One such pioneering project is Paro, a social robot that resembles a baby harp seal. Paro shows promise in lifting the spirits of elderly adults, especially in those patients with dementia or depression. A more recent project is Smiby, a low-tech baby robot developed by Chukyo University’s robotics department in collaboration with Togo Seisakusyo Corporation. Smiby requires human “parents” to attend to it as if it were an infant child, providing its users a sense of companionship, bonding and, hopefully, happiness.

Other robots, such as GeriJoy (USA) and GiraffPlus (EU), aim to reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation.

GeriJoy, a start-up founded by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, combines pet therapy, avatars and tablet computing to provide virtual pet companions for elderly adults. The caregiver provided by GeriJoy is a trained “helper” located in the Philippines who communicates with elderly clients through an avatar of a cute dog or cat on a tablet app. Streaming audio and visual data help remote caregivers to check on the clients, telling them when to spark up a conversation or prompt their charges to take medication, eat and exercise. GiraffPlus, an EU-based project, is a telepresence robot (consisting of a tablet screen attached to a wheeled cart) that allows caregivers and family members to videoconference with their charges and loved ones.

GiraffPlus, Image by europa.eu

These fluffy, social, and interactive robots are not without their problems, and bring with them pressing ethical issues for the healthcare community as expressed by a number of experts in the field.

Tom Sorell, a professor of politics and philosophy who leads the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group at the University of Warwick in the UK, argues that an ethical framework should be developed for robotic caretakers that respect the elderly person’s autonomy and decision-making. Amanda and Noel Sharkey, computer scientists at the University of Sheffield, have highlighted the need to balance the benefits of robotic companions with the potential risks of treating elderly adults like children, or deceiving those with dementia.

Furthermore, in her latest journal publication, Amanda Sharkey says: “At the same time, insensitive use of assistive robots could have a negative effect on the access of vulnerable seniors to certain capabilities … Increased use of assistive robots in general could lead to a reduced number of interactions with humans, and so reduce older people’s opportunities for social interaction and affiliation with others”.

As we continue to explore this topic this, our latest poll question was about how much interaction between a senior and a robot caregiver is socially acceptable. Here are the results:

First, according to the results, our readers do not feel strongly about the need to regulate the amount of interaction seniors have with robot caregivers: almost half (48%) of the respondents said that this is purely a matter of preference of the individual seniors. In addition, 34% of our respondents stated that any amount of interaction with a robot is acceptable, although more people sharing this view qualified this with the phrase “as long as the senior gets some human interaction on a regular basis.”

More interestingly, only 2% of the respondents chose the option that involved a regulatory body to determine the right amount of interaction. Is this because people do not feel that the amount of interaction with robots is something that should be regulated in any way, or because people do not have faith in regulatory bodies to make appropriate decisions for us? The dominant support for the use of senior’s preferences seems to suggest the former. Also worth noting is the fact that only 10% of the respondents said that maximum interaction with humans and minimum interaction with robots is best.

This indicates that the majority of our respondents, most of whom are roboticists or related to robotics in some way, trust seniors to make preferential choices by themselves on this topic, and that the amount of interaction with care robots is not seen to pose a major point of concern.

This question we posed to poll-takers did not take into account the cognitive capabilities of the senior in question. Would our view of  how much seniors should interact with care robots change as we consider seniors with varying degrees of cognitive capabilities? And how to address the fact that cognitive abilities deteriorate with age? More for us to think about in a future poll.

Do you have questions or topics you’d like ORi and Robohub to cover in our poll-based discussions? Send us an email (ajung@openroboethics.org). 

The results of the poll presented in this post have been analyzed and prepared by Camilla Bassani, with the help of AJung Moon, Shalaleh Rismani, Rohan Nuttall, Joost Hilte, and Julio Vazquez at the Open Roboethics initiative.

Tony Prescott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the Sheffield Center of Robotics believes that the medical industry could be at the forefront of changing the public perception of robotics. Why?  Because this is an industry that already understands how paramount it is, when dealing with the elderly, disabled and ill, to provide a service that is helpful, friendly and nonthreatening.

Speaking this week at RE.WORK – an event that explores the challenges of commercializing robotics – Prescott recalled the fear people had in the 90s about the coming of the Internet. Similarly, he said, reporters often ask him: “When will robots take over the world?” The question has perhaps become a cliché among roboticists, but in his presentation (aptly titled “Robots that know themselves will make better carers”) Prescott suggested that much can be learned from neuroscience and psychology to improve the safety and effectiveness – and by extension the public perception – of human-robot interaction.

The aging population is increasing rapidly, and there are not enough caregivers to satisfy the growing demand. It is projected that by 2060, there will be one dependent person for every working person in the EU. Per visit, caretakers have limited time in which to interact the elderly people in their care, and time must be divided between aiding with personal hygiene tasks, ordering/preparing food, and one-on-one conversation time. As such, seniors must often make difficult decisions to prioritize the services they wish to receive from caregivers.

Prescott said that personal robots could aid seniors with time consuming household tasks such as making a pot of tea, reaching for the salt, opening a jar, or microwaving food – tasks that could be frustrating if you have to wait around for help. Personal hygiene tasks such as showering or using the toilet can create an embarrassing dynamic between the elderly and the caretaker, and so also make ideal tasks for robot care assistants.

Prescott points out that the role of a robot should be to assist the senior and the caregiver, not to take over.  “Robots can help caregivers, not by replacing them, (but by working with them).”  With the aid of personal robots, caretakers could spend more time engaging in one-on-one conversation with the elderly, providing valuable social interaction.

Paro therapeutic robot

And yet we cannot stop people from getting personally attached to the items they own, Prescott explains. People like to glue fur to their Roombas to make them feel more like pets, and robot companions like the Paro have been shown to induce relaxation, reduce stress, and stimulate communication between patients and caregivers. The important distinction to remember, suggested Prescott, is that the companionship people feel toward their robots is more in line with how they feel toward their pets, and the need for human companionship will always remain critical.

If we can learn to design robots that can work as part of a care team, public perception of robots is sure to change.

Therapy robots for demetia patients
In 2008 a study found that therapy robot PARO soothed dementia patients and helped them communicate. Since then the Danish Technology Institute DTI has become the European distributor of PARO and encouraged every Danish nursing home to buy one. So far Danish nursing homes have purchased 110 PAROs, mainly with public funds.

Robot suit HAL
Japanese Cyberdyne established its first European subsidiary 2009 in Denmark to start a consortium to win government approval for robot suit HAL as health care equipment and for the leasing of HAL suits. HAL is a cyborg-type robot that can supplement, expand or improve physical capability. The project was funded by ABT fund of Denmark Government (a fund for projects on labour saving technology).

First eating and cleaning  robot tests
In 2009 the Municipality of Odense started first tests with the Japanese eating robot MySpoon and a large number of vacuum cleaner robots was evaluated at care centers in three municipalities from autumn 2010 to spring 2011.

Social robot drivers license
In 2010 Denmark was first in Europe to qualify care personal with a social robot drivers license. The first International Certification Workshop with a group of participants from Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden was at the DTI, in Odense. The aim of the workshop was to learn how to use PARO but also to discuss ethical issues.

Robot suit test for rehabilitation 
In 2010 Cyberdyn signed for collaboration with Rehabilitation Center in Odense  for starting a project funded by the Danish Government to introduce robot suit HAL to a rehabilitation center in Odense University Hospital for clinical trials regarding worker augmentation.

Robot Learning
In November 2010 Aarhus municipal visited the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) for a presentation of robots that can be uses in English language education. In 2011 the City has entered into a robot collaboration with KIST to test robots at Rehabiliteringscentret Vikærgården in Risskov and in elementary schools in Aarhus – among other things as a help in education children with ADHD.

First Danish Geminoid
In 2011 the first Geminiod outside Japan was developed at Aalborg University in cooperation with ATR and Kokoro. The purpose of the project led by Henrik Scharfe, Associate Professor, and Director of Center for Computer-mediated Epistemology, was to investigate certain aspects of Human Robot Interaction, the novel concept of Blended Presence, and by studying cultural differences in the perception of robots.

Robotic bed

In 2011 Japanese Panasonic and the Danish CareLab at DTI Centre for Robot Technology in Odense presented the latest version of Panasonic’s robotics bed, designed for people who have limited mobility and need an extra level of independence. Panasonic has collaborated with Danish robotexperts to optimize the usability of this innovative robotic device. The expertise of the Danish experts has helped Panasonic to get access to professional environments in nursing homes, in hospitals, in municipals and research institutes in Denmark, and to get better insight in real user needs and technical requirements. This gives Panasonic a competitive advantage to reduce time to market and Denmark access to state-of-the-art robotics in real case environments.

Hospital logistics robots
At the hospital of Jutland logistics robot Aethon TUG is tested for use in Danish hospitals. These smart carts can haul supplies around the hospital, making deliveries and pickups at a fraction of the costs of human workers.

“Smart” (robotic-like) products profess to add value, assure safety, and provide convenience through connectivity… claims that in many cases are true, particularly with in-car infotainment systems.

3,100 exhibitors, 1.86 million sq ft of exhibition space, 153,000 attendees of which 34,000 were international and only one good food stand (Nathan’s hot dogs – you can’t ruin a Nathan’s hot dog). Massive crowding, slow moving, loud, extravagant and wonderful. Thin TVs – so thin they looked like they couldn’t stand up by themselves without bending – 3D with and without glasses, projectors, smart appliances, and apps for everything from TVs to refrigerators to scales.

Consumer robotics represented a very small part of CES but had the same combination of glitz, glamour, marvelous stuff, misrepresentation, uninspiring products and hidden gems, just like the rest of CES. Robotics Trends hosted a Robotics Tech Zone but the action was well beyond their purview because many of the companies wanted to emphasize their consumer orientation instead of highlighting the robotic.

Romibo

One of the most interesting areas was focused on Digital Health – where one could easily see benefits from sensors and smart apps providing data for the cloud to process and selectively inform doctors or users of the results, and progress over time. The highlight of the area was Life Technologies $150,000 Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer, which, by the end of the year, will be able to sequence an entire human genome for about $1,000 in a few hours. Digital Health was also the only area where research was shown and where the NSF/Carnegie Mellon University Quality of Life Technology booth was located, an area packed with healthcare inventions and eager young inventors. Few fell under the robotics umbrella (most were digital apps and devices) except these three:

1. Romibo, a do-it-yourself robot for therapy, education and play.
2. PerMMA, a personal mobility and manipulation appliance for power wheelchair users.
3. Myomo, rehabilitation robotics and interactive gaming systems for stroke victim rehab.

Certainly the most publicity went to Tosy Robotics, a Vietnamese manufacturer of robotic and high-tech toys, for the launch of  their new mRobo, a transformer-type boom-box entertainment robot with a two-hour meet-and-greet by teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.

Tosy also showed their other robotic toys: DiscoRobo, a dance to the beat with lights toy, and Sket-Robo, a robot that draws.

Cubelets, $160, by Modular Robotics, had a small booth and a big hit for their educational robot construction kit. These magnetic blocks can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. Since each cube has unique functions, you can build robots that drive around on a tabletop and respond to light, sound and temperature.

Parrot, a French manufacturer of hands-free wireless devices for cars and phones, was the hit of CES 2010 with their AR.Drone, a quadcopter with two cameras that is driven from an iPhone or iTouch. This year they upgraded the camera to enable hi-def video, improved their software for still and video capture, and added a range of games and customization accessories… all shown at a huge outdoor booth at CES.

iRobot launched their Roomba, Scooba, Verro and Looj vacuums, floor washers, pool cleaners and gutter cleaning robots at previous CES’s, but at this CES they only had office visits for demos and marketing where they were also showing off their AVA concept robot and promoting their partnership with InTouch Health, a provider of telepresence collaboration for doctors, nurses, paramedics and patients and a place where iRobot’s lower cost AVA robots could be armed with InTouch Health’s hospital experiences and enable the resulting systems to be available to a larger audience.

More than 7 million robot vacuum cleaners have been sold thus far with real competition for iRobot showing up recently with a flurry of similar cleaners – all displayed at CES:

Look-alikes: (from left to right): Techko Maid, Agait, Ecovacs, xRobot, iclebo and Ottoro

iRobot Roomba, LG RoboKing, Samsung Tango The big news is that both Samsung and Ecovacs (above) offer a self-emptying dustbin option.

But LG and Samsung entered the arena, and, with their large consumer client base, vast manufacturing and marketing resources, and an array of add-on features, has been selling their vacuums in Asia and Europe; not yet in the US. iRobot should feel their presence very soon.

Another consumer products manufacturer (of home theater systems), South Korean Moneual, also sells a robot vacuum and a more interesting $1,000 home mobile air filter / security device. The mobile air filter is also designed as a safety system for the elderly, it connects with a wrist band that can detect a fall and can call for help if one occurs.

A skinless Pleo showing it’s complex innards

Pleo, the baby robotic dinosaur, was represented by both the seller (Innvo Labs) and the manufacturer (Jetta Co. Ltd.) that reincarnated the old bankrupt company, and was showing the new Pleo rb (reborn), with accessories and software enhancements.

Amongst the pseudo robotic products were three which act as a pedestal for the camera and video functions of iPhones and swivel or have wheels or tracks to move as wirelessly directed:

1. Xybotyx, a Colorado start-up, is launching a $111 wheeled platform and app for your iPhone that lets you drive your phone wirelessly.
2. Swivl by Satarii, is a $159 stationary platform for your iPhone camera or video. It swivels to follow you or can be remote controlled.
3. Romo by Romotive, is a $99 tracter-like iPhone holder which can stream video to your PC and also dance to music on your iPhone.

Karotz, by Violet (a subsidiary of Aldebaran, the builder of the Nao robot), announced the launch of their Karotz “intelligent internet companion” into the U.S. market with a $99 special price for the rabbit and 30% off all accessories. Ideal for learning how to develop apps with voice recognition and Internet connectivity, and now with Aldebaran stewardship, this interesting little device may hold a key to the future of human-robot communication.

Other vendors under the robotic umbrella included:

(from left to right): Windoro, Sphero, Ladybug, Mantarobot, Paro, Crawler

• Windoro, from Ilshim Global, a window washing device.
• Sphero, by Orbotix, a robotic ball controlled from your phone.
• Ladybug, by JS-Robotics, a bug-like mobile device with collision avoidance sensors.
• Mantaro telepresence robot, a mobile Skype platform using your own iPhone or iPad.
• Paro, the therapeutic furry seal-like bot for hospitals and eldercare.
• Crawler, by Topy Industries, an experimental tractor-like base for search and rescue.

Not exactly robotic, but for prototyping and DIY’ers, there were three 3D printers of note: Makerbot announced their new $1,750 two-color 3D printer, Essential Dynamics showed their $3,000 Imagine Printer that prints with a whole host of materials, including food, chocolates, silicone, cheese, epoxy, organics, etc., and the Cube from Cubify which offers both a $1,300 3D printer and also a service for those that just want to send their designs in and get back the finished product.

So there you have it — 25+ robot vendors focused on consumer products — less than 1% of CES — and perhaps only one or two to rave about. Maybe next year….

“Smart” (robotic-like) products profess to add value, assure safety, and provide convenience through connectivity — claims that in many cases are true, particularly with in-car infotainment systems.

3,100 exhibitors, 1.86 million sq ft of exhibition space, 153,000 attendees of which 34,000 were international and only one good food stand (Nathan’s hot dogs – you can’t ruin a Nathan’s hot dog). Massive crowding, slow moving, loud, extravagant and wonderful. Thin TVs – so thin they looked like they couldn’t stand up by themselves without bending – 3D with and without glasses, projectors, smart appliances, and apps for everything from TVs to refrigerators to scales.

Consumer robotics represented a very small part of CES but had the same combination of glitz, glamour, marvelous stuff, misrepresentation, uninspiring products and hidden gems, just like the rest of CES. Robotics Trends hosted a Robotics Tech Zone but the action was well beyond their purview because many of the companies wanted to emphasize their consumer orientation instead of highlighting the robotic.

Romibo

One of the most interesting areas was focused on Digital Health – where one could easily see benefits from sensors and smart apps providing data for the cloud to process and selectively inform doctors or users of the results, and progress over time. The highlight of the area was Life Technologies $150,000 Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer, which, by the end of the year, will be able to sequence an entire human genome for about $1,000 in a few hours. Digital Health was also the only area where research was shown and where the NSF/Carnegie Mellon University Quality of Life Technology booth was located, an area packed with healthcare inventions and eager young inventors. Few fell under the robotics umbrella (most were digital apps and devices) except these three:

1. Romibo, a do-it-yourself robot for therapy, education and play.
2. PerMMA, a personal mobility and manipulation appliance for power wheelchair users.
3. Myomo, rehabilitation robotics and interactive gaming systems for stroke victim rehab.

Certainly the most publicity went to Tosy Robotics, a Vietnamese manufacturer of robotic and high-tech toys, for the launch of  their new mRobo, a transformer-type boom-box entertainment robot with a two-hour meet-and-greet by teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.

Tosy also showed their other robotic toys: DiscoRobo, a dance to the beat with lights toy, and Sket-Robo, a robot that draws.

Cubelets, $160, by Modular Robotics, had a small booth and a big hit for their educational robot construction kit. These magnetic blocks can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. Since each cube has unique functions, you can build robots that drive around on a tabletop and respond to light, sound and temperature.

Parrot, a French manufacturer of hands-free wireless devices for cars and phones, was the hit of CES 2010 with their AR.Drone, a quadcopter with two cameras that is driven from an iPhone or iTouch. This year they upgraded the camera to enable hi-def video, improved their software for still and video capture, and added a range of games and customization accessories… all shown at a huge outdoor booth at CES.

iRobot launched their Roomba, Scooba, Verro and Looj vacuums, floor washers, pool cleaners and gutter cleaning robots at previous CES’s, but at this CES they only had office visits for demos and marketing where they were also showing off their AVA concept robot and promoting their partnership with InTouch Health, a provider of telepresence collaboration for doctors, nurses, paramedics and patients and a place where iRobot’s lower cost AVA robots could be armed with InTouch Health’s hospital experiences and enable the resulting systems to be available to a larger audience.

More than 7 million robot vacuum cleaners have been sold thus far with real competition for iRobot showing up recently with a flurry of similar cleaners – all displayed at CES:

Look-alikes: (from left to right): Techko Maid, Agait, Ecovacs, xRobot, iclebo and Ottoro

iRobot Roomba, LG RoboKing, Samsung Tango The big news is that both Samsung and Ecovacs (above) offer a self-emptying dustbin option.

But LG and Samsung entered the arena, and, with their large consumer client base, vast manufacturing and marketing resources, and an array of add-on features, has been selling their vacuums in Asia and Europe; not yet in the US. iRobot should feel their presence very soon.

Another consumer products manufacturer (of home theater systems), South Korean Moneual, also sells a robot vacuum and a more interesting $1,000 home mobile air filter / security device. The mobile air filter is also designed as a safety system for the elderly, it connects with a wrist band that can detect a fall and can call for help if one occurs.

A skinless Pleo showing it’s complex innards

Pleo, the baby robotic dinosaur, was represented by both the seller (Innvo Labs) and the manufacturer (Jetta Co. Ltd.) that reincarnated the old bankrupt company, and was showing the new Pleo rb (reborn), with accessories and software enhancements.

Amongst the pseudo robotic products were three which act as a pedestal for the camera and video functions of iPhones and swivel or have wheels or tracks to move as wirelessly directed:

1. Xybotyx, a Colorado start-up, is launching a $111 wheeled platform and app for your iPhone that lets you drive your phone wirelessly.
2. Swivl by Satarii, is a $159 stationary platform for your iPhone camera or video. It swivels to follow you or can be remote controlled.
3. Romo by Romotive, is a $99 tracter-like iPhone holder which can stream video to your PC and also dance to music on your iPhone.

Karotz, by Violet (a subsidiary of Aldebaran, the builder of the Nao robot), announced the launch of their Karotz “intelligent internet companion” into the U.S. market with a $99 special price for the rabbit and 30% off all accessories. Ideal for learning how to develop apps with voice recognition and Internet connectivity, and now with Aldebaran stewardship, this interesting little device may hold a key to the future of human-robot communication.

Other vendors under the robotic umbrella included:

(from left to right): Windoro, Sphero, Ladybug, Mantarobot, Paro, Crawler

• Windoro, from Ilshim Global, a window washing device.
• Sphero, by Orbotix, a robotic ball controlled from your phone.
• Ladybug, by JS-Robotics, a bug-like mobile device with collision avoidance sensors.
• Mantaro telepresence robot, a mobile Skype platform using your own iPhone or iPad.
• Paro, the therapeutic furry seal-like bot for hospitals and eldercare.
• Crawler, by Topy Industries, an experimental tractor-like base for search and rescue.

Not exactly robotic, but for prototyping and DIY’ers, there were three 3D printers of note: Makerbot announced their new $1,750 two-color 3D printer, Essential Dynamics showed their $3,000 Imagine Printer that prints with a whole host of materials, including food, chocolates, silicone, cheese, epoxy, organics, etc., and the Cube from Cubify which offers both a $1,300 3D printer and also a service for those that just want to send their designs in and get back the finished product.

So there you have it — 25+ robot vendors focused on consumer products — less than 1% of CES — and perhaps only one or two to rave about. Maybe next year….

In July of 2008, the app store concept was launched by Apple and it has dramatically changed the mobile industry. Over 1.2 billion apps were downloaded between Christmas and New Year according to Flurry Analytics. That’s about 60 percent higher than every week of December before Christmas, and marks the largest number of apps ever downloaded in a single week.

Robot app stores are now beginning to happen as well and visions of apps for tele-robotic safety and surveillance pop into mind, or light domestic duties, or…? My imagination runs wild at the thought and I imagine these new apps being easy to use, having multiple functions and a low cost.

But that is then and now is now. At present there are three significantly different approaches to an app store for robots (although additional “stores” are in the planning stage and many existing stores are making arrangements to expand beyond their own boundaries (like iRobot’s online store and Willow Garage’s application chooser)):

1. MyRobots, by Canadian RobotShop, has opened a combination app store and online environment to permit robotics products to be monitored and updated seamlessly as well as providing a Cloud repository for applications that run from the Cloud instead of the robot itself. MyRobots’ slogan is “Connect your robots; reap the benefits.” The online monitoring aspect of MyRobots is similar to the MyMotoman Remote Monitoring Service initiated my Yaskawa Motoman America in August.
2. Robots App Store, by San Francisco serial entrepreneur Elad Inbar, is developing their store to be an online marketplace for selling apps and also providing developers their own sales portal. Robots App Store, in addition to attempting to trademark the hyphenated words “Robot-app”, has a wonderfully informative info-graphic explaining the need and market for robot apps. What it doesn’t explain is how the process will be different than what most of us have come to expect when buying apps from Apple’s App Store. It involves tinkering with development tools and operating system platforms – a turnoff for all but the most avid hobbyist.
3. RoboEarth, an EU public-private consortium, is using the Internet to create a giant open source network and database repository that can be accessed and updated by robots around the world. Focused more on academia and industrial applications, RoboEarth speeds up robot learning and adaption in complex tasks and can execute tasks that were not explicitly planned for when the robot was designed.

Service robotics – as differentiated from industrial or defense/security/space robotics – needs to provide inexpensive and efficient assistance to humans to be profitable in the consumer marketplace and emerge as a serious industry. We already have vacuum robots and adaptive cruise control bots, but there are thousands of other possible applications. Entertainment, embedded systems, eldercare and home assistance are certain to be amongst the first groups to benefit as the service robotics industry materializes.

There are two different approaches to providing those services:

C3P0 The Ultimate Humanoid Robot

1. A universal robotic tool that will be able to perform all the tasks we ask it to do, including social communication – a robot like C3P0. This is the goal of humanoid robots. At this time, humanoid robots are costly, difficult to control, slow and intrusive. Although human-robot communication is part of the lure, and there is much progress in that area, we are at least five years away from devices that not only speak but understand. IBM’s Watson and Apple’s Siri are proving that it can be done but their software isn’t yet available to front-end robotic applications and there is, at present, little comparable in the robotics world (although the recent ABC Nightline interview of Hanson Robotics’ Philip Dick robot shows there is serious ongoing development). Even when the two-way communication aspect is further developed and made available to roboticists, it will be many more years until the goal of a C3P0-like sophisticated humanoid robot will be ready.

• A more near-term and progressive solution is to forego universality and design specific devices that provide limited, task-specific means to communicate and complete specific tasks… think Roomba.

Certainly #2 has more near-term promise and is where most of the market is focused for the rest of this decade. As service robots begin to meet the four core criteria of low cost, low intrusiveness, safety and modularity – which is happening almost daily with technology changes – an incredible number of opportunities for service robot apps can be foreseen. The key will be to make them practical, affordable and acceptable by humans as part of their day-to-day life.

Robots App Store:

At discussions with Elad Inbar, CEO of Robots App Store, I asked about the size of the marketplace and was surprised to find that there are 14 million service robots out there now, and it’s estimatited that by the end of 2014 there will be 24 million. If only 15% of them were able to buy two apps at an average price of $9.99, that’s $72 million in revenue. If they each bought five apps instead of two, the figure would be $180 million. If 20% purchased five apps it would be a $¼ billion business. How real and applicable those figures are depends on many complex variables: willingness of the buyer to tinker, quality of the apps, flexibility of the robots, price, disposable income, etc. In fact, apps for robots with an Apple or Android front end will not be available in the Robots App Store but will onlybe available through the Apple (or Android) App Store – which limits the market metrics… an example of this Apple exclusivity is the hundreds of thousands of Parrot’s AR.Drone quadcopters.

Regardless of the metrics, the process of developing and sharing apps can provide a giant leap toward rejuvenating the robots we have and teaching the audience (the buyers) that they can get what they want from their robot(s). Thus the buyer becomes more educated and demanding and the producers less capricious — and more profitable.

From an infographic by Robots App Store showing possible app prices for various robots

Inbar’s Robots App Store is “focused solely on the personal and service robots marketplace because “industrial robots are very limited in their functionality… not to mention that they are oriented to quickly repeat the same tasks 24/7 unlike personal and service robots that can be extended to virtually everything! I believe in the consumers market – as they will grow like a hockey-stick!”

When I asked what kind of apps we will see once the store opens, Elad said, “We have more than 100 approved robotic developers working on apps for Romba, Pleo, AIBO, NAO, DARwin and others arranged in categories like Entertainment (dances, etc.), Story Telling (for kids), Utilities (like home search engines), Tools (like face recognition and such) and many others.”

Finally, I asked about the mechanics of porting an app or game from one robot to another. “ROS by Willow Garage, Gostai, URBI and others are trying to build a standard open platform OS that will run across all robots. We, as a marketplace, don’t take sides in this battle. We are serving every robot, ever developer, and every OS. But surely we’ll have to take sides one day when the critical mass will decide which is the widely spread and used OS…. Personally I believe that ROS is in the best position to become the de-facto standard and I personally love to work with their code. It is easy, simple and their libraries can be ported quickly between different robots – a huge advantage for every robot apps developer.”

MyRobots:

The goal for MyRobots is to get all robotic platforms to collaborate and operate together (regardless of their operating system) via the use of Cloud robotics. Although like other stores MyRobots will sell downloadable apps too, their main interest is to develop applications that will run on the Cloud thereby freeing computation time and resources on the robot and will make a single app compatible with many different robotic platforms.

Says MyRobot’s Mario Tremblay:

Cloud Robotics is the application of the cloud computing concept to robots. This means using the Internet to augment the robots capabilities by off-loading computation and providing services on demand. Being connected to the cloud also helps robots to collaborate with other machines, smart objects and humans. Through this collaboration, robots transcend their physical limitations and become more useful and capable since they can delegate parts of their tasks to more suitable parties. By combining increased communication capabilities to the ability and flexibility of running and storing part of their intelligence (i.e. software, behaviors and apps) on the MyRobots infrastructure, smart objects and robots become augmented and constitute a new and revolutionary concept for the future of robotic intelligence: Cloud Robotics.

RoboEarth:

RoboEarth is an EU-funded consortium of educators, research facilities and corporations working together to provide a world-wide-web for robot applications. RoboEarth, in development for the last two years, can be seen as a giant network and database repository where robots share information and learn from each other about their behavior and environment thereby showing a better way of robot collaboration and information sharing. RoboEarth’s premise is to out-source application development by tapping creativity and experience from wherever they can. Further, they believe (as do I) that more apps sold equates to more robots sold. Quoting Markus Waibel:

The central beauty of the App Store idea is that it enables a feedback cycle: The more devices (phones/robots) you sell, the more lucrative the app store becomes for 3rd party developers to program new apps. And the more new apps, the more devices you sell. In my opinion, robotics does not yet have critical mass to jump start this at the present time.

RoboEarth is fast becoming a large shared repository for maps, object models, task descriptions, robot models, semantic relations, probabilistic relations and “action recipes” (apps) within the global academic community. It remains to be seen whether the big robot manufacturers will embrace the technology for their products.

One unintended consequence of RoboEarth’s efforts may be within the used robots marketplace. Imagine the financial gain if an older, unused robot is rejiggered to have new equipment as well as easy to train software to put the robot back to work on new projects. Another possible beneficiary is the end user who will be less likely to retain an intergrator/consulting service if the robot can handle ongoing changes on its own.

The ultimate goal of RoboEarth is to enable robots to share and store what they discover about the world on their own Internet.

As a personal aside, I live in a rural area outside of a medium-sized city. 4G LTE is planned for 2012-2013 for the city but not my area and I have to pay for a very unreliable T1 line to my office. It’s hard to imagine having a service robot doing its thing in my world while relying on the Cloud (as represented by my T1). Maybe the concept will grow on me with time but right now I’m wary and a bit afraid of the consequences.

What do you want from a robot app store? Let’s compile a long list of “wants” and send them off to these app stores and see whether they can get them for us. Why should we wait to see if our app magically appears in their store? Let’s ask for what we want. Send them to me and I’ll combine them all and send them off to the stores.

Here’s what I would like:

• For my old Pleo, anything that makes it do things it doesn’t already do.
• For my AR.Drone, a programmable camera shoot over a grid that I draw onscreen from a starting point where I place the drone.
• For my little iSobot, a complicated routine of fetch, grab and return.
• And for my new Swivl, something sexy where it follows my girlfriend around the room and refocuses as the distance changes.

But I also want to buy a used two-armed Yaskawa Motoman and put it to work in my workshop doing ad hoc tasks. I’d love to be able to add a hardware component add-on (or two), be able to use ROS or some simulation software to test my apps, buy some additional apps that do the kind of tasks I need to do in the shop, and have all that work seamlessly and without line-for-line coding, excessive cost or too much fiddling.

What do you want? Send them to me and I’ll combine them all and send them off to the stores.