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The rise of the robotic servant
Chores are the bane of domesticity. Dull and repetitive tasks have already been farmed out to robots in industrial workplaces, so why not our homes, too? On a small scale, they've already arrived, just not quite in the way film and TV promised. For this week's Rewind, we take a look at some of the highlights in the history of robotic servants.
Willow Garage debunks collapse rumors, reinvents itself as a commercial company
We've been tracking Willow Garage's fortunes since 2009, so when we heard rumors that the company wasn't long for this earth, we were concerned. Fortunately, the PR2 maker has hit back at the scuttlebutt, saying instead that the start-up is becoming a commercial entity in order to become self sustaining. With any luck, founder Steve Cousins will announce a retail version of Bakebot when he's talking at Expand.
Robotic butlers, bartenders and receptionists at Carnegie Mellon (video)
At school like Carnegie Mellon, it sort of figures that you'd find robots just about everywhere, performing the sorts of tasks we've traditionally left to us more fleshy types. In the two days we've spent on campus, we've seen 'bots do just about everything -- some far more autonomously than others. Take Roboceptionist -- the robotic secretary was one of the first intelligent beings we encountered upon arriving on the premises, artificial or otherwise, greeting us from a wooden kiosk near the entrance to Newell-Simon Hall. The receptionist's creators named him Marion "Tank" Lefleur -- but don't call him "Marion." It's really a sort of a "Boy Named Sue" scenario, and calling him by his birth name is a surefire way of getting on his bad side. When he's not getting irritated, Tank's tasked with helping you find things on campus -- people, halls, food -- by way of a small keyboard. He's got a surprisingly complex backstory that informs his answers. Ask him how his mom and dad are doing and you're bound to get some fairly bizarre responses -- same with more straight forward questions about finding a place to eat on campus, for that matter.%Gallery-169179%
Robot Hall of Fame inducts Big Dog, PackBot, Nao and WALL-E (video)
It's the sort of ceremony that's so magical it can only occur on even-numbered years. Inventors, educators, entertainers, college students and media folk gathered at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA tonight for the 2012 inductions to the Robot Hall of Fame, a Carnegie Mellon-sponsored event created to celebrate the best of our mechanical betters. This year, the field included four categories, judged by both a jury of 107 writers, designs, entrepreneurs and academics and the public at large, each faction constituting half the voting total. The show kicked off, however, with the induction of 2010 winners, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the da Vinci Surgical System, iRobot's Roomba, the Terminator and Huey, Dewey and Louie, a trio of robots from 1971's Silent Running. The first 'bot to secure its spot in the class of 2012, was the programmable humaoid Nao, from Aldebaran Robotics, which beat out the iRobot Create and Vex Robotics Design System in the Educational category. The PackBot military robot from iRobot took the Industrial and Service category, beating out the Kiva Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System and Woods Hole Oceanographic's Jason. Boston Dynamic's Big Dog ran over some stiff competition in the form of Willow Garage's PR2 and NASA's Robonaut to win the Research title. And WALL-E triumphed over doppelganger Johnny Five and the Jetsons' Rosie in the Entertainment category. Relive the festivities in four minutes after the break.
Robot Hall of Fame voting begins for class of 2012, Johnny 5 learns where BigDogs sit
It's that time again: time for Carnegie Mellon to roll out the red carpet and welcome the crème de la crème of the robotics world into its halls. Since 2003 the school has been selecting the best of the best and inducting them into the Robot Hall of Fame. Past honorees have included everything from LEGO Mindstorms to the Terminator. This year's list of nominees is no less impressive, with celebrity bots Johnny 5 and WALL-E pitted against each other in the entertainment category, while NASA's Robonaut takes on the PR2 and BigDog under the banner of research bots. There will also be two other inductees awarded a spot in the hall in the consumer and education category and the industrial and service field. Best of all, for the first time ever, Carnegie Mellon is letting the public vote on the inductees. And, while PETMAN was snubbed yet again, he's not letting that get him down -- the Boston Dymanic's biped just keeps on struttin'. Hit up the source link to cast your vote before the September 30th deadline and check back on October 23rd to see who's granted a podium speech.
Robot uses semantic search to get a Subway sandwich, do Jared's evil bidding (video)
Old PR2 can already fold towels, play pool and grab an ice cold beer -- really, the Willow Garage robot is just one task of short of mastering the day-to-day activities of your average college student. What's that? It can get a sandwich, too? Never mind. And this isn't just any "get me a sandwich" command -- the stout white 'bot uses semantic search to infer possible locations for sandwich, using knowledge of similar objects and environmental models. In the below video, you'll see PR2 make its way to a refrigerator, in search of sustenance, only to come up empty-clawed. Undaunted, it hops on an elevator and makes its way to a Subway sandwich shop. The joint project from the University of Tokyo and University of Munich was recently shown off at recent robotics conference. No word on when PR2 will be programmed to hold the onions.
Willow Garage slashes price, arm with PR2 SE robot
Looking to build your own Bakebot using Willow Garage's PR2 robot development platform but can't quite scrape together the necessary $400k? Then we've got some good news for you. The company's now offering a modified version dubbed the PR2 SE for a mere $285,000 (or less if you meet the requirements for a 30 percent discount). The bad news? You'll have to make do with just one arm. As seen previously with the aforementioned Bakebot, both the existing PR2 and the new PR2 SE also now come equipped with an updated sensor system that includes a Microsoft Kinect, and you'll be glad to know that the SE model can indeed be upgraded to two arms at any time. Press release is after the break.
Robots for Humanity help around the house, scratch your itch (video)
Robots for Humanity? That certainly doesn't jibe with our notion of the upcoming cyborg apocalypse. And it shouldn't, considering this joint effort's noble aim is to assist the disabled with the everyday household chores most of us take for granted. The project, a collaboration between Willow Garage and Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab, has been working with stroke victim Henry Evans to develop custom UIs that give him mastery of the human-assistive PR2 robot. These tailor-made, head-tracking interfaces have allowed the mute quadriplegic to partially shave his face and even scratch a previously unreachable ten-year itch -- all with the helping claw of the friendly bot. It's a compassionate use of cybernetic tech we're used to seeing come out of Japan, and a welcome assist for disabled communities everywhere. Click past the break for a video demo of Henry and his robotic pal.
Qbo, the open-source robot, interacts with people, makes adorable mistakes (video)
A while back we got a detailed look at the innards of Qbo, TheCorpora's open-source robot. But we haven't gotten to see the little guy in action -- until now. His handlers recently let him loose to run autonomously, guided by a pair of webcam eyes and voice recognition courtesy of Willow Garage's ROS software. The team soon noticed some unexpected behavior, though. Despite being programmed to follow humans at a specific distance, Qbo trailed uncomfortably near with taller people -- probably the first example of a robotic "close walker." Poring over the log files revealed why: proximity was calculated based on faces. The faces of taller people were farther away from the ground-hugging robot, which adjusted accordingly. Roll your way down the page to see more of our cute mechanized friend, and over to the source link for more musings on programming him.
DIY telepresence robot uses PrimeSense Kinect drivers for extremely awkward push-ups (video)
From enhancing your WoW game to putting you in Tom Hanks's shoes, DIYers the world o'er really do seem to love Kinect. And what do we have here? Taylor Veltrop's Veltrobot remote telepresence 'bot uses the PrimeSense open source Kinect drivers for tracking the user's skeleton, with a modified Kondo KHR-1HV mirroring the operator's movements (which are received via 802.11n WiFi). Right now he is only controlling the arms, but with any luck we should be seeing complete control over all the robot's movements soon enough. Once the thing is finalized, Veltrop plans on releasing an open source development kit. And then? That's right: robot avatars for everyone!
PrimeSense's OpenNI provides the best Kinect drivers yet, from someone who would know
We've been so wrapped up in Kinect hacks lately that we actually missed a Kinect non-hack that emerged last week. PrimeSense, who built the initial Project Natal reference hardware for Microsoft, has released its own open source drivers for the Kinect. PrimeSense is working with Willow Garage (best known for its open source ROS robot operating system), and Side-Kick (a motion gaming startup) through a new OpenNI organization it set up, and the trio will be combining their powers for good. The OpenNI framework will cover low-level hardware support (drivers for actual cameras and other sensors), and high-level visual tracking (turning your body into a 3D avatar that kicks ass in a virtual world). This should be a boon to an already vibrant Kinect hacking community, and if the video above is any indication, we aren't far from Kinect-level interaction and gameplay on our lowly PCs. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Kinect sensor bolted to an iRobot Create, starts looking for trouble
While there have already been a lot of great proof-of-concepts for the Kinect, what we're really excited for are the actual applications that will come from it. On the top of our list? Robots. The Personal Robots Group at MIT has put a battery-powered Kinect sensor on top of the iRobot Create platform, and is beaming the camera and depth sensor data to a remote computer for processing into a 3D map -- which in turn can be used for navigation by the bot. They're also using the data for human recognition, which allows for controlling the bot using natural gestures. Looking to do something similar with your own robot? Well, the ROS folks have a Kinect driver in the works that will presumably allow you to feed all that great Kinect data into ROS's already impressive libraries for machine vision. Tie in the Kinect's multi-array microphones, accelerometer, and tilt motor and you've got a highly aware, semi-anthropomorphic "three-eyed" robot just waiting to happen. We hope it will be friends with us. Video of the ROS experimentation is after the break.
Screen Grabs: Willow Garage's telepresence bot guest stars on The Big Bang Theory
Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dot com. CBS's The Big Bang Theory is the super popular sitcom about brilliant nerds. If you've been watching, you've undoubtedly seen Steve Wozniak's recent guest spot -- but there have been other notable presences, too. Willow Garage's Texai telepresence robot recently made an appearance as "Shel-bot" -- a stand in for the character Sheldon. While we didn't get to see the hilarious high jinks ourselves, we can tell from the screen shots that it was a pretty good time. Hit up the coverage link to learn more about Willow Garage's Texai.
Willow Garage now selling the PR2 for $400k a pop
While it was fun while it lasted, it was obvious that Willow Garage couldn't keep giving away its ultra-high-end development platform PR2 bots forever. After shipping 11 of the bots to research institutes, Willow Garage is now selling the PR2 to all comers -- as long as they've got 400 grand in their back pocket. We've covered the specs before (oodles of CPU power, two highly articulated pincer arms, and high-end vision systems), along with some of PR2's recent hijinks, and hopefully we see more of that sort of stuff now that the rugged, ready-for-adventure PR2 is on the market. If you can't scrap together all the cash, Willow Garage will also be offering a discount $280k version to people and institutions that can demonstrate "past performance and leadership" in open source robotics software -- a topic obviously near and dear to Willow Garage's heart with ROS, the OS that powers PR2 and is slowly spreading throughout much of the world of higher-end personal robotics. As for the high price and its generally opaque business model, Willow Garage compares the current state of its industry to high end workstations in the 70s, back when researchers were spending more money and time figuring out what their computers could do than actually accomplishing anything with them. Willow Garage isn't planning on making any sort of killing in the business yet -- they'd just be happy to have the PR2 project at a self sustaining level -- but they're working toward what they see as the "next radical shift" in productivity, a personal robotics follow-up to the personal computer revolution. This is a future similar to the one Bill Gates was talking up back in 2006, but of course Willow Garage wants its open source ROS platform to be the "Microsoft" this time around. They certainly don't plan to corner the hardware market in the process, however: the company hopes the quasi-followup to the PR2 will actually be built by multiple companies. %Gallery-101640%
Open source Qbo bot makes the jump to ROS, the open source robot OS
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/programming/Open_source_Qbo_bot_makes_the_jump_to_ROS'; While the Willow Garage-initiated ROS is designed to consolidate and accelerate robotics innovation for the long term, it's still a long ways from powering your robotic butler / life coach / best friend, so it's exciting to see it put to use in the here and now. The folks at Thecorpora, responsible for the Qbo open source robot project, have been busy converting Qbo's original Java API into ROS, and just announced they're at 99.9 percent completion of that task. That means the Qbo gets instant access to some of the fun development going on in ROS, like stacking all its cameras and ultrasonic sensors into a system for machine vision, or controlling the bot with a Wiimote or a PS3 controller. (There's a video after the break of the Wiimote in action). Don't think Qbo will be powerful enough for you? Willow Garage just announced that it's about to put its own ROS-powered PR2 bot on sale soon, after a few months of its (highly successful) PR2 Beta Program.
Willow Garage PR2 robot learns to sort socks for $10k prize (video)
We've been following the evolution of the Willow Garage PR2 robot for a little over a year now, watching as it learned to mooch electricity and hustle pool sharks. That, as it turns out, was only the beginning. The robots are now up for general pre-order should anyone want one (priced well into the "if you have to ask" range, surely), and to celebrate that Willow Garage founder Scott Hassan put up $10k to sponsor a video contest of the PR2 robot doing some impressive things. The winner is a video called "Sockification" from a crew at UC Berkeley in which the PR2 shows some... enthusiastic sock sorting skills. You can see that one embedded below, along with our personal favorite: an ode to StrongBad and his lightswitch rave.
Beer-fetching robot promises to make your significant other obsolete
The thing about the future is this: we'll still have to do menial things like answer the door, or take out the trash, or get up off our couches to get our own brews after a long, hard day at the office... unless we're smart enough to invent robots to do such menial things, that is. Well, Willow Garage has spent some time building a "Beer Me" application for its PR2 robot which gets at least one of these tasks under its belt. They added a four-holed foam block placed behind the robot's navigation laser so that it can safely carry four bottles across the terrain, and equipped their refrigerator with a tilted "self-stocking" shelf. Check out its operation in the video below.
Willow Garage PR2 robot plays pool, gives Fast Eddie a run for his money (video)
We're pretty big fans of Willow Garage, and its generous support of the open source Robot Operating System (ROS). For its latest trick, the company has developed a system to teach its PR3 robot billiards. Unlike projects we've seen in the past, Poolshark doesn't rely on overhead cameras to calculate moves. Rather, it's forced to conform to standard rules: it can only shoot from where the cue ball lay, and it sights shots from the same vantage point as human player would. And, you know what? While not perfect, the robot does pretty well. Not bad for a week's work, eh? Video after the break.
Willow Garage starts shipping its PR2 Beta Program bots: get ready for ROS-powered hijinks
It isn't hard to get behind a company like Willow Garage, who not only has enough funding to invest heavily in building on ROS, an open source Robotics Operating System that's gaining traction in the robotics community, but also managed to dig up enough spare change to give away $4.4 million in robots to a few lucky research institutions. There were 11 schools selected to receive the Willow Garage-developed PR2 Beta, which stuffs some very high end sensors, two articulated arms, and sixteen CPU cores on top of a rolling base -- providing a lot of leg room for advanced functionality. Of course, in the world of robots, "advanced" means stuff like opening doors and not running over your cat, but with a common code base to work from and all this fancy hardware, hopefully these schools will manage to push the industry along a bit during the next two years that the PR2 Beta Program lasts.
UC Berkeley researchers teach PR2 robot to fold towels
We've already seen Willow Garage's PR2 robot learn to roam offices in search of a power outlet, and it looks like some researchers at UC Berkeley have now helped it pull off its most impressive feat yet: folding towels. That may not sound like too hard a task, but it's actually proven to be quite a conundrum for robotic laundry researchers, since robots need to first pick up a towel from a pile and then somehow determine that this previously unseen shape is, in fact, a towel that can be folded. While it's still a long way from being the Roomba of laundry, the JR2 bot is now able to fold at the blistering speed of 25 minutes per towel, and the researchers are hopeful that the same computer vision-based approach can also be applied to a range of other tasks that have previously stumped robots. Head on past the break for the video -- don't worry, it's sped up.
