Servo - May 2011

Then

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NOW

THE NEXT STEP IN ROBOTICS by Tom Carroll

Back in February ‘ 11, I followed a series of threads on the Seattle Robotics Society’s list server that concerned the next step in robotics. Many people from all over added their comments and — as with most conversations within these various groups — the subject began to stray a bit after a week or so. It was quite interesting to see the many viewpoints expressed. There are some absolutely brilliant robot experimenters in this world. Needless to say, the basic concepts mentioned concerned robots of the experimental or hobbyist variety.

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To start the conversations, someone had asked “What is the next step <in robotics>?” As with many questions that I have discussed over the years, a question such as this is highly dependent upon the person who is asking the question. Is the person a robotics hobbyist or experimenter, a university student working on a thesis project or a micromouse (researcher designing a robot to assist the elderly)? Is it a person who is interested in only humanoid bipedal robots, UAVs, space-borne robots, military robots, or any of the many other types? The next step could have widely different meanings to different people. For the sake of this discussion, I am going to concentrate on just a few types of experimenter’s robots that might be used in contests or built just for fun and education.

Though everyone seemed to have their own idea of exactly what the ‘next step’ may be, quite a bit of the feedback seemed to center on software approaches, though some looked to the future of the overall market for robots. One extremely optimistic outlook written in 2009 for the market of personal robots — in particular, elder care robots — saw the market in 2010 to be $74 billion and growing to $86.6 in 2014. A Robotics Trends’ article by ABI Research written just last December saw the market for the complete realm of personal robots to be a bit more modest at $19 billion in 2017. This figure included telepresence and varieties of home robots. As reality has set in with this recession, it is hard to believe even these last figures, but we all remain hopeful. Most robot companies would not mind having a few billion dollars tossed into the ring right now.

The Next Step in a Micromouse

I’ve selected the IEEE Micromouse contests and several variations as an example of a widely recognized and long-running series of contests to illustrate how a series of next steps have resulted in dramatically newer ‘mice.’ Back three decades ago in 1981 when the IEEE Micromouse contests had been around for only a few years, David Buckley of the

UK built his unique Quester shown in Figure 1 for the contest. The various Micromouse contests use a maze up to 20 feet square consisting of 6-1/2 inch wide pathways with two inch walls as shown in Figure 2. I remember seeing articles about Buckley’s rather large mouse from the UK. David has built more robots than almost anybody that I know of and Quester certainly turned some heads back in the ‘80s. I’ll use his machine as a sort of starting point for many next-step robots. You can read much more about Quester and many other robots at David’s website at davidbuckley.net.