Reality/Fantasy

There are many different kinds of service robots already being used. Vacuum cleaners, lawn-mowing robots, entertainment and leisure robots, mediacl robots, underwater robots, demolition robots, surveillance robots are just a few. Household robots are becoming more avaible. You can now go to Sears and buy the Roomba and Discovery Vacuum Robots. Many stores like Sharper Image carry service robots. Robot toys like Sony's Aibo, an electronic dog, are making there way to the market. Prices are high now, but as more and more of the domestic robots appear in the market place, more and more of them will begin to arrive at the average person's homes.

Service Robots for Personal/Domestic Use:

Types of Robots

Robots for Domestic Tasks

There are many service robots on the market today from the Roomba vacuum cleaner to the Ambrogio Lawn Mower. Here are a few that are interesting:

RoboMower :

Company: FriendlyRobotics

Description: A fully automatic lawnmover that works with the push of a button. It works on any shape yard where a regular gas or electric mower could be used. The cutting system is battery powered (5.5 HP gas mower equivalent) and has three blades (56cm) with 5800-RPM speed. The grass is cut into very small pieces and buried in the roots to decompose and become a natural fertilizer. The RL1000 model has a docking station. Wire around the perimeter of the lawn guides the mower and it returns to the docking station to recharge after each scheduled event. It is programmable for weekly mowings for an entire season and can handle lawns up to 16000 sq.ft.

CareBot MSR2.2 :

Company: Gecko Systems

Cost: $12,950 with automatic navigatin Geckobrain and GeckoChat

Description: Emily is the CareBot prototype, an assistive appliance. She can run errands around the house or check-up on things when you are away. One feature is the speakerphone, caller ID system that lets Emily announce who is calling. Emily could also take care of an elderly or sick person. One task would to be to register heartbeat and breathing. If there were any irregularities 911 would be called. Carebot also has a video camera in her head to monitor if someone fell down and was unable to get up. Emily would ask if the person was ok. If the response was abnormal, weak, or garbled the CareBot knows that help is needed and contacts appropriate persons or calls 911.

The Carebot Emily can talk to you or take verbal commands using the GeckoChat program. Emily could read to someone, do household tasks, and is internet remote controllable. The owner can call the Carebot from work or home on a PC allowing them to see what the CareBot was looking at and hear what was going on in the house. The speaker phone would allow a conversation with anyone at the house.

UltraBot:

Company: Comfort House

Cost: $2499.00

Description: Ultrabot lets people enjoy their pool without the hassle of cleaning it. It scrubs all of the pool from top to bottom vacuuming away the dirt and debris. There's no installation to get Ultrabot up and running in the pool. Just throw it in the pool and plug it in. Ultrabot is for residential pools and can climb walls and steps automatically. Algae, dirt, debris, hair and sand are no match for the Ultrabot. It can pump 7,500 gallons per hour through the micro-filtration system. This creates a healthy and clean environment for the home pool. While using Ultrabot use of the pool's regular filter system can be reduced up to 60 percent.

Floorbot:

Company: Floorbotics

Cost: $500

Description: The Floorbot is an intelligent vacuum robot designed for home use. It is 350mm in diameter and weighs only 6.9 kg. The Floorbot uses a smart logical navigation system that allows the owner to just put it in the room and leave it alone. The navigation system called ARNA ensures that the floor is entirely cleaned. It operates using advanced algorithms in the most efficient and non-repetitive pattern. The robot memorizes the room pattern and where it encountered obstacles. There are only three buttons; start, stop and pause. When activated the Floorbot begins to clean and also to map the room so it knows when it is done and has covered the entire room. It recharges like a mobile phone and is wireless. It runs for 45 to 60 minutes using bag elss high suction and rotating beater bars to get all the dirt.

Reality

1950- W.Grey Walter, a neurophysiologist punlishes a paper, "An Imitation of Life" which tells about his 'turtles' machines that could navigate in a simple environment and respond to light.

1950- Claude Shannon experiments in artificial intelligence with his electromechanical mouse.

1954- George Devol designs a programmable robot and uses the term universal automation. His prototype called the Unimate weighed 2000 pounds and stored memory on a magnetic drum.

1955- marvin Minsky and John McCarthey coined the term Artificial Intelligence.

1962- General Motors buys the 1st industrial robot made by the company started by Devol.

1966- The Unimate robot appears on the Johnny Carson show to get public response to robots being real.

1967- Kawasaki purchases a robot design and begins manufacturing Unimation robots in Japan who would become the largest users of robotics in the world.

1976- Robots are being used in radioactive test sites and in space exploration. Space probes, Viking 1 and 2, had robot arms.

1979- Ssankyo and IBM put SCARA on the market, an articulated robot arm.

1994 - CMU, Carnegie Mellon University, builds Dante II, a six-legged robot, to study volcanoes.

1995- Intuitive Surgical was formed to design and market surgical robotic systems.

1997- Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars and deploys the robot rover named Sojourner. It sends back picture of Mars.

2000- Gecko Systems develops the CareBot to take care of children and the elderly.

2001- SSRMS, the Space Station Remote Manipulator System, is launched and begins work on the International Space Station.

Fantasy

1927- Fritz Lang makes the silent picture, "Metropolis" a story set in the year 2000 where the down trodden workers are led by a female robot in a disastrous revolt.

1938- The story, "Helen O'Loy", features robots that are happy servants of mankind.

1938- Eando Binder writes "I,Robot" where the robots are faithful servants.

1950- Asimov writes short sotries featurein robots like "I, Robot" where he tells of a robot industry where the robots can do only as they are told.

1951- "The Day the Earth Stood Still", motion picture was made. An alien lands in the U.S. with a 12-foot high silver robot named Gort who is a galactic policeman.

1954- "Foldly Fahrenheit" is a tale of a robotic servant who becomes a murderer.

1956- Robbie the Robot is introduced in the movie, Forbiden Planet. Robbie is the handy household robot who can do anything and manufacture anything from a sample.

1963- Dr. Who travels the universe and meets the Daleks, dome shaped robots created to be weapons.

1966- "Lost in Space", the tv show airs. It features a robot, B-9, who takes care of the young Will Robinson. the robot says the famous lines "Danger Will Robinson, Danger".

1966-1969 Star Trek the tv series airs. Most of its robtos were dangerous.

1968- 2001, A Space Odyssey is a movie about a manned spaceship out in the solar system with a computer named HAL.

1969- THX 1138 is a movie about humans living in an underground world run by a computer.

1972- The movie, Silent Running, tells the story of a young ecologist trying to preserve the last plant life on earth in an orbiting habitat. There are three drones who help him, Huey, Dewy and Louie.

1977-2002 - Star Wars adventure with two robots, R2-D2 and C3P0 save the universe in a galaxy far far away.

1984- The first Terminator robot movie is made.

1986- A laser armed robot named Number Five becomes alive in the movie Short Circuit.

1995- Robocop movies tell the story of a policeman becoming a robot cop.

2000- Bicentennial Man is a movie about a robot that wants to become human.

2001- A.I. is a movie about a robot boy who wants to find his human mother.