Automaton

You can find information on the state of industrial robotics, but no one has before been able to quantitatively determine the size, demographics, or trends of the hobbyist side of robotics. With industry you can sample the major players and then extend those trends for a good estimate. However with hobbyists these traditional litmus test methods will not work. There are tens of thousands of us scattered around the world with no major players, so getting a statistically valid sample becomes a challenge.

As a robotics hobbyist I always search the web to research the project I am working on. If I were looking for a microcontroller, I'd browse the web on information about microcontrollers. If I were confused about a circuit, I'd browse around for schematics. Because robotics hobbyists use the web as support for anything they are working on, I reasoned the simplest way to measure them was to datamine the server logs.

I began my fairly popular robotics website around mid-2005, and currently get about 420K pageviews a month. My robotics YouTube channel has been around just as long, and has over 600K total views of all my videos.

Given these large numbers of visitors, my data collected should accurately represent the demographics of robotics hobbyists across the world.

Not only did I use Google Analytics and YouTube Insight, I also used Google Trends which tracks search rates of specific keywords. What I found definitely surprised me. Here is the executive summary of a robotics hobbyist:

- 17% are female

- most are aged below 20 or over 40

- those who are retired do not build robots

- India, Indonesia, and Thailand dominate robotics related searches, not the US

- 50% of robotics web traffic begins with a Google search

- 90% use Windows, 4% use Linux, 4.5% use Mac

- there are at least 50,000 robotics hobbyists worldwide

- media attention for robotics has increased every year

- Google searches on robotics terms have dropped more than ~40% in four years

That very last result was very surprising for me. It appears that people are simply searching Google less and less year on year about robotics and most robotics related terms. For example here is a graph of Google searches on microcontrollers:

Photo: www.societyofrobots.com

What does this very disturbing trend mean? Is the robotics field shrinking and becoming ever less popular?! I only have one theory . . .

I have provided my processed data and a deeper analysis of my findings on my Robot Hobbyist Trends 2008 report.

Automaton correspondent Marcel Bergerman, a systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, sent us this nice report about his mentoring experience with the FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics competition -- after which he became, as he puts it, "FLL-oholic."

I just came back from the FIRST Lego League (FLL) competition in Pittsburgh and I thought Iâ''d send you a note. FLL is the official FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) event for kids ages 9 to 13.

In 2006 and 2007 I was a research and software judge, and this year I was one of the mentors for a local school (Providence Heights Alpha).

I donâ''t want to exaggerate, but attending an FLL event should be in all the formal IEEE list of the â''100 things to do before you die.â''

Itâ''s 70 teams, some 700 children, who have to build and program a Lego NXT-based robot to solve an 18-mission game. Some missions are easier than others (e.g., pushing things around) but some are really challenging (e.g., turning a wheel that opens a houseâ''s window).

Robots can use a maximum of three motors plus a combination of touch, light, and ultrasound sensors. Itâ''s amazing what some teams are capable of creating, not only in terms of locomotion but mostly manipulation. You should see some of the powered appendices in some robots â''- itâ''s like graduate school-level robotics!

The programming environment, based on National Instruments's LabView, is amazingly simple to learn -â'' kids are writing programs within minutes of being introduced to it for the first time.

All of us in the robotics field should be indebted to FIRST and the people who organize FLL events, as they are fostering the next generation of roboticists. Our local guys are the never-tiring Robin Shoop and Norman Kerman, plus an amazing team of tens of volunteers. They ran the show like a clockwork, rotating teams in and out of competition pits some 200 times over the course of 6 hours. Congratulations Robin and Norman!

Now the real reason I am writing to you is this: If you ever considered mentoring an FLL team but are afraid that itâ''s too hard or you donâ''t have the knowledge necessary or you wonâ''t have time to put on a decent performance in 10 weeks (the time between the official release of the game and competition day) -â'' then you are roundly mistaken.

I know this sounds rude, but thatâ''s what happened to me. Ten weeks ago Robin invited us to join the competition, and I said no -â'' because I thought it was too hard and I didnâ''t have the knowledge and time to put on a decent performance. He insisted, and I am sooo glad he did.

The team (children and parents) decided to go for the challenge, met every Saturday for 3 hours, and guess what? The AlphaBots went home with two trophies in hand, second place in Software and fifth place overall.

The kids solved nine of the eighteen missions, and got a maximum score of 165 (out of some 380 possible points). At the end of their third (and last) round at the competition table the AlphaBots were screaming their lungs out, cheering for their robot and the two kids who play the game on behalf of the team. The sense of teamwork alone was worth all the effort.

And, of course, the two trophies will go nice on the shelves of a small private school in Western Pennsylvania. So pardon my redundancy, but I owe this to Robin â''- even if youâ''ve never seen or programmed an NXT, you can build a successful team in less than three months.

PS: I put a video of the AlphaBots in action at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mbergerm/public. Sorry that I donâ''t have videos of the other teams in action as well. The noisy adult screaming in the background is yours truly.

Photos: Carnegie Mellon University/The National Robotics Engineering Center/Robotics Academy

It's that time of year for cookies, lights, trees, gifts, and holiday cheer. What better way to celebrate than with robots?

Gifts

Last year we had our robot kit gift guide, and this year Spectrum's gift guide includes a few more robots. I've also become more familiar with MAKE Magazine's products this year (I'm currently using the MAKE controller for a project, and it's very easy to use) so I suggest poking around the MAKE robot kits store to see what they've got. And don't forget to wrap these goodies in robot wrapping paper.

Food

Decorate cookies made with these robot cookie cutters or make your own. I think I'd also enjoy gingerbread made in a Wall-E cake pan. (I suppose you could use it for fruitcake, too, if that's the sort of thing that floats your boat)

Decorations

I love this robot ornament, and of course you can find your favorite sci-fi robots in ornament form, and this robot menorah (found here) is kind of awesome.

What are your suggestions for making robots part of your holiday season?

PHOTO: Adriana M. Groisman/FIRST

In a Spectrum online article, Ray Almgren and Mark Walters, two execs at National Instruments, write about FIRST's new 32-bit PowerPC-based controller, which promises to make the competition even more ... competitive! From the article:

For the 2009 high school FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) competition beginning in January, a 32-bit PowerPCâ''based embedded controller is replacing the 8-bit microcontroller thatâ''s been used to run the robots for the past eight years. The event organizers expect that the technology will let more than 43 000 participating high school students tackle tougher challenges than those of previous years. The specific task the robots must perform while working against other robots will be announced on 3 January. Previous challenges included throwing balls into goals (Aim High), placing rings onto racks (Rack â''Nâ'' Roll), and stacking pyramids onto goals (Triple Play).

[...]

The new flexibility and processing power means that robots should be better able to handle the complex control and signal-processing algorithms required to operate autonomouslyâ''that is, without being â''drivenâ'' from the sidelines by handlers; in previous competitions, robots were required to spend 15 seconds operating autonomously, but one-third of the teams didnâ''t attempt to score during this period. The souped-up processing power also means that the robots will be able to handle more complex image data in real time, identifying shapes or doing optical character recognitionâ''they will be robots that can read.

Competitors will be able to program the CompactRIO controller using standard C++ language or a custom version of National Instruments Corp.â''s LabView graphical programming software, adapted specifically for the competition. The FIRST organization will in either case start the students out with built-in libraries of example codes and preprogrammed sequences. These resources will let teams get started developing the robots quickly, easing the learning curve. To exploit the full potential of the robots and win competitions, however, team members will have to come up with code of their own.

Read the rest of the storyhere.

The SGR-A1 sentry robot, developed by Samsung Techwin Co. for the South Korean government, uses a low-light ­camera and pattern recognition software to distinguish humans from animals or other objects and, if necessary, can fire its builtâ''in machine gun. (Read more.)

PHOTO: Kim Dong-Joo/AFP/Getty Images

In today's New York Times, Cornelia Dean writes about ethical concerns that the eventual arrival of autonomous robots to the battlefield raise. Can we design robots with killing capabilities that behave ethically -- perhaps even more ethically than humans -- and so never violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement?

Some may think it's preposterous to debate robot ethics in the battlefield when human ethics in the battlefield is a much bigger problem these days. That's a fair point, but it doesn't mean we can't address both issues. After all, the weaponized robots are coming.

As my blog colleague Mikell noted in an early post, "the bulk of military robotics has been oriented toward surveillance, security, and disposal of mines and IEDs -- situations where most everyone can agree that it's a good idea to keep a human out of the way." But, she added, "things are changing." In addition to missile-equipped drones, companies are now adding weapons payload options to ground robots. There's still a human at the trigger, but that could change soon. In the military robotics world, "autonomous" is a word you hear often.

Times' Dean interviewed a range of roboticists, philosophers, and other experts, and I thought it'd be a good idea to summarize their positions -- below, snippets from the Times story:

* â''My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can,â'' said Ronald C. Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, who is designing software for battlefield robots under contract with the Army.

* Randy Zachery, who directs the Information Science Directorate of the Army Research Office, which is financing Dr. Arkinâ''s work, said the Army hoped this â''basic scienceâ'' would show how human soldiers might use and interact with autonomous systems and how software might be developed to â''allow autonomous systems to operate within the bounds imposed by the warfighter.â'' ... â''It doesnâ''t have a particular product or application in mind,â'' said Dr. Zachery, an electrical engineer. â''It is basically to answer questions that can stimulate further research or illuminate things we did not know about before.â''

* [Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield in Britain] said he would ban lethal autonomous robots until they demonstrate they will act ethically, a standard he said he believes they are unlikely to meet. Meanwhile, he said, he worries that advocates of the technology will exploit the ethics research â''to allay political opposition.â''

* â''We donâ''t want to get to the point where we should have had this discussion 20 years ago,â'' said Colin Allen, a philosopher at Indiana University and a co-author of â''Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong,â'' published this month by Oxford University Press. ... In their book, Dr. Allen and his coauthor, Wendell Wallach, a computer scientist at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, note that an engineering approach â''meant to cover the range of challengesâ'' will probably seem inadequate to an ethicist. And from the engineerâ''s perspective, they write, making robots â''sensitive to moral considerations will add further difficulties to the already challenging task of building reliable, efficient and safe systems.â'' But, Dr. Allen added in an interview, â''Is it possible to build systems that pay attention to things that matter ethically? Yes.â''

* Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University, agrees. â''If we talk about training a robot to make distinctions that track moral relevance, thatâ''s not beyond the pale at all,â'' he said. But, he added, letting machines make ethical judgments is â''a moral issue that people should think about.â''

So they all appear to agree that battlefield robots can be designed to behave ethically, or at least they agree that we have to have this discussion now, which is a good thing. Still, most of the discussion is based on theoretical considerations or computer simulations. We're still a long way from being able to claim that a completely autonomous gun-totting robot, with lots of subsystems, loaded with thousands of lines of code, subject to unexpected, untested conditions, won't shoot the wrong thing, or person. Or worse, that it won't go completely rogue. That said, I'm an optimist when it comes to our engineering capabilities. We'll get there.

PS: And if we don't ... there might be other means of stopping the 'bots. Over at our neighbor blog Risk Factor, Bob Charette wrote about WAR Defence, a London startup developing "weapons systems against robots, detection and monitoring of robotic entities, and 'robo-viruses.' " As Charette noted, "I never thought of fighting future robots as an emerging career opportunity, but with the military involvement in robots, the singularity supposedly approaching, maybe ..."

I'm currently serving on the steering committee for the RICC, the Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference. The RICC, being planned by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (home of the US's first undergraduate robotics major) and currently sponsored by an NSF education grant, is designed to attract those students that were raised on FIRST, BEST, and BotBall and are looking for a new and different robotics challenge in college.

Unlike many robotics competitions, the RICC is meant to be a well-rounded event: not only must students design and build a robot, there will be a business and marketing component of the final deliverable. The focus is not on research lab developments, but rather on practical applications of robotics for actual markets. Small teams of undergraduate and graduate engineering students and, optionally, business students must submit their report, give a presentation, and demonstrate their robot in action at the RICC event.

In addition to the competition, there will be a one-day robotics conference with a keynote speaker and sessions that discuss topics like intellectual property, product design and development, and industry needs. The conference will also offer networking opportunities for students and industry sponsors.

The thought is that each year, the theme of the competition will change. This year's theme will be "Improving quality of life." Rules and specifications will be released on January 16th, 2009, with the competition taking place 7-8 November, 2009. This gives teams a chance to brainstorm and design throughout the spring and summer before the real push to build and write up the report during the first semester of the academic year.

Sound like something you're interested in? Sign up for the mailing list to make sure you're notified of changes, updates, and announcements.

Last Tuesday at the IEEE TePRA conference, former iRoboter and co-founder of Harvest Automation Joe Jones weighed in on the robotics design process and how a startup finds its market. Harvest Automation, as I mentioned a couple months ago, came out of stealth company Q Robotics, formed by a group of the original Roomba developers when they left iRobot. Jones is the CTO.

Harvest Automation's first and currently only product is a small mobile robot that picks up and moves potted plants in nurseries. These nurseries are extremely large -- much like fields in commercial farms -- and the potted plants have to be spaced evenly on a black plastic surface. If you imagine a worker picking up and moving these pots for ten hours on a hot summer day on a black surface, you can see why nursery owners have difficulty finding workers to do this. Enter the robots.

A view of the fields of potted plants at commercial nurseries. Photo courtesy Harvest Automation.

As this cnet article rightly points out, who wakes up one morning and decides, "Why don't I build a robot that moves plants?" The answer, said Jones, is "no one." The design process doesn't start with the robot; it starts with identification of a market. Q Robotics (as they were at the time) started by searching out several untapped markets that still utilized manual labor in undesirable jobs. By going out on numerous on-site visits and researching the size of the markets, they found about 15 different leads before narrowing down their focus to these nurseries.

Next they had to establish the actual task. They knew how big the pots were and how they needed to be spaced; from there, it was relatively simple to design the mechanism that would allow a small mobile robot to find, pick up, move, and set down a potted plant. They also needed to determine what they *wouldn't* be able to do: move the plants from, say, a flatbed truck onto the ground. Humans can continue to do that, or perhaps another automated system; but limiting the tasks was just as important as determining what they were in the first place.

Harvest Automation's prototype robot. Photo courtesy Harvest Automation.

A number of problems still face Harvest Automation's design. For example, Jones mentioned that a single robot would work a full "shift" and that it would move at roughly the same speed as a walking human. While he didn't indicate how long a shift is, if we assume it to be like a human's -- eight hours -- these robots will have some demanding power requirements that will only be fulfilled by heavy and probably expensive batteries. However, these are technical challenges that can be overcome; Jones and his engineers already know they have a market and they know these folks are willing to buy (in fact, he mentioned that some of these nurseries have already put up small amounts of funding to continue the development).

Jones brought this process up again on a panel the next day. When the panel was asked what technologies are limiting practical robotics development, Jones said that the technology is there -- the question at this point is how to put it together the right way for new applications. If wannabe-startups can focus on the applications instead of the technology itself, they could have a lot of success.

In 1924 George Antheil, a "bad boy" of music, composed a piece of music called the Ballet Mecanique which, due to the complex synchronization between player pianos that it required, Antheil never heard performed as composed during his lifetime. Robotic technology has enabled music technologist Paul Lehrman to complete the Ballet and allow it to be performed as originally written.

Lehrman is a professor at Tufts University where he teaches a course called Electronic Musical Instrument Design. It's a combination of music and engineering where students work on projects like musical shoes and MIDI ties. In the 90s, Lehrman was approached to use MIDI technology to automate the synchronized player pianos required to perform the Ballet.

The Ballet was finally performed several times when, in 2006, the National Gallery in DC decided they wanted a full installation that could perform the piece daily. Since comissioning human musicians to play daily would have been prohibitively expensive, Lehrman teamed up with Eric Singer of LEMUR, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Together they roboticized the entire orchestra for the Ballet and the installation became an extremely popular attraction at the National Gallery. Today at the TePRA Conference Lehrman described how earlier this year, the robotic orchestra provided the musical score to a theatrical production called Frequency Hopping, about Hedy Lemarr and George Antheil. (Note: If you don't know about Hedy Lamarr's contributions to spread spectrum radio technology, read the Wikipedia article I linked there.)

Anyway, below is the video. It is ... noisy. I'm loving the automation, though -- how great to see technology so integral to a modern art installation!

I'm currently at the inaugural IEEE TePRA conference in Woburn, Mass. The TePRA conference allows researchers to present on the technologies they've developed that are enabling low-cost practical robots to be commercialized. The technical program covers vision systems, manipulators, multi-robot applications, navigation and control, and more. Check back for reports on the cool stuff being shown (I just heard something about a robotic musical installation...)

Two sister projects, both funded under EU's Seventh Framework Programme spanning from January 2008 to 2013, are investing heavily in swarm robotics research.

Although not yet realized, swarm robotics has numerous advantages such as:

1) system failure resistance by high redundancy

2) the ability to conquer goals only possible through teamwork

3) mass manufacturability with low per unit costs, etc.

It is the goal of these two projects to research and develop the technology needed to make each advantage a reality.

The Symbrion project has four distinct goals: to create a "platform for exploring artificial evolution and pervasive evolve-ability," develop the required computational on-board resources, support artificial immunology and embryology research, and manufacture a "large number of light modules."

The Replicator project also has four distinct goals: to create an "intelligent, reconfigurable and adaptable 'carrier' of sensors," build a "sensors- and communication-rich platform," ensure high-reliability in an open-ended environment, and manufacture a "medium number of heavy modules."

For a quick summary of the various prototype platforms and current research, check out this video of their past work:

One major challenge the researchers point out is miniaturized power sources. As batteries are scaled down, so is the voltage and charge capacity. Their smallest robot, the I-SWARM bot, draws power from a tiny solar cell, while their larger Jasmine machines use a battery.

Being incredibly small also limits computational capacity. Their current onboard processor has just eight kilobytes of program memory and two kilobytes of RAM, although typical of modern microcontrollers used by most hobbyists.

For more info, see the image gallery, many informative videos, and their publications.