I would like to introduce you to iRobot's latest prototype: a new telepresence robot named AVA that was unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2011) -- see the video below.  Through AVA, iRobot intends to explicitly leverage the proliferation of tablets / smart phones and their associated app stores.  They intend to furnish actuation (mobile base, pan-tilt unit, telescoping linear actuator spine, etc.), a sensor suite (including sonar, laser, and a depth camera like Microsoft's Kinect), and basic robot software (eg. obstacle avoidance, mapping, and direct physical interfaces).  Meanwhile, you provide the brains in the form of a tablet (eg. iPad or Android).  In theory, this should open up mobile robot application development to a much broader audience, creating the oft-discussed robot app store.  When combined with the recent announcement of the Scooba 230 floor cleaning robot (which I will certainly purchase), I would say iRobot is still innovating!

Dejan Pangercic of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group at TUM (Technische Universität München) wrote in to show us a cool dual-robot demonstration where a PR2 robot (TUM's James) and TUM-Rosie combine their efforts to prepare and deliver pancakes -- Yum!  The demonstration system is quite impressive, featuring: door and drawer opening, object recognition, grasping and manipulation, navigation, multi-robot cooperation, etc.  The demo seems to use a fair bit of stock ROS functionality, as well as some new functionality and CRAM integration (Cognitive Robot Abstract Machine, a reasoning framework from TUM).  I'm anxious to learn more about the system: assumptions, limitations, and methods.  Hopefully more advanced details are forthcoming.  Check out the video below.

Yesterday Georgia Tech's PR2 robot made a LIVE appearance on CNN.  The event was accompanied by interviews of Dr. Charlie Kemp (director of Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab and my advisor) and Keenan Wyrobek (Willow Garage figurehead).  Travis Deyle (yours truly) was also present and responsible for the robot demonstration.  While some of the PR2's movements (some driving, waving to the audience, etc) were scripted or teleoperated via joystick, the actual medication delivery demonstration was fully autonomous and used UHF RFID sensing (a major component of my PhD research), the base laser rangefinder, and a slightly-modified TrajectoryPlannerROS.  The demo went off without a hitch, and as Keenan mentioned on the PR2-Users mailing list, "Their demo is a milestone (albeit a gutsy one) for PR2.  The first nationally televised, LIVE, sensor-based demo with a PR2."  Check out the video (embedded below), as well as some behind-the-scenes pictures of the PR2 inside CNN's studio.

CNET's Road Trip 2010 series dropped by iRobot HQ, where "Cool Stuff" is aptly emblazoned on the doors. They snapped a number of interesting photos of lesser-known iRobot history / robots, including: underwater gliders, previously unseen chembot prototypes, and Landroids (mini-Packbots). But perhaps the most interesting nugget was the Roomba testing lab, where Roombas scuttle around for 1500-2000 hours of durability testing across various floor types with different levels of dirtiness -- check out the video below.  The multi-floor testing is uncannily similar to that which we performed on the Roomba Dustpan robot.

I recently became aware of an effort by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) to define a standard for domestic service robots -- more specifically, ISO-13482 "Safety requirements for non-medical personal care robots."  I must confess having mixed feelings about this development.  On one hand, it is exciting that the personal robotics revolution is near-enough at hand to warrant the definition of a standard -- there are many standards for industrial robots (eg. ISO-10218 and ISO-9409), but none for domestic personal robots.  On the other hand, I'm a bit concerned that a somewhat-binding international standard is being developed prematurely and in a rather closed-door fashion -- issues upon which I will elaborate below.  Thankfully, there will be plenty of discussion at IROS 2010 (Taipei, Taiwan in mid-October) at the "Workshop on Standardization for Service Robots."  Lack of resources will likely preclude my attendance, so perhaps someone can fill us in after the fact...?

FastCompany spotted a new version of HERB (Home Exploring Robot Butler) at the CMU Quality of Life Technology Center.  HERB is a joint effort between Intel Research's Personal Robotics Program and Carnegie Mellon University.  The new version sports two Barrett WAM arms on a Segway RMP mobile base and has a very distinctive rotating (instead of tilting) planar laser rangefinder.  The new HERB certainly has a unique design -- be sure to check out the photos and video below where HERB grasps objects from a table.

We've seen snack-carrying and coffee-fetching robots on Hizook before, but the BlueBotics Nesbot really speaks to my over-caffeinated heart.  Nesbot is an autonomous mobile coffee machine whose sole purpose is to take my web-based order, autonomously locate me (via BlueBotics' ANT navigation system), and deliver my choice of  six blends -- and remember, I prefer strong espressos!   It seems that Nesbot was a contract job for BlueBotics, which is one of a few select robotics companies in the EU BRICS project, commissioned by Nestlé Nespresso to "investigate future applications in the coffee service market."  I like it -- I want all of my robots to have embedded coffee machines... 

I finally took a few minutes to watch a tear-down of the Roomba 4000 Series vacuum cleaner by Dino Segovis of DinoFab.com.  The 20-minute two-part video (embedded below) provides a pretty solid look at the design considerations that went into making the Roomba both robust and low-cost.  While the sensors and motherboard are definitely interesting, the motors are the most intriguing to me -- they seem to be separately fabricated modules with a small DC motor coupled to a planetary gearhead via a belt drive.   It is also striking just how much gunk (hair, dust, etc.) builds up inside every nook and cranny of the robot.  Definitely a hacker-friendly robot that offers plenty of lessons to people interested in designing commercial robots -- almost worth buying one just to look at first-hand.

Back in October 2009, Colin Angle spoke at TEDMED 2009.  It was a big announcement: IRobot was launching a new healthcare robotics business unit to be led by Tod Loofbourrow.  Their ambitious goal:  add 1 million years to users' lifetimes through robotic assistance.  Some good synopses of the talk were posted, but videos of the event were elusive... until now.  Below you can find the full video of Colin's talk and some points that I think are particularly poignant.

Today Willow Garage announced that eleven (rather than the original ten anticipated) PR2 Beta robots, with a total value of over $4.4M, will be loaned out to academic and research institutions worldwide to develop a slew of impressive capabilities over the next two years.  The recipients include 7 US-based institutions, 3 European, and 1 Asian.  The final list is a panoply of robotics specialists:  University of Freiburg (Germany), Bosch, Georgia Tech, KU Leuven (Belgium), MIT, Stanford, TU Munich (Germany), UC Berkeley, U Penn, USC, and University of Tokyo (Japan) -- full details can be found in the Willow Garage press release.  It is difficult to overstate the importance of this event in the grand history of robotics...  Let me try to explain.

Well, it's official.  Willow Garage CEO Steve Cousins just announced to the Robotics-Worldwide mailing list that Willow intends to give away 10 PR2 robots.  These are some amazingly impressive robots, costing several hundred thousand dollars each.  Willow's PR2 robots and open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) have been widely acclaimed by news organizations such as the New York Times, Popular Science, Hizook, and pretty much everyone else.  This should be an interesting year for Willow Garage.  The full Robotics-Worldwide announcement is below, and the Willow Garage Call for Proposals (CFP) can be found here.  Updated Jan 21st 2010: Included some new (professional) photos of the finished PR2.

A commercially-available ultra low-cost laser rangefinder is finally set to hit department store shelves in February!  I'm speaking of the laser rangefinder presented at ICRA 2008 that costs $30 to build (commented on here at Hizook almost one year ago) that sits atop the recently announced Neato Robotics XV-11 vacuum cleaner.   Others have thoroughly discussed the XV-11's competitiveness with iRobot products, the possible patent infringement of iRobots square-front design, and its ability to perform SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping).  But everyone has glossed over the coolest part:  Forget the $400 robot, $60 batteries, $30 wheels (etc.) available for pre-order on Neato's website... if made available, sub-$100 laser rangefinders would revolutionize hobby robotics!  Read on for a description of this compelling (future?) component.

While perusing through Kuka's 2008 Annual Report, it became evident that the robotics giant is making a serious foray into mobile manipulation with its OmniRob concept robot (photos and videos below).  This new robot sports a omnidirectional mobile platform based on mecanum wheels, a Kuka lightweight arm, and what appear to be dual SICK LMS100 laser range finders to provide 360° lidar coverage.  Between Kuka's "toy" educational platform (covered by Hizook in October) and this more advanced offering, it is clear that Kuka is highly invested / interested in the future of mobile manipulation.  With Kuka's classic expertise in robot arms, combined with competence in omnidirectional systems via their OmniMove industrial application line, Kuka will surely be a significant force in the exciting field of mobile manipulation.

I saw a press release by Robosoft (a French company that creates "advanced robotics solutions") with attractive CAD drawings of a robotic walker meant to assist the elderly.  I thought this was a good opportunity to examine some of the other robotic solutions in this space, from the more complex Care-O-Bot II from Fraunhofer to the most simplistic passively-breaking walkers that prevent stumbling and excessive acceleration.  Read further for more information, and if you know of any examples of robotic walkers to assist the elderly, please chime in!

While most (semi)autonomous mobile manipulators employ expensive articulated arms with grippers (6 or more DOF), the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech, the same folks who made EL-E, are also examining low-complexity end effectors modelled off of dustpans and kitchen turners for non-prehensile grasping of isolated objects from the floor.  When mounted on an iRobot Create (Roomba), the system's performance was impressive; it successfully grasped ~95% of the 34 test objects across numerous orientations / configurations and four different surfaces -- an impressive feat of robustness given that the end effector is a single under-actuated "sweeper" (1 DOF) working in tandem with a planar wedge, the whole system operates via open loop control, and the objects were quite varied (from small individual pills to large containers, and from deformable textiles to rigid bottles).  This system is slated to appear at ICRA 2009 in Kobe, Japan in the next few days and is documented in a paper entitled "1000 Trials: An Empirically Validated End Effector that Robustly Grasps Objects from the Floor" (of which I am a coauthor).  Read further for videos and additional discussion.

While Hizook covered the Rollin' Justin robot over three months ago, the rest of the world (including Engadget) had to wait until CeBIT, where Rollin' Justin "debuted" today.  Lots of great pictures and videos were taken, including a video where Rollin' Justin is led around by the hand (I assume using the force/torque sensing capabilities of the DLR-III lightweight arm or the DLR-II hand).  However, the "serious" coverage at CeBIT left out one of Justin's most hilarious commands:  "dance like in pulp fiction."  We show this video (to be shown at the upcoming ICRA 2009 conference) below.

Back in May 2008 it was announced that CMU professors Sara Kiesler and Jodi Forlizzi (from the HCI Institute) and Paul Rybski (from the Robotics Institute) were awarded $500k in Microsoft's Human-Robot Interaction funding to develop a social, snack-selling robot to traverse Newell-Simon and Wean halls (press release).  After seeing a prototype appear on Flickr in July, we've all been waiting patiently to see pictures of the final version.  Well, the wait is over -- photos of the new CMU snackbot, conceptual designs, and construction photos are contained below!  It appears that the CMU team is progressing nicely.

You may recall Justin, the humanoid robot sporting two DLR-III lightweight arms and two DLR-II hands.  Well, Justin has recently acquired a 4-wheel mobile base dubbed "Rollin' Justin".  The base utilizes a "powered-caster" design similar to the Willow Garage PR2, except that the torso-caster linkage contains a spring-loaded lift mechanism that gives the base a variable footprint.  I'm sure this will prove useful when trying to squeeze through doors, adapting to uneven terrain, or providing a larger support polygon.  While we currently do not have any video of the system in action, there are a number of great pictures and design documents below.

Myself and several colleagues are anxiously following the creation of Willow Garage's PR2 mobile manipulation robot.  By looking at the progress on WG's blog, it appears they're well on their way to functioning units by early next year; they already have some bases, spines, heads, and even an arm up and running -- read on to see more images from the PR2 "alpha" prototypes.  One interesting aspect of Willow Garage is that their "Robot Operating System" (ROS), being developed by the Player-Stage founder Brian Gerkey, is entirely open source and run on (among others) Ubuntu Linux!  You may also recall that Keenan Wyrobek and Eric Berger (formerly at Stanford, now both at Willow Garage) had a hand in the PR1 robot, with impressive videos of the robot cleaning up rooms, fetching beer, and unloading a dishwasher (see videos below).

There has been a lot of press in the last six months revolving around El-E, the autonomous mobile manipulation platform for the motor impaired out of Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab (to which I belong).  There was a report in the NY Times on El-E's laser-pointer interface, and now a report in MIT Tech Review on El-E behaving like a service dog.  Recently, the lab's director (and my advisor) Dr. Charlie Kemp, gave an impressive talk at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute (CMU-RI) where he adeptly ties together these research initiatives and makes a compelling case for more autonomous mobile manipulators for the motor impaired.  Read on for the CMU-RI video and some choice images and themes from the talk.

Researchers at Georgia Tech (labmates of this author) have developed a robot that can robustly open closed doors. The target application for the robot, named El-E ("Ellie"), is assistive tasks related to healthcare in the homes of the disabled. This application demonstrates a set of behaviors that enable a mobile manipulator to reliably open a variety of doors and traverse doorways using force-sensing fingers and a laser range finder.

During the Spring 2007 semester, several friends (and labmates) took a course at Georgia Tech on mobile manipulation. This was no ordinary class... the final exam's assignment was to use a Segway base with KUKA arm to fetch a cup of coffee!  There are a ton of reasons that this is interesting, from mobility, navigation, perception, manipulation, etc. However, the most impressive thing is that each group used different software to complete the task. One team used MS Robotics Studio, another used Player/Stage on Linux, and another used a functional language called OCaml on Mac.