Hasta La Gadget!

Everyday Robots, the Ones That Have Forever Been Coming… They Might Actually Get Here?
Well, in Japan, anyway. Two massive companies and one or two government agencies have assembled some intriguing and aggressive robot launchpad situations, and the game might be changing from “what the distant future will bring” to “what’s going to be in place in 3 years.”

Before jumping into to why things are different this time, it’s important to be fair to those less enthusiastic or perhaps bitterly incredulous about such claims. Wild projections and plans for robotic life accessories, robotic nurses, doctors, cops, soldiers, and perhaps even friends & lovers have long been subject to entirely reasonable criticism and dismissal. Very rightfully so, because all the amazing robots of the future have been kinda perpetually just that; of the future.

It’s easy to discredit theories and hopes and what-ifs, but it gets tricky when non-intuitive collaborations arise and money starts flowing in from both the private sector and the government. As it often does with the robots, Japan’s recently taken a few big steps:

First, global automotive & industrial powerhouse Honda announced a new robotics-related development partnership with Japanese construction & real estate giant Sekisui House. Honda makes three assistive robots: UNI-CUB, a rolly self-balancing chair-bot, and the mobility-assistive robots Bodyweight Support Assist and Stride Management Assist (more energy put into engineering than naming, but forgivable – previous coverage here). Teaming up with Sekisui House looks to be an avenue for Honda to sort of insert its robots beyond demos and gimmickry and directly into homes – homes ergonomically designed with humans and their robotic appliances & amenities in mind.

For its part, Sekisui House appears to have recognized robotics’ imminent matriculation beyond hope & theory into practical, pressing consideration – followed by implementation. It’s telling that a company with no real vested interest in robots yet an obvious and fundamental interest in profit wants to get dialed into Honda’s stuff early and often.

Second, item #2 in the big developments department is that, just days ago, the Japanese government detailed plans to begin large-scale funding for assistive robotics research and development in conjunction with consumer-end subsidies for the consumption of robot-based healthcare. Important here is that it’s not projected funding for some vague, far-off day to be decided after the completion of a survey or study or what have you, it’s funding for this fiscal year. To move forward in incorporating practical robots into human healthcare, alongside the R&D push are initiatives aimed at revising insurance codes to cover assistive robotic devices and/or services for the elderly or disabled.

For the R&D part, the government initiative calls specifically for the following:
• A motorized robot suit that can assist in lifting or moving elderly and otherwise impaired patients.
• An ambulatory robot that can help the elderly and others walk by themselves, even on inclines.
• A portable, self-cleaning robot toilet that can be placed in living rooms or bedrooms.
• A monitoring robot that can track the movements and whereabouts of dementia patients.

Conveniently, we once again see Honda’s options for early adopters:

And with a little careful market positioning and some decent design, Sekisui House will have just the place to put them.

The Why: an Unstoppable Force Meets a Fleet of Robots
Readers interested in the big breakdown of Why Japan? and Why Now? should leap on over to our March 2013 piece and get hip to what translates pretty directly as The Nation-Wide Existential Really Kinda Big-Deal Population Problem: “Dear Assistive Robot Industry, We Need You! Sincerely, Rapidly Aging Japan.”

The very basic recipe for Japan’s motivation toward developing robot labor breaks down like this:
1. The affluent children of two post-war baby-boom generations have for several decades been increasingly unmotivated toward the baby making, 2. the resulting birthrate in Japan has dropped far lower than 2.0 (which would be a replacement set for the two parents, i.e., population equilibrium), 3. Around 98.5% of Japan’s 130 million or so humans are ethnically and racially Japanese, and to put it gently, foreign residents aren’t so likely to be asked how long they hope to stay, but when they’re going home. That is to say, it’s unlikely that an immigrant labor force will be allowed or would want to take care of: 4. Nearly 40% of Japan’s population is 55 or older.

Therefore: robots.

It’s Worth Believing This Time:
In Japan, and really anywhere in the world, the pop-culture image of robotics and their capabilities is served up in sci-fi fantasy. As such, the reality can be a bit deflating, and one cannot really fault the average citizen for feeling that the promise of advanced robotics has been a long wait for a train that never arrived – and probably never will.

However, along with nearly every other branch of science, robotics is now subject to the massive leaps in computational capability that’ve put everything technology-related, i.e., the entirety of human civilization, into super-tech overdrive. To the slightly robo-dorkier among us, it’s clear that we’re entering new territory, and the future – the near future, is very bright.

And another way to tell is when seemingly unrelated Japanese companies start aligning robotics initiatives, and rather conservative government agencies start earmarking real robo-cash. This should be very, very interesting.

_________

Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.

Props to Jason Falconer at Gizmag for the heads-up on Honda/Sekisui.
Thanks to the Yomiuri Shimbun Online.
Images: Honda & Sekisui House

We’ve been hearing a lot about Google‘s self-driving car lately, and we’re all probably wanting to know how exactly the search giant is able to construct such a thing and drive itself without hitting anything or anyone. A new photo has surfaced that demonstrates what Google’s self-driving vehicles see while they’re out on the town, and it looks rather frightening.

The image was tweeted by Idealab founder Bill Gross, along with a claim that the self-driving car collects almost 1GB of data every second (yes, every second). This data includes imagery of the cars surroundings in order to effectively and safely navigate roads. The image shows that the car sees its surroundings through an infrared-like camera sensor, and it even can pick out people walking on the sidewalk.

Of course, 1GB of data every second isn’t too surprising when you consider that the car has to get a 360-degree image of its surroundings at all times. The image we see above even distinguishes different objects by color and shape. For instance, pedestrians are in bright green, cars are shaped like boxes, and the road is in dark blue.

However, we’re not sure where this photo came from, so it could simply be a rendering of someone’s idea of what Google’s self-driving car sees. Either way, Google says that we could see self-driving cars make their way to public roads in the next five years or so, which actually isn’t that far off, and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is even interested in developing self-driving cars as well. However, they certainly don’t come without their problems, and we’re guessing that the first batch of self-driving cars probably won’t be in 100% tip-top shape.

[via BuzzFeed]

Driving Miss dAIsy: What Google’s self-driving cars see on the road is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Like most of you, I’m patiently waiting for the day when I can buy a robot that will take care of all the irritating things around house I want to deal with. I want a robot to wash the dishes, bathe the dog, mow the lawn, and take out the trash. While this breakthrough might not solve that problem for me yet, a group of scientists from Georgia Institute of Technology have invented something dubbed “smart skin” that could give robots a sense of touch.

The researchers working on the smart skin used a bundle of vertical zinc oxide nano wires along with an array of about 8000 transistors. Each of those individual transistors is able to independently produce electronic signals when subjected to mechanical strain. The researchers say that these touch sensitive transistors, which they call taxels, have sensitivity comparable to that of the human finger. They say that the artificial skin can feel activity on its surface and the sensation could be translated into control signals for robot in the future.

Having a sense of touch is important because it will allow a robot to know when something is in its hand and how hard can grip that object. It wouldn’t do to have a robot breaking all your dishes after all.

[via BBC News]

Archaeology can be both challenging and dangerous. A lot of the archaeological finds take discovers underground, where they are forced to squeeze through very narrow passages that are at times to narrow for a human to crawl through. Archaeologists working in Mexico near the Pyramid of the Sun have begun using a robotic archaeologist to explore caverns and tunnels underneath the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. The caverns are too small for a normal human to explore.

The robot is called Tlaloc II-TC and gets its name from the Aztec god of rain. The robot is 3 feet long and designed to allow to easily pass through tight passageways that are too small for a human. The robotic explorer has a video camera and mechanical arms to help move any obstructions out of the way.

The human archaeologists lowered the robot into a 2000-year-old tunnel so that the robot could check how safe the tunnel was for human exploration. The researchers explored for several months using the robot and this week an investigation of the data retrieved by the robot led to images that archaeologists believed to be three ancient rooms. The tunnels in question are approximately 37 miles north of Mexico City underneath the Temple of Quetzacoatl, near the Pyramid of the Sun.

The configuration of the space discovered by the robotic archaeologist is said to be similar to a tunnel previously discovered beneath Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun. Archaeologists know very little about the rulers of the ancient city and have no depictions of a ruler or tombs of monarchs to study. Archaeologists hope that further investigation could reveal clues about the people who built ancient constructs.

[via Science World Report]

Robot archaeologist discovers new chambers under Temple of Quetzalcoatl is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Can’t afford the sweet Kuratas mech? Maybe you can pass on your dream of riding a robot to your kid. Japanese company Sakakibara Kikai recently released a video showing an updated version of its Kid’s Walker machine. It looks a lot more toy-like now, but it’s also more menacing because it has a gigantic drill on its left limb, in case Junior wants to play some Bioshock IRL.

Check out a Newtype lucky kid testing the Kid’s Walker NT in the video below:

I’m not sure if the Kid’s Walker NT is already for sale, but if the price of the previous model is any indication you’ll need tens of thousands of dollars to earn the title of world’s best parent.

[via Gizmag via Relevant Magazine]