How Robotics Has Changed Over the Years
FIGURE 3. The hot-selling Microsoft Kinect.
items as it was one of the products that changed the face
of experimental/hobby robotics.
Figure 2 shows the later version of the Hero — the
Hero 2000. Also, based also in Ann Arbor, MI — the home
of the Robotic Industries Association — the NSRA had great
initial enthusiasm but garnered little industry support. As
did the RI/SME, the NSRA seemed to shrink to oblivion,
though the parent group (RIA) is still active and presents
many conferences and exhibits around the country.
Microsoft’s Kinect Gives
Robot Builders A New Goal
Robotics has changed in the past decades. Powerful
and cheap computing power coupled with some
amazing new sensors have given robot designers new
directions and applications for service robots that were
not only unavailable decades ago, but unthinkable.
Electronic Design’s April issue featured Willow Garage’s
PR- 2 on the cover with the associated article “Robot
Revolution” addressing how ‘Cooperation Leads to Smarter
Robots.’ Desktop Engineering’s July issue featured an article
entitled ‘Mobilizing Toward a Robotics Revolution’ that
delved into intelligent robot sensors, in particular, the
This amazing device
has taken the intelligent
robotics field by storm
the past couple of
years and seems to
have surpassed bipedal
and self-balancing
robots as the biggest
subject of interest for
advanced robot
builders. Robot builders
are now able to use this
device to allow their
robots to not only sense
human presence, but
to allow the sensed
humans the ability to
control the robot
through hand and
body motions without the need for a wired hand controller.
Kinect Is An Ideal Intelligent
Vision System For A Robot
FIGURE 4. The 1979
Stanford AI Lab Cart.
It was not until Microsoft introduced the $149.95
Kinect peripheral for their Xbox-360 that robot builders with
a limited budget could now create a machine that would
make sense of human motion. On November 4th of last
year, Microsoft released the Kinect, and Xbox gamers
jumped on it like bees on a picnic watermelon. So did robot
experimenters. Just as the Scarecrow and Tin Man in the
Wizard of Oz felt they needed a brain
or heart to finally be accepted as
intelligent entities, robot builders
wanted their robots to have a true,
functional vision system. This group of
experimenters saw this new product as
a dream come true for their creations —
at least as far as the vision part goes.
By March of this year, Microsoft
had sold over 10 million of the devices
FIGURE 5. Kinect Quadrotor from IEEE
Spectrum.
78 SERVO 10.2011
