Robotics of the future

Its amazing how the world has evolved from a crappy old black and white Nokia with snake, to iPhones within a 10 year period. Now its time for robotic evolution; robots that do our daily chores or maybe even act as surrogates. Talking about Nokia, on my next post i will be talking about their new invention, a flexible phone!

So today i have brought you 3 different articles all written by Alex Knapp (Forbes).

Robots Are Learning To Take Care Of Pets

(Photo credit: Jessica McConnell Burt/The GeorgeWashington University)

Over at the University of Pennsylvania, robotics researchers have taught the Willow Garage PR2 to pick up dog leavings, so you don’t have to.

But now researchers at George Washington University are taking that pet-care robotics research one step further – they’re teaching PR2 robots to walk dogs and play fetchwith them.

Ask For a Sandwich and This Robot Will Go to Subway For YouAlex KnappForbes Staff

Robots as Surrogates for the DisabledAlex KnappForbes Staff

The students proposed tasks that they would tackle, first in simulation and then in the real world with the robot,” Dr. Drumwright explained. Most of students chose pet-related tasks—things a robot would do in the course of taking care of a pet. Mr. Zapolsky proposed teaching the robot to walk a dog. Ph.D. student James Taylor worked on a “fetch” game, where the robot would throw a ball for a pet to retrieve. And Ph.D. student Roxana Leontie developed a program that would allow the robot to carry items without stable centers of gravity—say, bottles of water or half-filled bags of pet kibble.

[...]

Mr. Zapolsky said the course was appealing because he had taken a lot of advanced mathematics courses and was interested in applying what he’d learned. One of his biggest challenges during the semester was learning several programming languages as a first step, before he could even begin working on simulations for the robot. And his dog-walking problem was one of the most complex of the semester.

“Walking a dog is a difficult concept, since dogs are variable creatures,” he said. “You’re not just dragging a dog—they’re in front of you but still following you. You realize how smart dogs are when you try to get a robot to do it. So it’s turned into a project about walking a robot.”

This is a pretty fascinating project, that both illustrates some of the cool things that we can do with robots. But it also illustrates just how difficult robotics programming still is. That said, I do love Willow Garage’s PR2 because it’s where I think a part of the future of robotics is going – general purpose robots that are capable of doing lots of things, rather than specialized robots for particular tasks.

Let’s just hope that they don’t turn dogs against us in the inevitable robot apocalypse. We need those dogs to let us know when a person is really a Terminator.

Ask For a Sandwich and This Robot Will Go to Subway For You

A PR2 (Image by robbie_shade via Flickr)

Longtime readers know that I’m a fan of Willow Garage’s PR2 robot, which is being used all over the world for robotics research. It’s also been used in student projects to perform tasks that seem relatively simple for humans, but are actually rather hard for robots, including baking cookies, solving Rubik’s cubes, and doing the laundry.

Now here’s an even more interesting piece of programming. A team of researchers from both University of Tokyo and Technische Universität München have joined forces to develop what they’re calling “semantic search” for use with the PR2. Evan Ackerman explains:

“Semantic search” is simply the ability to make inferences about an object based on what is known about similar objects and the environment. It sounds complicated, but it’s really just a computerized version of what we humans think of as “common sense.” For example, if someone asks you to bring them a cup without telling you exactly where the cup is, you’re probably clever enough to infer that cups can be found in drawers or cabinets or dishwashers, and that drawers and cabinets and dishwashers are all usually located in a kitchen, so you can go to the kitchen, poke around for a little bit, and find a cup. Semantic search allows robots to do the same sort of thing.

Now that’s a pretty innovative piece of programming. What’s more interesting is that it will also learn. So if you store something in a room not normally associated with the object – say, your phone chargers in the hall closet – it will learn to associate phone chargers and the hall closet.

You can see a demo of the PR2 with semantic search below. Here, the robot is given a simple command – to get a sandwich. It first checks the kitchen, fails to find a sandwich, and then goes somewhere else where sandwiches are found – the local Subway. It even knows what floor to take the elevator to. Check it out.

Robots as Surrogates for the Disabled

Robotics company Willow Garage has teamed up with the Healthcare Robotics Group at Georgia Tech on a project they’re calling Robots for Humanity. For the first part of the project, they’re working with Henry Evans, who is a mute quadriplegic after suffering a stroke. He can, however, control one finger and the motion of his head, and that’s been enough for him to interface with one of Willow Garage’s PR2 robots. Here’s how Willow Garage puts it:

Last year, Henry caught a TV interview of Georgia Tech Professor Charlie Kemp showing research with the Willow Garage PR2 robot. Willow Garage and Professor Kemp were contacted by Henry shortly afterwards, and we have been collaborating since then.

We are currently exploring ways for Henry to use a PR2 robot as his surrogate. Every day, people take for granted the simple act of scratching an itch. In Henry’s case, 2-3 times every hour of every day he gets an itch he can’t scratch. With the aid of a PR2, Henry was able to scratch an itch for himself for the first time in 10 years.

While this is only a first step, it demonstrates how people with severe physical disabilities could use personal robots to gain independence. In another example, Henry recently used the PR2 to shave his cheek. We are actively researching ways for Henry and others to perform tasks like these on a daily basis.

This is a very cool use for robots, and hopefully one that can become more common in the years to come.

Below, you can check out a video of Henry using his PR2 to perform some of his everyday tasks: