What would your ideal robot be like? One that can change nappies and tell bedtime stories to your child? Perhaps you’d prefer a butler that can polish silver and mix the perfect cocktail? Or maybe you’d prefer a companion that just happened to be a robot? Certainly, some see robots as a hypothetical future replacement for human carers. But a question roboticists are asking is: how human should these future robot companions be?

A companion robot is one that is capable of providing useful assistance in a socially acceptable manner. This means that a robot companion’s first goal is to assist humans. Robot companions are mainly developed to help people with special needs such as older people, autistic children or the disabled. They usually aim to help in a specific environment: a house, a care home or a hospital.

At the beginning of the 20th century, one of the first pieces of technology designed to help in a household environment was the vacuum cleaner. Since then, technology has transformed the home. Nowadays, we even have a robot that can cook. The chef robot was developed by Moley Robotics, a start-up company that won the 2015 Asia Consumer Electronics Show. The robot is said to be able to cook 2,000 different meals.

Pepper, the latest robot from Aldebaran Robotics, is a good example of a humanoid robot companion. It can provide assistance in making choices, detect human facial expressions and communicate with people. Pepper can adapt its behaviour depending on its perception of a person’s mood, and in this sense we can say that Pepper cares for people. At the moment, only research institutes and Japanese residents can acquire a Pepper robot. The robot costs around £8,710 for a Japanese customer.

Companion robots can take the form of pets, too. Paro is a robotic seal developed to provide comfort to old people. And rather than taking care of you, this robot has to be taken care of. It is how Paro provides emotional support.

Sometimes people get attached to robots that are not actually made for companionship. Take Roomba, for example, the intelligent vacuum cleaner. In their studies, Ja-Young Sung and colleagues from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that people wanted to become tidier in order to allow the vacuum cleaner to run smoothly.

Although many of these robots show some form of initiative and encourage people to interact with them, many are responsive rather than active – in other words, the robot waits for a human request before acting.

Should robots be more ‘human’?

Thanks to progress in Artificial Intelligence and technology, we can now develop more intelligent systems that are capable of acting very much like a human. Last year, a few of them were presented to the public, such as Nadine, the robot receptionist, Yangyang, the singer robot, and Aiko Chihira, the robot that can communicate in sign language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DydjzhZDdlg

Although the popular and controversial Turing test is used in AI to measure whether a machine is as intelligent as a human, it is a very different thing when it comes to robots, since robots are also expected to act intelligently. There is not yet a standardised test to determinate how human a robot is. It may come in the near future. However, all robotic researchers seem to agree that the robot would have to be able to show some social awareness and personality, and be capable of understanding and recognising people’s speech and expressions.

But do we want robots to have more personality and to be able to take more initiative? Ultimately, to act more like us? Some may argue, yes. If intelligent vacuum cleaners were able to differentiate a sleeping human from objects, for example, at least one unfortunate lady in South Korea wouldn’t have had her hair “eaten” by her new domestic appliance.

But others argue that it is dangerous to give robots too much intelligence. And would it allow them to answer back? We are still at the beginning of research regarding the potential consequences this might have. Indeed, the scientific community is still debating whether a robot can ever have feelings or be self-conscious. Although AI has been able to perform certain tasks extremely skillfully, for example Alpha Go, the community is still a long way from developing an AI which closely resembles the human mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1Q8oFpX1Y

At present, robot companions are either focused on companionship or on task-execution. Jibo, for example, is a social robot that can talk, order food, remind you of things, or take pictures, while Roomba is an intelligent, but ultimately functional, vacuum cleaner.

Who is in charge?

But it’s about striking the right balance, depending on the job at hand and the person it is working for. Our most recent study, Who is in charge? Sense of control and Robot anxiety in Human Robot Interaction, showed that the more controlling and anxious about robots a person is, the more initiative they expect the robot to show and the more willing they are to delegate tasks to it. The research focused specifically on what level of initiative people preferred their robot companion to have when executing a cleaning task.

Participants could choose between manually turning on the cleaning robot themselves, having their robot companion turn on the cleaning robot remotely when instructed, or having the robot companion turn on the cleaning robot when it noticed that cleaning needed to be done. It was found that most people wanted their robot companion to execute the task without being asked.

This paradoxical result may be explained by the fact that people are now more used to technology – from computers and smartphones to smartwatches and intelligent home appliances – acting semi-autonomously. Smart companion robots are just the next step in the long evolution of our relationship with technology.

In the future, it is likely that we will see more domestic robot companions that can be customised to people’s individual preferences. And we will be able to shop for them as we now shop for vacuum cleaners and phones. Ultimately, it seems, there will be a robot for everyone.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

If you liked this article, you may also want to read:

• Robots that may help you in your silver age
• Caring for robots: How assistive robotics may change our homes
• 2016 will be a pivotal year for social robots
• Architectural robots: The shape of the robots that will shape your home
• Japanese telcos vie for share in consumer robot-as-a-service business
• Robot caregivers: How much interaction with a robot is socially acceptable?
• Driven by care needs, will it be the booming senior population that spurs wider acceptance of robots?

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Image: Dyson

After a six-month delay to hone the robot for Japanese homes, and a year after the original launch announcement, the Dyson 360 Eye robotic vacuum cleaner has finally gone on sale in stores all over Japan and in Dyson’s new flagship retail store in Tokyo.

A recent TechNavio analysis of the residential robotic vacuum cleaner market forecasts a CAGR of 6.43% over the period 2015-2019. Another research firm predicts a 15% growth rate over the same period. Robovacs (as robotic vacuum cleaners for carpets and floors are called) still form a small percentage of the global vacuum cleaner market (18% according to Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, makers of the Roomba line of robotic vacuum cleaners), but their acceptance is clearly growing at a steady pace.

The Dyson 360 Eye system is novel in that it creates a panoramic 360º view of the room and then navigates by triangulating fixed visible points. The video below shows the navigational process:

Dyson plans to launch the 360 Eye robot vacuum in the US, China and Europe during 2016.

Today, vacuums represent just half of Dyson’s $2.1bn in sales. The company’s technology pipeline for the next few years includes hiring 3,000 new people, launching 100 new machines and  four brand new product categories — all by 2020.

Advanced robotics will change the world of engineering for good. At Dyson, we’ve been developing robot technology for over 15 years – 200 engineers, 420 patents and £28m has already gone into our first robot vacuum. But our Dyson 360 Eye robot is just the start. The team is advancing the systems that make our robots more intelligent – able to understand environments and navigate with complex sensors and algorithms. The future is robotic.

Robotics Trends compared the 360 Eye to iRobot’s Roomba 980 in a side by side chart that indicates very similar functionality and high selling price, (the Dyson product is $250 more than the Roomba). Dyson claims it’s vacuum generates the highest suction of any robot vacuum. Both have comparable software apps but iRobot claims that the Roomba’s low height enables cleaning in places where the Dyson can’t go. Also, the vision systems are different, particularly in respect of how they map the area, plan their work and localize where they are.

Only sales figures from the marketplace will tell the real story of how consumers perceive any differences.

Image: Tnarik Innael/flickr

Although robotic vacuum cleaners have been on the market for over a decade now, it is only recently that they have started to become pervasive. Innovations in technology have allowed manufacturers to add more cleaning power and convenience features, and this has been a key factor in developing highly efficient and fully automated robotic vacuum cleaners.

Robotic vacuum cleaners, colloquially known as robovacs, are primarily used in residential spaces to clean pools, gutters and floors. Robovacs usually consist of a mobile base, programming software, cleaning system, batteries, and other accessories. Robovacs are autonomous and use intelligent sensors to clean even hard-to-reach surfaces. Robotic vacuum cleaners are also equipped with laser vision, room mapping, and self-empty — features designed to offer convenience and ease of use to the users.

Robovacs still form a miniscule percentage of the global vacuum cleaner market, but their acceptance is growing at a steady pace. Today’s busy lifestyles leave little or no time for home cleaning and other chores. This, coupled with the fact that most modern robotic vacuum cleaners offer fully automatic functionalities, are the prime reasons that have led to the demand for robovacs around the world, especially in developed countries.

Most advanced robovacs are priced around US$500 and above, and the high price has been a challenge for their adoption on a massive scale. However, manufacturers are optimistic that the advanced features of robovacs will compensate for the high price and consumers will eventually see the benefits of robotic vacuum cleaners.

Global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Analysis & Region-wise Outlook

The global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market is anticipated to witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 15%. The growth will be supported by the factors that we discussed above — time constraints for doing household chores, ease of using the robovacs, and the advent of advanced robovacs. The market value of the residential robotic vacuum cleaner market is anticipated to be worth US$ 3 billion by 2020.

The key markets are the US, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific (APAC). The residential robotic vacuum cleaner market in the US is anticipated to expand at a steady single-digit CAGR through 2020. Consumer awareness about robovacs and coverage of robotic products, in both print and digital media, has helped raise awareness amongst consumers, providing an impetus to the prospects of the residential robotic vacuum cleaner market in the US.

Western Europe is another lucrative region for the residential robotic vacuum cleaner market, and it is anticipated that in France, Germany, and UK the demand for robotic vacuum cleaners will be robust in the next five years.

APAC is another lucrative region for robotic vacuum cleaners. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong are the regions where consumer awareness about robotic vacuum cleaners is relatively high compared to other APAC countries. Among these key regions, the Japanese residential robotic vacuum cleaner market is notable, due to the launch of innovative products in the country. Most talked-about has been the launch of the Dyson 360 Eye by Dyson Ltd., a UK. based technology firm. The Dyson 360 Eye was launched in September 2014 and is reported to have cost Dyson Ltd. a whopping US$47m in development and R&D. Although the device was launched amidst much fanfare and received positive reviews from analysts, it has its task cut out against iRobot Corp., which has around 80% share of the Japanese robotic vacuum cleaner market.

iRobot Corp., a US based advanced technology company, has maintained its dominance in the global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market. The company has been at the forefront of offering robotic vacuum cleaners with advanced features. Its range of Roomba® and Braava® vacuum cleaners have been well received in the market. Other key players in the residential robotic vacuum cleaners market include Electrolux, Hanool Robotics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Metapo, Inc., and LG Electronics, Inc.

Although still at a nascent stage, the market for residential robotic vacuum cleaners will witness steady growth in the future on account of technological advancement in the field of robotics, growing demand from tech-savvy consumers, and greater awareness.

The information presented in this article is sourced from Future Market Insights’ upcoming research report, Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 – 2020

Just last month Rod Brooks chided me that robotic vacuum cleaners were already mainstream in response to what I had written: that they had just recently moved from niche to mainstream partly because big consumer product companies were entering the market.

Dyson and Samsung had just recently announced product launches and LG and Ecovacs were already selling.

Then at RoboBusiness, Colin Angle said in a keynote speech that iRobot had sold 12 million Roombas since they began selling them, that robotic vacuums represented 18% of the global vacuum market, and the market was growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 21.8%. Further, he said that iRobot captures 83% of the North American market, 62% of the European Middle East market and 67% of the Asian Pacific marketplace.

Now comes news that on a single day – Singles Day, a made-up holiday for the Chinese singles and youth market – Ecovacs sold $24.8 million worth of robotic products, mostly their robotic vacuum cleaners. Ecovacs Deebot cleaners sell for between $200 and $500 on Alibaba; higher on Amazon. Dividing $22 million (presuming that 88% of the day’s total sales were vacuums) by $300 per unit equals 73,300 Ecovacs units sold on a single day! That is, truly, mainstream.

Alibaba has trademarked the Chinese double 11 symbol in their effort to make Singles’ Day (11/11, November 11th) an international online shopping event. According to an Ecovacs press release, 85% of Singles Day sales were sold at their online (Alibaba) store.

Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from around the world. Learn more about us here. If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Rethinking iRobot, Samsung and Dyson robotic vacuum cleaners
• Why is Japan the first to get Dyson’s new 360 Eye?
• Recent robotic vacuum launches change industry from niche to mainstream
• Housework 2.0: The battle of the robot vacuum cleaners begins!
• Dyson launches new robotic vacuum cleaner
• Has Dyson’s robotic dream become a reality?

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Recent robotic vacuum cleaner product launches by Dyson and Samsung have transformed what once was a niche market of early adopters and robot enthusiasts into a marketplace of serious consumer products for home cleaning.

Both Dyson and Samsung have upgraded the vacuuming function of their robotic cleaners to be equivalent to non-robotic cleaners. Consequently, they have endorsed what iRobot invented many years ago: a convenient robotic method of cleaning carpets and floors.

But until these two new products, particularly the Dyson one, the marketplace has been small and limited. One could characterize the buyers as early adopters of new technology, particularly those fascinated with robotics. They were fun to have and own… but they weren’t really good cleaning devices. Dyson has changed that with the introduction of their 360 Eye product and Samsung has followed suit with their new Powerbot VR9000. Both were displayed last week at the IFA Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin. Dyson had quite large crowds surrounding their new robotic vacuum cleaner.

iRobot, over the past 10 years, has sold 10 million Roombas, mostly through online distribution methods. With the global distribution channels that both Dyson and Samsung bring, it’s conceivable that either (or both) could sell 10 million of their products next year thereby doubling 10 years of worldwide sales in a single year!

The future is ripe for automated devices in the home and over the next few years we are likely to see many of these capture the home market for floor cleaning, sanitizing of kitchen and bathroom floors, carpet cleaning, etc. iRobot pioneered the concept with their Roombas and Scoobas but now the big players (Dyson, Samsung and LG) are stepping in, bringing up the quality of the product and performance to the level needed to satisfy the general consumer market and then to manufacture, distribute, market and service the product in massive quantities, which they are very good at doing.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Why is Japan the first to get Dyson’s new 360 Eye?
• Housework 2.0: The battle of the robot vacuum cleaners begins!
• Has Dyson’s robotic dream become a reality?
• Dyson invests £5m in robot lab

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The public may be expecting to see robot cyborgs battle it out in distant galaxies, but back here on earth the battle of the robots is taking on a distinctively quotidian reality. The double announcements today of Dyson’s 360 Eye and Samsung’s Powerbot VR9000 come as a challenge to robot vacuum market leader iRobot’s Roomba, and hails the arrival of a new competitive era of the robot-as-appliance .

http://youtu.be/OadhuICDAjk

While Dyson is a relative giant on the appliance scene, and Samsung is an electronic powerhouse in its own right, Roomba currently boasts dominance in the more niche robot vacuum market. In a recent report, iRobot claims to have sold over 10 million robot vacuum cleaners since 2002, and counts more than 50 countries in its distribution network.

With those figures in mind, it’s no wonder that iRobot responded to today’s announcement of the 360 Eye in lock step with a video riposte that subtly pokes at Dyson for its appliance-based roots:

http://youtu.be/SYm4oLyHpCA

While the video suggests that iRobot’s advantage is that it has always been a robot company (their YouTube description says: “We’ve always believed certain tasks are better left to a robot”), it’s ironic that iRobot only started to make money once it realized that people didn’t want to buy robots as much as they wanted to buy appliances. As iRobot CEO Colin Angle has been quoted as saying:

It took me becoming a vacuum cleaner salesman to actually have some success for my company, my investors and myself.

Andra Keay from Silicon Valley Robotic comments on how tough it can be for a high-tech startup to break into the more traditional appliance market: “iRobot didn’t really start making money until they embraced online sales; the established appliance market was too tough to make a big dent in. Yet they’ve now become the most widely distributed robot in the world.”

Is there room for two more robot vacuums in what many have previously thought of as a novelty market?  Or is the “novelty” market now becoming mainstream?

Clearly Dyson and Samsung have done their homework, or they wouldn’t have launched competing products. And with Dyson investing £5m in a lab at Imperial College London, they obviously have their longterm sights set on the robotics community.

iRobot has been doing its own market research, too. In the above-mentioned report, iRobot claims that the robot vacuum business is at an explosion point, with a “huge addressable market” and a “$7 billion annual market opportunity”. With those kinds of numbers, it’s no wonder that other players are jumping into the game.

Which company is likely to emerge victorious in this battle for the consumers pocketbook? It may be too early to tell. Keay says that “Dyson is definitely upping the ante though with a smart phone connected vacuum cleaner. And with Dyson’s distribution networks and reputation, it will be interesting to see how the public adopts Housework 2.0.”

One thing is for certain, though: competition is a sure sign of growth in this space.

With contributions by Yannis Erripis, Andra Keay, John Payne, and Frank Tobe.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Why is Japan the first to get Dyson’s new 360 Eye?
• Recent robotic vacuum launches change industry from niche to mainstream
• Has Dyson’s robotic dream become reality?
• Dyson launches new robotic vacuum cleaner
• Dyson invests £5m in robot lab

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

1.  iRobot Roomba or Create
2. ROS Electric installed on Ubuntu Linux and configured according to the tutorials
3. Some way of connecting the robot to your computer (1, 2, or modify a USB-to-serial connector to interface with the mini-DIN port). For teleoperation, you can use the connected computer, another computer, smart phone, tablet, iPad, or anything with a browser supporting web sockets.

Let’s get into the specifics. With ROS installed, you’ll need a few more packages that aren’t included in the base install. Rosbridge is a solid middleware package that is going to enable communication with ROS through a webpage. It can do a lot more, but this satisfies our goal for now. Let’s install that (from Brown screencast):

> sudo apt-get install ros-electric-brown-remotelab

You’ll also need a package to enable ROS to communicate with the robot. The package, at its most basic functionality, will listen for Twist messages (ROS-speak for motor drive commands), and convert it to the low-level serial commands for the roomba. (Though this tutorial focuses on roomba/create, you can use any robot with an existing ROS package, or write your own!) You have three options, based on your roomba model:

1. iRobot Roomba 500 series or up (uses iRobot OI spec [pdf])
2. iRobot Roomba pre-500 series (uses iRobot SCI spec [pdf])
3. iRobot Create (uses iRobot OI spec)

> mkdir ros_workspace
> cd ros_workspace
> mkdir myStacks
> cd myStacks
> git clone https://github.com/dpiet/robotsindc-ros-pkg

Be sure to rosmake. Check to make sure the directory (or parent directory) is included in the ROS package path:

> echo ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

If it’s not, add it:

> export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:/home/david/ros_workspace

There’s one more piece we need in order to control the robot through a webpage: the webpage. Fortunately, there are plenty of rosbridge examples out there and a javascript novice like me was able to hack together a simple page with keyboard inputs and button inputs. Download the page (or you already have it if you cloned the git repo) to your web server directory (if you’re running one) or to you /home and you need only modify the IP address to point to the computer controlling the robot. And that’s it!

Here’s the procedure for putting this altogether at execution:

In a separate terminal for each line, run the following commands:

> roscore
> rosrun roomba_400_series roomba400_light_node (assumes robot is attached to /dev/ttyUSB0)
> rosrun rosbridge rosbridge.py
(Optional) if you don't have a webserver, cd to your /home directory with the teleop.html file and use the magic of python:
> python -m SimpleHTTPServer

1. Grab your iPad (or other device), make sure it’s on the same wifi local network as the robot computer, and load up the page. If you’re running SimpleHTTPServer, type this in: http://[robot ip address here]:8000/teleop.html
2. If all goes according to plan you’ll get a rudimentary screen with buttons for directional control and a log showing connection status messages
3.  Happy roomba driving!

To recap, we connected a roomba to a laptop running: ROS, the open source Robot Operating System from Willow Garage; Rosbridge, a convenient middleware package from Brown University; and a web server (in this case Python’s SimpleHTTPServer). We were then able to load up a webpage with some javascript from a laptop, android smartphone, or iPad, with each able to drive the roomba with basic forward/reverse/left/right commands. Cool.

By using ROS and a few open source packages, we were able to get going with a moving robot via teleoperation with a simple user interface relatively quickly, or at least much quicker than if we were to program everything from scratch. So the benefit has been the ability to stand up a teleoperation robot in short order through code reuse. A criticism is that we used a fairly heavy framework, with a lot of pieces working under the hood, which means a lot of upfront work to read system documentation/tutorials and review examples. But as I argued above, the upfront cost is worth it, because now the robot is based on software modules with a vibrant community of contributors that facilitates code reuse without you having to reinvent the wheel or become a path-planning expert.

To take advantage of the upfront work we put in to learning ROS, we can now easily extend the first part of the tutorial and add a video feed to our web interface so we can now teleoperate remotely. Here’s what we need to add:
//

• The mjpeg_server ROS package (to install, download the package or svn checkout. cd into the directory and run “rosmake –rosdep-install”)
• Microsoft Kinect ROS package using OpenNI drivers (to install, run “sudo apt-get install ros-electric-openni-kinect”)
• A new html file with some additional javascript

The following video demonstrates the first run after integrating all the components on the robot. Not too bad, but there’s definitely room for improvement. Next steps will be to add a roslaunch file to our repo to simplify startup, accelerometer controls for navigation, and further testing to identify sources of lag.

Here’s the procedure for getting the demo running. Be sure to change the robot’s IP address as appropriate. Please note: this demo is currently compatible with ROS Electric, not the latest version, Fuerte.

In a separate terminal for each line, run the following commands:

> roscore
> rosrun roomba_400_series roomba400_light_node (assumes robot is attached to /dev/ttyUSB0)
> rosrun rosbridge rosbridge.py
> rosrun mjpeg_server mjpeg_server _port:=9091
> roslaunch openni_launch openni.launch
(Optional) if you don't have a webserver, cd to your /home directory with the teleop_video.html file and use the magic of python:
> python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Where can we go from here? We’ve essentially built a Turtlebot, replacing the iRobot Create with the roomba (though we’re obviously missing the convenient mounting hardware). So there are plenty of resources for integrating advanced behaviors like mapping, autonomous navigation, or even a manipulator arm. In particular, the Pi Robot project has done some interesting demonstrations with the Turtlebot platform.

Have a roomba gathering dust and a Kinect sitting next to your Xbox? Then you have all the major components to build a moving robot.