2010 has been quite a year for our gear-driven robot friends. Here's our review of the year's
robot news. ----------------
We start with Simon, a robot developed by the Georgia Institute of Tecnology. Simon
has been taught to recognize items and drop them into corresponding bins. Right now that
makes him good for robot-aided recycling, but the university has bigger plans.
Andrea Thomaz, Assistant professor, Georgia Institute of Tecnology.
"We’re interested in robots you could have in your house and don’t have to be preprogrammed
with everything that you would want them to do and you could teach them new things to
do around the house."
And just in case Simon goes haywire, there’s an emergency shut off button.
-----------------
Another robot with sights set on the home is Intel's Herb.
SIDDHARTHA SRINIVASA, SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST, INTEL RESEARCH PITTSBURGH
"Our goal is to really enable robots to move away from the factory floor, from structured
environments like that, into the home. And one of the hardest things about a home is
that it's highly unstructured. Things are all over the place."
Intel is building algorithms that enable Herb to figure out things around the home. It's
based on a Core i7 Quad-core laptop running Linux and has a spinning laser that maps 40,000
points a second to build a 3D model of its surroundings.
SIDDHARTHA SRINIVASA, SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST, INTEL RESEARCH PITTSBURGH
You or I might not want to get a robot that takes 10 minutes to go get us a beer, but
there are people, like paraplegics in a wheelchair, whose entire life depends on not dropping
the remote. And so a robot like this that can let them live independently for longer
is extremely useful.
Intel doesn't want to sell robots: It buys parts and builds robots like HERB so it can
develop better algorithms.
-----------------
We've all had meetings we'd rather not attend. If you have $15,000 lying around, next time
you can send an Anybot robots.
The obot functions as a seeing and hearing replacement for yourself. It can roll around
the office as you operate it through a Web browser from your home. With a Wi-Fi connection
and a video camera and a speaker in the head of the bot, you can converse with work colleagues
from a remote location, while you can hear and see them.
-----------------
A few years ago we had Paro, the seal bot that was intended to stimulate the eldery
at nursing homes. This year Fujitsu came up with a teddy bear bot. The robot can recognise
people and objects and even act accordingly.
If you smile, it smiles back.
If you wave, it waves back.
And when all the play is done, it even gets sleepy.
-----------------
In Japan, Panasonic's Evolta robot completed a 500 km, two-month journey from Tokyo to
the ancient capital of Kyoto. Designed to promote Panasonic's batteries, the robot previously
completed a 24-hour endurance race around Le Mans and climbed to the top of the Grand
Canyon.
Tomotaka Takahashi Designer, Panasonic Evolta robot
The first one only took six hours, the second one took 24 hours. This time it's a couple
of months, much much longer and much much harder.
-----------------
Also breaking records, Cornell University claimed a world record by getting this robot
to walk for non-stop for 23 kilometers, that's about 14.3 miles.
The robot managed the feat in 10 hours, 40 minutes and 48 seconds journey before it literally
collapsed.
A team of about 60 students worked on the record-breaking effort, including a controller
who kept the robot on course and steered it with a model-airplane remote control.
-----------------
General Motors' Robonaut 2 had a much loftier target in 2010. The robot was to become the
first non-human member of a space mission and blast into orbit on Shuttle mission STS-133
in November.
Scott Higginbotham, NASA Payloads Specialist "R2 is a humanoid-like robot, he's quite big,
he looks like an NFL linebacker, but just from the torso up and he has hands and fingers
just like a human. We're taking him up and we're going to run through some tests on orbit
to see how well a humanoid-like robot can serve as an aid to the astronauts."
Unfortunately the Shuttle mission has been delayed to 2011, so for now Robonaut 2 remains
grounded.
-----------------
On four wheels and Mitsubishi Motors turned to robotic technology to give test-drives
a new twist. In November the company offered U.S. drivers a chance to take its new Outlander
Sport for a test drive online. It rigged a test vehicle with robotic control systems
so it can be remotely controlled via the Internet. Cameras inside the car will send back live
images to drivers.
Mitsubishi says that participants will be able to enjoy the feeling of being in the
driver's seat, even though they might be thousands of miles away.
-----------------
And one of the most impressive we saw this year was Panasonic's hair-washing robot. It
wets, washes, massages and rinses with 16 electronically controlled fingers. The robot
is a little smaller than a washing machine and can run automatically from start to finish
in about 3 minutes.
So is it the ultimate toy for the lazy? Not quite.
Panasonic hopes the robot will be useful in hospitals and care facilities, where it can
lighten the load of busy workers.
-----------------
From Bremen University, a robot soccer team invaded this year's Cebit IT show. You won't
find these guys in the Bundesliga, but they were the reigning 2009 robot world cup champions.
The pace of the game is a bit slow, the robots aren't great runners, but they are autonomous
deciding their moves without any human control.
Tobias Kastner, University of Bremen "Our software is open-source so we have opened
it for everyone to access, it can be downloaded on our Web site."
The robots are based on the French Nao platform, so anyone can download the control software
and tinker with it. If you do that, the teams needs a hand in one area: it doesn't have
a goalkeeper program yet. -----------------
And that's the year in robots. To see the full reports on all these robots, check out
the 2010 Robots playlist on the YouTube channel.
In Tokyo I'm Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Video:
IDG News Service
PC World
Cornell University
Intel
Mitsubishi Motors
NASA
Panasonic
Production and editing: Martyn Williams