CIOL : News : A robot for every home?

Worldwide robot sales in the first half of ’03 were up by 26%, says a survey. 50,000 household robots are already in operation, and a tenfold increase is expected by ’06.

BANGALORE: The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has released its 2003 World Robotics survey, which says that robot orders in the first half of 2003 were up by 26%, the highest level ever recorded. Growth rates reached 35% in North America, 25% in Europe and 18% in Asia.

There are now at least 770,000 robots at work, including 350,000 in Japan, 233,000 in the European Union and about 104,000 in North America.

Robots are coming to our homes too. At the end of 2002 more than 50,000 autonomous vacuum cleaners and lawn-mowing robots were in operation. By the end of 2006 a tenfold increase is predicted.

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Home invasion fuels robot explosion

In the first six months of the year, there was a 26 percent jump in demand for robots as more of the machines were employed in industry and in homes.

According to a new report from the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics, 80,000 robots were sold globally between January and June. “These figures indicate that a strong recovery is in sight,” the report said, noting that the global robot market contracted by 12 percent last year.

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The biggest use for robots today remains in industry, with about 770,000 out of 1.4 million active robots in the world currently used for manufacturing. Half of the planet’s industrial robots are in Japan, 230,000 are in the EU and just 104,000 are in North America, the survey said. However, in two years there will be about 875,000 units in use globally, with 333,000 in Japan, 303,000 in the European Union and 135,000 in North America, according to the World Robotics survey.

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Other interesting commentary in the study included a prediction that service-oriented and household robots will soon become more commonplace and that sales of these kinds of machines are on the way up. “They will not only clean our floors, mow our lawns and guard our homes but they will also assist old and handicapped people with sophisticated interactive equipment, carry out surgery, inspect pipes and sites that are hazardous to people, fight fire and bombs and be used in many other applications,” the report said.

In 2002, sales of “domestic robots,” which mainly include automated lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners, jumped to 33,000 from 20,000 the year before. By 2006, there will be as many as 400,000 vacuum-cleaning robots in service globally and 125,000 smart lawnmowers.

In terms of entertainment, sales of robotic toys, like Sony’s AIBO dog, should reach 1.5 million by 2006, or almost three times the current 550,000 level.

Ananova – ‘Emotional’ robot goes on display

A pioneering robot capable of showing emotions is to go on public display for the first time.

The machine, called eMo, will greet and interact with visitors to Birmingham’s Thinktank from October 25.

As well as expressing a range of emotions from anger to happiness, eMo is also programmed to respond to the moods of people it meets.

Visitors will be challenged to guess eMo’s mood, receiving a nod and smile if they are right and an angry shake of the head if they are wrong.

eMo’s has been created by Sheffield University Professor Rod Sharkey – who is best known for his role as a judge on the BBC’s Robot Wars.

He hopes the robot will provide some fun, but says it could also be a serious research tool.

Prof Sharkey said: ‘Such machines may one day play an important role in our lives – actually responding to our moods.

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New Scientist: Martial arts robots hit Asian tech fair

HOAP-2 stamps the ground like a sumo wrestler (Image: CEATEC)

Humanoid robots capable of performing somersaults and complex martial arts moves were demonstrated at Asia’s largest electronics and computing fair in Tokyo on Saturday.

Visitors to CEATEC 2003 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) met Morph3, a human-like robot about 30-centimetres tall developed by researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. It can perform back flips and karate moves thanks to 138 pressure sensors, 30 different onboard motors and 14 computer processors.

Another miniature humanoid robot on display was Fujitsu’s HOAP-2. This droid has been programmed to perform moves from the Chinese martial art taijiquan, as well as Japanese Sumo wrestling stances.

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Japan Corporate News Net : CEATEC Japan 2003: From Sumo to the Martial Arts, a New Generation of Compact Robots Fights it Out at CEATEC Japan

Tokyo, Japan, Oct. 10, 2003 – (JCN Newswire) – Enormous advances are being made in compact robot development, particularly humanoid robots, so mobile and graceful in motion that they might be called beautiful. CEATEC Japan 2003 is giving visitors a look at a future world in which humans and robots coexist to make lifestyles more convenient and abundant.

Wind River Systems, Inc. is exhibiting ‘morph 3,’ a compact humanoid robot that adopts the company’s real-time operating system, VxWORKS (R), and is installed with 13 sub-CPUs (central processing units) in addition to its main CPU. A total of 138 pressure sensors and 30 compact motors allow morph 3 to not only walk on two feet, but also give it the flexibility to perform karate forms, back flips and defensive positions. This robot was designed by a team led by Dr. Takayuki Furuta, chief of the Future Robotics Technology Center at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan.

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EE Times – E-textiles, robot ‘skin’ among advances at IEDM

HANCOCK, N.H. — The upcoming International Electron Devices Meeting will explore the range of potential applications for crystalline organic semiconductors.

The technology occupies an intriguing niche between high-performance silicon and low-end amorphous silicon or polymer electronics. Like polymers, crystalline organic compounds are carbon-based and thus easy to work with. But like crystalline silicon and other inorganic semiconductors, they have better performance than amorphous compounds, making them attractive for a wider number of applications.

The most prominent application to have emerged thus far is the flat-panel display, where organic light-emitting diodes offer low-cost processing on a variety of substrates. But other application areas, such as radio-frequency ID tags, have yielded some promising developments.

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In another exotic application, arrays of pentacene organic transistors have been built into a flexible sheet to create a pressure-sensitive “skin” for robots at the Quantum Phase Electronics Center of the University of Tokyo. The sensor arrays are built layer by layer on polyimide films. The design could be realized with large-area printing technology to create low-cost, flexible membranes that could imbue robots with a sense of touch similar to that of the human hand, making them much more dextrous than in the past, the researchers said.

Gizmo :: Adult-sized, His and Hers home robots

Looking for some entertaining, hassle free housemates whose personality you can program yourself? These interactive, remote controlled, multifunctional robots were designed and built by International Robotics and feature on-board computers that can be fully programmed for communication or automated ‘performance’ sequences.

The adult-sized pair are part of the 2003 Christmas Book from Dallas based specialty retailer Neiman Marcus.

The ‘His’ Robot is designed to respond empathetically to humans and features programmable technology that will help him evolve his personality to suit your preferences and input.

The ‘Her’ Robot has a multicolour moving message display that can be re-programmed from a laptop.

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Animalistic robots ready to unleash

Photo by Robbin Cresswell

Chris Prahacs walks a Robotic Hexapod, a biologically inspired robot with six rotating legs, over a pile of rocks during the Lackland Force Protection Battlelab Exposition last month at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The 30-pound roach-like robot also swims.

(This is the final installment of a three part series examining how animal and insect research is helping to protect humans.)

Defense Advanced Research Project Agency researchers have studied many animal characteristics over the years. Scientists have longed to better understand how nocturnal animals function and whether the capabilities certain species possess might have practical applications for the military.

For example, the agency is intrigued by a dolphin’s ability to sleep portions of its brain, while other parts remain awake to keep it from drowning. Military officials have a constant eye on the research in hopes of applying this technique in some capacity to soldiers. Battlefield fatigue has become and will continue to be major military obstacle in war.

The agency has also looked into the unique characteristics of animals and insects other than dolphins. Researchers want to better understand how certain species can walk on walls, traverse rocky terrain and even slither.

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The Korea Herald : The Nation’s No.1 English Newspaper

Fledgling robot industry aims to fly high

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Will the day really come when ‘intelligent’ robots take over mundane household chores and give people more leisure time?

Dreams come true?

There is no definition yet of the intelligent service robot. But according to the preliminary definition by the International Federation of Robotics, an industry group concerned with commercial robots, it is ‘a robot which operates semi or fully autonomously to perform services useful to the well-being of humans and equipment, excluding manufacturing operations.’

Lim Young-mo, a senior researcher at the private Samsung Economic Research Institute said, “While most industrial robots performed repeated tasks at factories, service robots have intelligence and move on their own to help people with household chores and office work. Service robots are expected to create a mass market as large as the markets for personal computers or automobiles.”

While no robots like Andrew are available to consumers yet, experts predict that home robots will become popular in coming years, taking care of a variety of household chores.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Research Institute projected that household robots would begin to penetrate the market in earnest in 2010 and that each household would own at least one robot by 2020.

But different agencies have different forecasts about how big the service robot market will grow in the future.

According to the International Federation of Robotics the global market for intelligent service robots is expected to grow to $2.2 billion in 2005 from $400 million this year. By 2010, the market is forecast to reach $24.3 billion worldwide, according to the organization.

The Japan Machinery Federation predicts the market will expand to $20 billion in 2010, while Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy estimates it at $70 billion.

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The Korea Herald : The Nation’s No.1 English Newspaper Seoul to coordinate robot R&Dplans

The Korean government will draw up a comprehensive plan to promote the nation’s robotics industry this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced yesterday.

The Science Ministry will also coordinate the research and development plans separately developed by various ministries.

It will form a special committee of experts soon to spearhead the project. The panel will be in charge of choosing competitive fields of the robot industry and setting up development programs, a ministry official explained.