Servo - November 2012

bots IN BRIEF

HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINES

A little robot named Wall-Ye is trying to get involved in the wine business process from the ground up by helping out in vineyards in France.

Wall-Ye has two arms and six cameras, weighs 20 kilos, and can reportedly autonomously prune 600 vines per day — among other things — according to a report.

Wall-Ye draws on tracking technology, artificial intelligence, and mapping to move from vine to vine, recognize plant features, capture and record data, memorize each vine, synchronize six cameras, and guide its arms to wield tools.

Yours for just $32,000.

To prune a vine, you first need a robot that can reach the vine (many if not most are trellised fairly high up), and second, you need a fairly complex vision system to be able to map the vines in 3D with sufficient accuracy and precision to properly cut them.

So, it seems like Wall-Ye may not be able to do this easily. But again, Wall-Ye doesn't have to be a pruning robot. It would be quite valuable as a mobile monitoring system with the capability to measure temperature, moisture levels, soil PH, and (if you wanted to get fancy about it) even vigor levels and vine health with a hyperspectral sensor using technology. Just a helpful suggestion.

ROBO-THERAPY

Researchers in robotics and communication disorders at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have teamed up to explore whether a personal humanoid robot may help people recovering from stroke by delivering therapy such as word-retrieval games and arm movement tasks in an enjoyable and engaging way.

Speech language pathologist Yu-kyong Choe recently won a two year $109,251 grant from the American Heart Association to investigate the effect of stroke rehabilitation delivered by a humanoid robot — a child-sized unit with arms and a screen where therapists, doctors, and others can interact with a client. Choe is collaborating with Rod Grupen, director of UMass Amherst's Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics, on ways to bring more and longer-term, home-based therapy and social contact to people recovering from stroke.

The study will enroll five stroke patients per year to attend three sessions per week for five weeks at the UMass Amherst lab. Three treatments will be compared: computer-mediated, robot-mediated, and robot-assisted telepractice by a remote therapist.

In the robot-mediated condition, patients complete word-retrieval tasks and games, plus arm exercises delivered by the robot alone based on therapy routines it has observed. In the computer-mediated condition, the same tasks and exercises will be presented on a laptop computer.

In the robot-assisted telepractice condition, the client performs word- and arm-movement tasks designed and directed by a therapist in a remote location being observed and mimicked by the robot via a 3D range camera. The robot exactly copies the therapist's movements. Choe predicts that the two robot-mediated conditions will yield better outcomes in both speech and physical function because of the patient-robot interactions. The research team will also analyze how the telepractice and robot-mediated therapy sessions are received by client and therapist.

Therapists Jennifer Baird and Tammie Foster, with computer science doctoral students Takeshi Takahashi and Hee-tae Jung are working with patients three days per week and developing software for uBot5 — the adaptive humanoid robot — to act as the liaison between a remote therapist and the client at home.