To date the majority of the use of robots is in the manufacturing industry. South Korea has the highest penetration of manufacturing robots in the world. Robots are very useful in this environment as they are good at repeating an action over and over again, very precisely without tiring. Not only do they reduce cost they increase efficiency and precision.
The next frontier for robots is the home. Small automated vacuum cleaners have been around for a while however they are limited in function. This week we will look at some new and emerging developments in robotics for cleaning the home.
An Autonomous Cleaning up Robot
This type of robot has long been the dream of every parent with a teenager. However Preferred Networks of Japan is developing robots to clean up the homes of the elderly. Their robot is the first to keep a cluttered room neat and tidy at a practical level. Their research is allowing robots to recognize objects and understand spoken language. The robot is therefor able to quickly and accurately grasp and place objects, plan its’ movements and follow human instructions.
Object Detection
Personal robots have to have the ability to handle a wide range of items in a personal living space whilst responding to complex and dynamic situations. Industrial robots tend to handle limited items that are always brought right in front of them in a situation that does not change over time. A computer vision engine allows the personal robots to identify the type and location of each object amongst the hundreds that can be found in a typical living room.
Picking and Placing Objects
There is a wide variety of things in a human living space, ranging from things with no definite shape like handkerchiefs, long and thin items like pens to tiny items, like fragments of potato chips that are difficult to pick up. The system needs to be able to differentiate, pick and place the range of objects in their designated locations.
Human Interaction
Industrial robots are operated by professionals that use control panels to manage the robot. Personal robots need a more intuitive means of control. The Preferred Networks robot understands human instruction and pointing gestures. Thus allowing us to tell the robot to perform a task as if we were talking to a human. The robot keeps track of every item in the room, as well as where it is currently and where it should be located. The robot also has a visual display that shows the objects it recognizes and what kind of action it is planning to take next. This allows us to give clearer instructions if the robot has not understood, as we wanted it to understand.
The next goal for the researchers is to be able to build a robot that can understand and navigate the ungodly mess that is a teenagers’ bedroom. A lot more research will be required.
Singapore’s Friendly City Cleaning Robots
Singapore has rolled out the first 4 of a planned 300 “friendly” cleaning robots that speak multiple languages and sing. The aim is the help keep the city-state’s hotels, shopping malls and government buildings clean.
The robots speak all four of Singapore’s official languages, English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil plus Japanese and Singlish (Singapore’s local mash up of English with a myriad of words from other tongues, e.g ok-la for ok). The robots sing and rap, tell jokes and politely ask people to move out of the way if needed. There is also an app which allows humans to ask the robots how they are feeling or what their hobbies are.
The robots are not intended to replace human cleaners but to assist them. In a rapidly aging society labour shortages can make finding people for some jobs difficult.
The Robot Assault on Fukushima
The March 2011 tsunami left a trail of devastation across northern Japan and most notably at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Now full of toxic radioactivity it is an extremely dangerous place for humans. Several Japanese companies have developed robots to conduct much of the cleanup.
There are hundreds to tons of radioactive fuel inside the three reactors that suffered core meltdowns. The uranium overheated, turned to lava and melted the steel containment vessels. The task is to locate and recover all of that highly radioactive fuel. Even in full protective body suits humans can only stay within the core for a few minutes.
A wide range of robots are being developed to explore, locate and remove the radioactive waste. This wired article has the full story. The scorpion (bottom left below) was the first attempt to develop a robot to be able to withstand the highly toxic and radioactive water that now fills the reactor cores. It was unable to survive the crippling conditions. The sunfish (right below) was then developed based upon the learning from the failed scorpion. It was successful in locating and identifing the waste. Further robots are now being developed to be able to remove the waste. This process will take many many years. It is unlikely to be finished in our lifetimes. Once the waste is removed it is then buried for hundreds of years. The top right photo is the space that the robots have to squeeze through to access the contaminated areas.
The good news is that the contaminated parts of Fukushima Prefecture are slowly being cleaned. I was in Fukushima-City early this year and it is an active metropolis full of people going about their daily life (it is about 80 kilometers from the former reactor). The reactor exclusion zone however will remain in place for a long long time.
Who knows, the learning from the clean up of Fukushima may one day assist in the aforementioned challenge of cleaning a teenager’s bedroom.
Paying it Forward
If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product, ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and give the start-up a shout out to my readers if it is something that I think they could use. If you have any questions or comments please email me via my website craigcarlyon.com
Till next week.