Automaton

I found out just recently about Vision Robotics, a company in California with a pretty broad range of products (or eventual products), but all of them are based on computer vision and SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) navigation technology.

Their agricultural products look pretty interesting; they're looking at developing a robot that can go through an orchard and pick ripe oranges off of trees, as well as one that can prune grape vines. The concept appears to be that one robot will scan the trees in each orchard row with its vision system, mapping out where each fruit is, while a second robot (I can't tell from the renderings if it's attached to the first one or not -- though they do like like two discrete modules) with the picking arms follows it and picks the fruit it has identified. I have to say, if anyone else is familiar with the Boomers from the anime Bubblegum Crisis, this thing looks terrifying.

I found out about Vision Robotics through a student at Olin College (my alma mater), where the company is sponsoring a senior project to develop an end-effector that can gently grasp and pick an orange off a tree without breaking the skin. The student also compared apples to oranges, pointing out that oranges contrast with the tree, while apples tend to blend in with the green leaves, making oranges an easier target for a vision system. Still, Vision Robotics does appear to be designing an apple picker as well.

On the home robots side, they've got patents on a vacuuming and mopping robot. Even though iRobot beat them to the punch on the concepts, Vision Robotics patented a design that uses a remote cleaning head that is much smaller and more mobile than the Roomba body; a module carrying power and other large, heavy components can stay out of the way while the connected cleaning head does its work. Unlike the Roomba, this robot (as conceived) also maps the room before vacuuming.

They also list an elder care "personal service" robot, though as with all of these elder care concepts developed in the US and Japan, their feasibility remains to be seen. The floor cleaning model is much better proven.

For anyone interested in moving to San Diego (or anyone already there), they list an open development position on their Careers page (linked at the bottom of their site).

Image source: www.visionrobotics.com

In this month's issue of Spectrum magazine, Erico covered the dispute between iRobot and Robotic FX bidding on the US Army xBot contract. Though the lawsuit is still in court, the Army has already moved: iRobot issued a press release this morning announcing that they had been awarded the contract. While iRobot's press release doesn't mention Robotic FX, they do acknowledge that they weren't just the lowest bidder:

"iRobot was selected to fulfill the contract as the lowest priced, technically qualified bidder deemed able to deliver as a responsible contractor."

This is a huge contract for iRobot. To date they've delivered about 1200 PackBots, and this contract could mean an order of up to 3000 over the next few years.

The folks at Kiva Systems pointed us to this little video they put together for the holiday season. Watch the 24 Kiva warehouse-automation bots dance to the tune of "March" from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker."

The robotic ballet, choreographed by Kiva's Ryan Gariepy and Rob Stevens, took place at the company's headquarters in Woburn, Mass. "We didn't really choreograph it," Stevens told us, "it was more free-form dance!"

This New York Times article describes how Mars Rover Spirit's wheel, which hasn't worked since March 2006, ended up scraping Martian dust off a patch of silica -- and when silica is found naturally on Earth, it is in one of two environments that "teem with microbial life." Scientists are still investigating the silica patch it found to see what we can learn from it.

Also of note, this January will mark the rovers' fourth birthday on Mars, well in excess of their original 90 day mission.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Thanks to The Sharper Image, holiday shoppers can now find all their robots conveniently assembled on four pages (technically, lightsabers and scooters are not robots, but the majority of the products listed certainly are). A big "Shop for Bots" banner on the home page leads you there. This is an interesting indication of how popular robots are becoming for the average consumer -- of all the products they sell, the robots get to share the front page with highly popular GPS units and audio gadgets.

It's also interesting that they're only selling "finished products" like Wowwee's toys and the Pleo rather than DIY kits like Mindstorms or Vex. These robots are going to reach a very different audience.

Researchers made Qrio giggle after kids touch it on the head. The result: endless giggling. Source: University of California, San Diego

You know that toddlers love to giggle. But did you know they love to giggle at robots that giggle?

In this Spectrum story, Morgen E. Peck reports that entertainment robots can charm toddlers for weeks, even months, and could be useful to teachers as educational assistants. Maybe these giggly robots could also become the babysitters of the future?

From the article:

Qrio, the dancing, bouncing, giggling robot spawn of Sony Corp., tried out its social skills on a group of children between 10 months and 24 months old at the Early Childhood Education Center at the University of California, San Diego, as part of a study on how children socialize with robots. The researchers found that the key to Qrioâ''s popularity was its ability to move and respond to the children in a way that was closely timed to the activity around it.

PS: As Spectrum reported a while ago, Qrio has done other impressive things in addition to entertaining toddlers. It "has played golf at a pro tournament in Hawaii, acted in the Japanese TV show 'Astro Boy,' danced and sung on stages from Las Vegas to Hong Kong, and even conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a rousing rendition of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony."

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.

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.

Scooba was the second home robot that iRobot introduced, the first being, of course, the Roomba (of which I am also a big fan). The one I have is part of that original series; the Scooba has undergone a slight update since then.

Before you Scooba, there's some room prep required -- move rugs and cords, pick up shoes and bags, move chairs if necessary. This step (and its analog with the Roomba) really seems to bother some people, but I'd be doing it anyway if I were mopping or Swiffering, so it seems like no big deal to me. If you want to constrain the area that Scooba can work in, you can use a virtual wall (a battery operated device about the size of a camera) that emits an invisible IR beam that Scooba can sense. This is particularly a good idea if you have smooth transitions between your tile/hardwood floor and some other surface. My parents' Scooba detects the edge of the carpet with its bump sensor with no problem, so they can do without the invisible wall, but they have a small curved metal thing (scientific term there) at the edge of the carpet that does it. Scooba also has the same cliff sensors to detect steps that the Roomba does, and they've always worked very reliably for me on both robots.

Scooba plugs into the wall to charge -- my parents have one with a battery charging cradle as well. Prepping the Scooba itself for washing is no big deal: remove the tank, fill up the "clean" tank with a few ounces of special Chlorox solution (vinegar works as well) and warm water, replace the tank, and hit go.

During its operation, Scooba does a couple of things. First it vacuums very lightly; I wouldn't recommend using it on your dirty carpet, but it did a nice job of picking up dustbunnies, stickers from Clementines, and crumbs that had fallen on the floor. Next, it lays down a thin layer of soapy water, which is then scrubbed up by a rubber brush. It leaves the floor a bit wet behind it, but that pretty quickly evaporates.

So at the end, you're left with a happily beeping robot with a full "dirty" tank. The after-maintenance is pretty quick: remove the tank, clean out the vacuum filter with a finger, and empty the water tank. I also wiped off the bottom with a paper towel to remove some gunky dust that had stuck just in front of the rubber scrubber brush.

Now below I have a picture for you of the water from this tank. Please bear in mind that I ran my Scooba last Thursday, I basically wore socks or slippers around my apartment all weekend, and before my Scooba purchase I pretty regularly Swiffered (both wet and dry). And look at what Scooba picked up.

That is why Scooba is my new best friend.

Special thanks to friend and colleague Deanna Abraham for being a photographer

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.

Made by the Israeli firm Friendly Robotics, it promises a â''beautifully manicured lawn effortlessly.â'' I liked the â''effortlesslyâ'' part, so on a sunny afternoon, I unleashed the robot on my yard.

I had already pegged a wire, included in the package, around the edges of my lawn, so that the robot could know the edges of its domain. After setting the mowing height, I pressed the Go button.

The 35.2-kilogram, tortoiselike machine began to zigzag, to the amusement of my neighbor's cats. At first, I thought it was missing some swaths, but later it returned to finish the job.

The robot's blades, spinning at 5800 revolutions per minute, chop the clipped grass so fine that you don't need to rake the lawn afterward. Password protection keeps kids from unleashing the machine themselves, and sensors in the bumpers stop it if someone gets in the way.

The mower did a great job overall, but it missed some grass at the edges along the fence. I took care of that by guiding the robot with its manual controller. My neighbors peppered me with questions, but they were disappointed by the price tag. The RL1000 model (for lawns of up to 2000 square meters) costs US $2000, and the RL850 (for 1500 m2) costs $1500. The RL1000 can be programmed to run at a preset time, returning to its docking station to recharge.

Friendly Robotics says the RL1000's power is equivalent to that of a 5.5â''horsepower gas mower. Its lead-acid batteries last 2.5 to 4 hours per charge, enough to cover 400 to 600 m2. A large lot could require several recharges. And because of its random zigzagging, it takes longer than if a brain were guiding a mower. But why should I care? I'm busy at the grill, flipping burgers.

You can buy a Robomow for US $1500 at http://www.friendlyrobotics.com.

From Spectrum's annual roundup of gadgets and gizmos for the holidays.

As I've mentioned before, I work for a company called Bluefin Robotics located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I haven't really talked about our technology, but we just recently got a contract for the next generation of one of our coolest vehicles, and I really like talking about this one, so on to... the HAUV!

The Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle started out as a joint project between Bluefin and MIT. It's a significant departure from our other vehicles, which are torpedo-shaped with propellers on the back. HAUV is more or less a box, not needing to be quite as hydrodynamic as its siblings, and as such has occasionally earned nicknames such as "Spongebob" in the Bluefin lab.

The HAUV is run by a main electronics housing (the brains) and a 1.5 kWh subsea battery that we make. It moves thanks to eight fancy hubless thrusters arranged to allow a full six degrees of freedom: X, Y, Z, roll, pitch, and yaw. To navigate it uses a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL), which provides the computer with velocity along the hull; an inertial measurement unit to measure orientation in space (or water!); a compass; and a GPS antenna to achieve a position lock when it's on the surface. Its payload is a Dual-frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON), located on the front of the vehicle next to the DVL, which provides imagery of the ship hull that looks a lot like a blue ultrasound. The Soundmetrics website (linked above) shows what some of that imagery can look like.

HAUV communicates with an operator via a fiberoptic cable that runs between the vehicle and the ship, but the cable is there for transmission of sonar data, not for active control from the operator (though the operator can upload new sortie commands via the link). This is different from our other vehicles, which are not tethered in any way and instead communicate via acoustic link underwater or via Iridium satellite or an RF link on the surface (depending on distance from the ship).

So what is this all for? Hull inspection, basically. Plop this little guy in the water next to a ship and it can go to town taking images of the hull. If it sees something suspicious, the Navy or Coast Guard can send down a diver to check it out and dispose of it as appropriate. Port security is a big deal these days, so there could be a lot of work for the HAUV.