emotional relationship, a more loving one and a sexual one."

While iRobot Corp.'s Roomba may be a vacuum cleaner and not a companion, Trower noted that people who own the robots identify with them, often naming them, drawing faces on them and even insisting that broken ones be repaired rather than replaced with a new machine.

"This is part of the evolution," said Trower. "We now see robots coming into people's lives and living with us. It's sneaking in and saying, 'Aren't I cute?'"

A New Generation of Service robots: The Care-O-Bot 3

Care-O-Bot 3 is a prototype of the next generation of service robots. Created by the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart, Germany, the 1.45 meter high robot has Stereo-vision color cameras, laser scanners and is aware of its surroundings. It can be controlled both manually and by spoken commands. The bot has a highly flexible arm which can pick up items without breaking them.

It moves on a platform with four separately steered and driven wheels that allow it to travel in any direction. The Care-O-bot can identify objects thanks to color cameras, laser scanners, and a 3D range camera. The camera allow it to be directed with hand gestures as well as spoken commands. It can also learn to recognize unfamiliar items like cups and bottles.

Thanks to the team from the Fraunhofer Institute, robotically-enabled laziness may soon be a reality.

Creating 'service robots'

Since human beings began to imagine robots - and the beginning was a 1920 Czech play called Rossum's Universal Robots, in which, yes, the machines do end up as our steely overlords - we've imagined them as mechanical, though perhaps more powerful, versions of ourselves.
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Think of Maria from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," Gort from "The Day the Earth Stood Still," C-3PO from "Star Wars," or the Terminator.

"It's very far from reality," said Ranjan Mukherjee, a professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan State University. "Human beings are very complex and making robots that are like human beings is not easy."

He knows what he's talking about. Mukherjee has received $247,000 in federal stimulus money to develop technology that could, among other things, allow two-legged robots to move more like humans: to climb stairs, walk on uneven ground, maybe even jump, tasks that even the most advanced robots can't do particularly well.

But, if everyday service robots are to become a reality, and Mukherjee believes they will, they will have to be able to operate in environments designed for humans. Meaning they should probably be able to handle the stairs.

"Most of the people working on bipeds" - that is, robots with two legs - "design them to walk on a flat surface," Mukherjee said. "Very few bipeds can climb stairs. We take that as the first challenge. Eventually, we would like to get to the point where it can handle undulated surfaces, uneven surfaces."


Consider the force
The reason robots aren't good with such surfaces has a lot to do with the way their movement is powered.

Most have motors that drive their movement that are along the lines of those that power electric fans. The power can be stronger or weaker, but it's more or less continuous.

What robots generally can't do is apply what are called impulsive forces: short, strong bursts of power that could allow them to make quick corrections when their balance shifts or when they encounter unexpected changes in terrain.

Humans do this all the time. When we jump from a height, for example, our muscles fire quick bursts of power that keep us from falling on our faces when we land.