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| The Robots Among Us |
September 2, 2004 |
By Gail Balfour
Why clean your floors, mow your lawn or read to your kids when a robot will soon do it for you?
Fifteen years ago, robotics expert Colin Angle asked a large group of people to imagine what it would be like to have a personal robot in their home. If that were possible, he asked, what was the one thing they would most like it to do? The answer was virtually unanimous: “Clean my floors.” A little more than a decade later, this became possible.
“Where the idea came from — that was the easy part,” said Angle, CEO and co-founder of Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot Corp. (no relation to the movie),
the company that created the Roomba, a robotic vacuum that cleans under furniture and senses its surroundings, including dirt and obstacles.
“The thought process was: ‘Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons — that’s what I want. When am I going to get it?’ And so there was this almost universal desire,” Angle said. However, when he asked people if they would be willing to pay thousands of dollars for such a device, the answer was a resounding “of course not.”
And therein lies the challenge. Angle said cost is the single biggest obstacle the whole consumer robotics industry faces — being able to develop and produce products that average people can afford to purchase.
“As soon as you pick an application — take vacuuming — the price of the product is pretty well set,” Angle said, because there are already vacuums on
the market. In order for a robotic vacuum to be successful, it needs to be priced competitively with other vacuums, and perform as well or better.
iRobot was not the first company to offer such a device to consumers, but it was the first to do it affordably, Angle said.
“The value proposition has already been determined. So people who go out and spend [money] on a robotic vacuum are not doing it because they want to keep
their floors clean, they are doing it for some other reason.” With prices starting at about US$200, iRobot has already sold more than half a million Roombas since introducing them in 2002.
MORE THAN FLOORS
“It is possible to build almost any robot you could imagine if time and money are not factors,” Angle said. “But if you know what you want to do, and you know what price you need to attack — if you can win there, then you have achieved something that I would say is far more relevant than a mere robotic technical marvel.”
The vacuum is just one of many such robots cropping up in the mainstream consumer marketplace designed to make life easier, or to entertain us, or both.
For example, there are robotic lawn mowers, such as those being offered by big-name companies like Toro and Husqvarna. Toro’s iMow, which sells for about US$500, lures potential buyers with promises of being able to lie in a hammock sipping lemonade while watching a robot trim their lawn with precision.
The concept is similar, in some ways, to the robotic vacuum. It has built-in sensors, moves automatically and performs a single, specific task independently.
WORKS LIKE A DOG
As well, most of us are familiar with AIBO (Japanese for “companion”), Sony Corp.’s now famous robotic dog. AIBO can bark, walk and wag its tail. It has several senses including touch, hearing, sight and balance. It can even display six different “emotional states.” It’s marketed as a toy, but it can be more than that to its owners. Studies have shown that many people actually react to it in a similar way that they would a real, breathing pet.
You may wonder who would buy such a thing, especially given the high cost of these puppies, which can run up to about US$1,500. “They are the early adopters.
They are people with an education…and money,” said Dan Kara, president and co-founder of Robotics Trends, a Northboro, Mass.-based research analysis and integrated media firm serving the robotics marketplace.
However, this demographic will soon expand, he said. “Once Sony gets the price down to about US$100 (which the company is working on), it will be selling tens of thousands per month.”
Kara agreed with Angle’s point that cost is the single biggest limitation to consumer robotics. “Anybody can build a robot that can do something in a lab. Basically, they are not limited by budget constraints and if the thing stops working, well it just stops working. In the marketplace though, that doesn’t fly.”
Kara said more consumer devices will be on the market soon, from education-focused robots such as Lego’s Mindstorm to those that do housework and lawn care, and those that act as personal assistants, not to mention more toys and entertainment robots.
“You are reaching a point now where every K to 12 school will have robotics projects or classes offered. At the same time, at the university level, major institutions now offer Ph.D.-level degrees in robotics. In addition to that, you have amateur user groups, popular media, television shows — all of this is coming together. And it is creating a whole new industry,” Kara said. “This is something unprecedented.”
WALK LIKE A MAN
Then there is the increasingly popular concept of humanoid robotic companions.
An idea which could be borrowed from a page in science fiction, these robots range from Wow Wee’s affordable Robosapien (at less than US$100, these mini humanoids can walk, make caveman noises, dance and exhibit rude behaviour) to expensive life-sized prototypes from several companies such as Honda, Sony, Toyota and NEC. The latter are not yet ready for the consumer market; the firms are researching ways for robots to entertain us, help the elderly and disabled, and do all sorts of strange and wonderful things. Because households are built to accommodate human forms, the humanoid design for a robot companion makes the most sense. One such robot making headlines is Honda’s ASIMO.
This multi-million-dollar marvel is human-sized, can walk, talk, listen and even climb stairs. It goes on educational tours, visits with children and is rented out as a “greeter” by companies like IBM.
Honda’s ASIMO continues to evolve with more capabilities such as sight and voice recognition.
But the company has no plans to mass-market such an item anytime soon. It is meant primarily to showcase what is possible, and to excite people about technology, said Art Thomas, national manager of corporate affairs at Toronto-based Honda Canada Inc.
“So where it will go and how it will be utilized by the world is still to be determined,” he said. “But certainly our dream is that it would be truly there to support humankind, not simply there as a demonstration of Honda’s engineering capabilities.”
FALSE HOPES
Angle feels robots like ASIMO are giving consumers a false expectation of the possibilities in the near future for mainstream robotics.
“Grand demonstration devices are technically fabulous, inspiring a generation of future roboticists. But creating a new industry? No. In fact, in many ways (they are) hampering the creation of a new industry by setting expectations too high and by developing technology that will not be useful because it is fundamentally too expensive.”
Dr. Carl Telford, a consultant and robotics technology analyst with SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, in Croydon, England, agreed with this observation.
“If you ignore the word ‘robotics’ and you look at where technology is going, there are definitely huge advances being made. But my worry is, because of the word ‘robot,’ people are going to have unrealistic expectations about what technology can actually achieve,” Telford said.
“We’ve got to kind of dampen people’s expectations.
As a home helper, what would it actually do? We already have dishwashers and washing machines and things like that doing a lot of our work. So why would you want (a robot) in your home?”Toys, or “leisure robots,” is the market that will soon take off, Telford said. And these robots will start to see more functionality in a practical sense. What may be just a toy today could be used as a companion or a heart monitor to a senior citizen tomorrow, for example.
“We are going to see some very complicated leisure robots. Robosapien and AIBO are just the start. We are going to see things coming out that are, for want of a better word, good fun,” Telford said.
“The way they move is going to look immediately impressive. And a lot of them might not have an immediate use. But as they [evolve] they will start to get more functionality and do stuff that is useful.”
What’s more, the leisure robot industry has opened up a whole new world for robotic hobbyists, which is comparable to the open-source community when Linux was first being developed. Already, there are AIBO hacker sites where people trade code to get their pets to do different things.
“You are going to see young people growing up with these platforms on which to program, and getting them to perform different tasks. If this kind of thing takes off, you can guarantee there will be some very interesting developments that will come from this,” Telford predicted.
ROBOTS MOVING IN
The word ‘robot’ still carries a science fiction-like thrill. Earlier versions of humanoid robots were hulkingly large, with deep booming voices, Kara said. But over time they have become smaller, with higher voices, which are perceived as more friendly. The key is to get them to look humanoid enough to relate to, but “people get too freaked out once they look too human; it’s disquieting,” he said.
“(However), the way you are going to see robots moving into the home and workplace isn’t an ASIMO. It’s going to sneak under the radar. You are going to add sensors to your cars. You will start to see more devices like the Roomba coming out, or the robotic lawn mowers,” Kara said.
“So it will be added piecemeal, very similar to the way dishwashers and microwaves first came in.”
In fact, the Roomba wasn’t called a robot when it first launched, Angle said, because they thought it would scare customers away. It didn’t. What’s really interesting, he said, is that at least 50 per cent of the people who own Roombas have confessed to naming their vacuum as if it, too, were a pet or an employee.
“There’s this sense of maybe guilt, maybe pride, maybe satisfaction: here’s this t hing working for you and you’re not doing anything. And it deserves a name.”
Web robots
Honda’s ASIMO http://world.honda.com/ASIMO
iRobot Corp. http://www.irobot.com
Robosapien http://www.robosapienonline.com
Robotics Trends http://www.roboticstrends.com
Sony’s AIBO http://www.us.aibo.com
SRI Consulting http://www.sric-bi.com
Toro’s iMow http://www.toro.com/home/mowers/imow
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