Chapter 9 Quest for the sentient robot 283
1.2 CURRENT-DAY MOBILE ROBOTICS
FIGURE 1.12 Telepresence and teleoperation most often features as a basic functionality in modern day robotics and finds support from most robotic software suits. As shown, a telepresence robot lacks in autonomy and is remote controlled over at a distance, and it’s controller can communicate with people in the robot’s local environment over vision (screen) and voice (microphone) channels. Telepresence is the first steps to a future when communication will commence over virtual reality. On the left is Anybots QA, and on the right is iRobot’s Ava 500, both images courtesycommons.wikimedia.org, CC-by-SA 3.0 license.
Walter’s turtles and Nilsson’s Shakey were near isolated events spaced across 20 years in which there was no appreciable experimental progress, but there was theoretical development of AI as a whole: cybernetics in particular by Wiener, the basis of artificial animals and early ideas which led to ANIMATs by Toda and a general integration of electronics leading to electronic processors. At the end of the 1970s, the development cycle of mobile robots became simpler due to innovations in AI, electronics, computer science, software design etc. In the next three sections I try to relive these technological developments and paradigm shifts.
15 There is a lack of a broad classification scheme, however robots with wheeled bases and differential drive are usually termed ‘mobile’, those with 2 legs are ‘bipeds’ and those with human exoskeleton and legs are called ‘humanoids’.
Khepera Khepera was developed at the
EPFL in the late 1990s, and it went commercial with the K-Team Corporation, broadly for use in education and research. This robot is often credited with being a vital aspect for the development of evolutionary robotics. Shown here is Khepera, the original version. From Fong et al. [107], with permission from Elsevier.
State of the art robots are equipped with a vision module for object recognition, NLP module for language processing and voice-based human interaction, added information and rules for specific operations and a learning module. Teleoperation and telepresence, shown in Figure 1.12along with map building with SLAM algorithms have been basic functionalities of modern-day robots and are often provided by the manufacturer.
Roomba The Roomba made by the iRobot
company in 2002, is a vacuum cleaning robot. While vacuuming, the Roomba can change directions when encountering an obstacle.
It can also detect an edge, thus preventing it from tumbling down stairs. To aid the vacuuming and cleaning process, there is a pair of brushes, rotating in opposite directions which helps to pick up dirt from the floor.
Shown here is Roomba 780. Image courtesy commons.wikimedia.org, CC license.
Developmental routes have become simpler and more modular with Arduino and similar boards and smaller and easy to use processors such as Raspberry Pi, ODROID etc. Motion sensing with Microsoft Kinect and other such devices has provided an avenue to develop quality robots on a strict budget.
kg. Shown here is a variation, where the Pioneer base is mounted with an arm manipulator, image courtesy commons.wikimedia.org, CC license.
Some robots are favourites among undergraduates such as the Khepera and the Pioneer and some universities have made the PR2 a part of their robotics courses. For the hobbyists, the Roomba, iBot and LEGO Mindstorms are cheaper options. The Roomba is a vacuum cleaning robot, however it has found great acceptance in the hobbyist fraternity. iRobot also provides a separate platform for the robot enthusiasts the icreate, which is very much like the roomba but without the vacuuming parts.
Erratic Robot
Erratic was designed and developed as a clone of the Pioneer robot, by Videre in 2000. It has found applications in academia and is often mounted by a SICK or HOKUYO laser. Shown here is a model of the Erratic spawned in simulations using gazebo.
The Khepera has seen four generations. This robot was designed by Jean-Daniel Nicoud and his team at EPFL as a readily usable platform for experiments and training, such as in local navigation, artificial intelligence, collective behaviour etc. It was developed using the Motorola 68331 processor in the 1990s. The latest avatar, version IV of the robot is equipped with 8 infrared sensors, 5 ultrasonic sensors, WiFi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, gyroscope, color camera and uses a 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. It is priced at
$2700.
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The Turtlebot
Turtlebot was developed by Melonee Wise and Tully Foote at Willow Garage in late 2010.
Shown here is Turtlebot 2, which has a Yujin Kobuki base, a Kinect sensor and a laptop with a dual core processor and is available as open source hardware with a BSD license. Priced at about $1000, the robot has found support from the ROS community and is used in various universities in their robotics laboratory courses.
There will always be a need for quality simulators in robotics as every experiment cannot be performed with real-world robots due to extreme logistics and cost considerations.
As a contrast, path planning was targeted in the earliest 2D simulators such as Karel and Rossum’s Playhouse (RP1), 3D simulators such as Webots and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (Microsoft RDS, MRDS) provided added designing capabilities and near life-like models of the robot. Currently, Gazebo which is a standalone project and also a part of ROS is one of the best and is often accepted as a standard for robotics simulations.
Personal Robot-2, PR2 PR2 is a near humanoid developed
at Willow Garage, but instead of legs it is mounted on a wheeled base. It has two 7-DOF arms and is equipped with a 5-megapixel camera, a tilting laser range finder, and an inertial measurement unit and is powered by two 8-core servers, each of which has 24 gigabytes of RAM, for a total of 48 gigabytes, and are located at the base of the robot. The PR2 can open doors, fold towels, fetch beer and also play billiards.
AIBO and similar designs such as the Tekno and the CHiP are anthropomorphised on a dog and often create a false bond of caring and compassion with human beings. In context, the PARO which is a robotic seal and the Pleo which is a robotic dinosaur are state of the art pet robots and both have a congenial appearance and respond positively to touch and cuddles. The PARO has found application in psychological therapy of the depressed and the elderly and the AIBO has been used in nursing homes as a company for the residents.
work led to the development of the AIBO in 1998. The image is from commons.wikimedia.org, CC license.
LEGO Mindstorms kit is meant for educational robotics. This affordable kit provides for easy assembling of custom-designed robots and for programming them with user friendly languages. The latest version, EV3, is based on a Linux ARM9 CPU and also contains motors, touch sensors, color sensors and an infrared sensor.
Honda ASIMO
Honda’s celebrated humanoid robot ASIMO is said to be inspired by Isaac Asimov but the acronym reads otherwise, ‘Advanced Step in Innovative MObility’. Designed as a walking assistant robot, the ASIMO stands 130 cm, weighs about 50 kgs, can attain maximum speeds of 9 km per hour in running mode and can be controlled by PC, wireless controller, or voice commands. Honda, most unabashedly claims it, “the world’s most advanced humanoid robot”. The image is from commons.wikimedia.org, CC license.
Willow Garage the company that developed ROS, build the Turtlebots I and II and the PR2, all of which integrates 3D sensors with a mobile base. The Turtlebot-I employed a icreate base, while the Turtlebot-II has a Kobuki base developed by Yujin Robot. Building humanoids have always drawn interest, and while PR2 is only partially humanoid, Honda’s ASIMO has human-like legs and can dance to a tune. Honda has not yet put up the ASIMO
19 for sale but leasing is at an astronomical price of $150,000 a month. The PR2 is priced at a staggering $400,000 with discounts for academic projects.
Nao This iconic mini humanoid was made by the French company, Aldebaran Robotics in 2006 as an open source software. The robot was acquired by Japan’s SoftBank Robotics [2]
in 2013. Standing at 58 cm and weighing 4.3 kg, it is powered by the Intel Atom processor and has an assortment of sensors, HD cameras, microphones, sonar rangefinder, infrared, tactile and pressure sensors. The robot has quite a reputation: it has acted in a ballet, been the most prolific robot in robo soccer, has been employed as a therapeutic robot for children suffering from autism, has been programmed to be the first robot with deontic ethics and also, to a degree it is the first robot to attain sentience, albeit for a very short time.
The image is from commons.wikimedia.org, CC license.
Open source has been the buzz word in the robotics community and Robot Operating System (ROS), Robotic Open Platform (ROP), Poppy and RoboEarth are projects that target crowd sourcing and thus freely provide technology and know-how.
Segway
This battery-powered, self-balancing two-wheeled scooter was developed at the University of Plymouth in collaboration with BAE Systems and Sumitomo Precision Products, and uses gyroscopic sensors and an accelerometer for maintaining balance. While not a robot as per the traditional definitions, the Segway is an early ancestor of autonomous vehicles of the immediate present and the promise of the future. At a maximum speed of about 12 miles per hour, it is ideal for the golf course and other short tours and it has also been designed into a companion robot [120]