Automaton

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.

Spectrum ran a feature on exoskeletons two years ago with some interesting details on the Sarcos system's force sensors, power unit, and hydraulic actuators, below:

For its part, the Salt Lake Cityâ''based Sarcos team, led by roboticist and inventor Stephen C. Jacobsen, has been working on what may be one of the strongest exoskeletons ever built. Earlier this year, at the demonstration the group did in Fort Belvoir, an engineer wearing the Sarcos robotic system was able to carry 84 kg [185 lb]â''about the weight of an average size washing machineâ''without feeling the payload at all. Jacobsen, Sarcos's CEO and a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Utah, says that the new exoskeleton supports the payload's entire weight even if the wearer stands on one leg.

Like Bleex 2 [the UC Berkeley exo], the latest Sarcos system is a second-generation model that improves substantially over its predecessor. Jacobsen says that while wearing the exoskeleton, you can walk and run, and if you stumble, the system is fast enough to readjust its powered limbs to keep the payload's weight off your body.

The exoskeleton relies on a network of force sensors that are in touch with the wearer's body at certain points, such as underneath the feet. These special sensors, developed by Sarcos, feed data to a control computer that in turn commands the robotic limbs to move in harmony with the wearer's arms and legs without ever obstructing them. Jacobsen calls this method "get out of the way" control, and he says using the robotic suit requires no training. "You can step into the exoskeleton, and you can immediately run it," he says.

According to Jacobsen, what makes an exoskeleton an extremely hard problem is that conventional, off-the-shelf components won't work. Sarcos had to design and fabricate each piece and, in parallel, integrate all of them into its system. The exoskeleton's power unit was one of these many pieces the company had to engineer painstakingly. It's a special internal-combustion engine that can use a variety of fuels and deliver enough hydraulic power to the actuators to meet the great strength and speed the robotic limbs require.

But even more challenging, Jacobsen says, was developing yet another component: the servo valves that control the flow of the hydraulic fluid into the actuators. The valves had to be small, extremely reliable, resistant to high pressures, and highly efficient to preserve precious power, not to mention that some of their parts had to be machined to micrometer tolerances. To make things even harder, so many complex physical processes occur in the valves, Jacobsen insists that simulation software couldn't help in the design. His group, therefore, had to go through several iterations of prototypes to get the valve it needed.

Sarcos is now preparing for demonstrations scheduled over the next few months. Team members are especially busy with the exoskeleton's upper-extremity system, which will add strength to the wearer's arms. A person wearing the full-body system will be able not only to carry a payload on a backpack but also lift heavy items, a capability that is particularly useful for logistics operations such as loading and unloading cargo vehicles and moving things in a warehouse.

PS: When my colleague Harry Goldstein and I spoke with Sarcos for that article, the company had just began developing their exoskeleton's upper-extremity part. Now, as the video shows, it seems they've made significant progress. One thing, however, hasn't changed. Note in the video: the exo has a tether attached to it, probably feeding power or control signals to the suit. Sure, it's a prototype. It will be interesting to see how exoskeleton researchers will cut the umbilical cords of their creations.

In response to yesterday's article about Raytheon's acquisition of Sarcos, a friend sent me this video:

That, my friends, is pretty crazy.

Raytheon is a large, well-known defense contractor with divisions all over the world. Sarcos Robotics is a small company in Utah that makes, among other things, animatronic and robotic characters for movies and amusement parks. And now Raytheon has bought Sarcos.

This article in Mass High Tech describes how Sarcos will be folded into the Integrated Defense Systems division in Massachusetts. In addition to its business of animatronics, Sarcos works on some medical devices and MEMS. Undoubtedly the MEMS technology will come in handy as part of Raytheon's defense systems, but perhaps there is another reason: Sarcos makes a robotic butterfly (link goes to Quicktime video). Perhaps Americans should be suspicious of military butterfly spies?

At any rate, take a look at Sarcos's website (especially their mildly intimidating jobs page). They do an excellent job of posting videos of their animals, humanoids, and other products. I like the juggling robot, below. I can't even do that.