Servo - March 2010

Then

d n a

NOW

A CLOSER LOOK AT PERSONAL SERVICE ROBOTS by Tom Carroll

Last month, I wrote about service robots and how they’ve become the largest segment of the robotics industry, by far. This is not to say that the industrial robot category has not changed, as these robots have become far more capable with active vision systems, precision direct-drive motor systems, and cost less to implement. This recession has hit all industries very hard and the robotics industry as a whole has felt the brunt of it, especially the service robot segment. It is hard enough for factory management to approve capital funding for new assembly line robots here in the US; the general public simply cannot afford to buy the service robots that have been developed in the last few years, such as Waseda University’s versatile Twendy-one shown in Figure 1. Weighing in at 250 pounds, this meter and a half tall robot is expected to be commercially produced by 2015.

Afew years back, about the only thing that a typical personal robot could do was to wander around the house, act as a pet, or maybe remind elderly folks to take their medications or possibly make a call for them.

Personal robots today are a lot more sophisticated with functional appendages that can assist a person or play a game with them. This is the segment of service robots that are the most interesting — a mobile robot that is designed to work or exist among humans. Today’s personal service robots can interact with people in numerous ways.

In my July ’06 SERVO article, I wrote about robots who care for people. In that article, I centered on robots that operated within the confines of a person’s home to serve and assist elderly or disabled people. Robots can