A Closer Look At Personal Service Robots
personally interact and care for humans in
many other ways, including assisting in
hospitals, in emergency situations, as
entertainers and even in the workplace along
side their “industrialized” cousins. They can be
used as a simple animal robot to lie in the lap
of an elderly person and comfort them, such
as the $6,000 Paro baby harp seal robot
shown in Figure 2 that recently received FDA
approval here in the US. These robots can act
as guides in museums or other unfamiliar
places such as assistants to astronauts in deep
space. Let’s take a look at a few entirely
different types of service bots that have made
headlines lately.
Personal Service
Robot Designs
Personal service robots that work among
humans can have wheels, tracks, legs, or even
fly or swim. Most of today’s personal robots still
do not have any appendages, but that does not
make them any less useful for the tasks they are
designed for. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs)
have been used in factories and hospitals for
years to move everything from medicines to
factory materials and finished products, moving
silently around people. These robots rarely
interact with humans directly other than stopping
when someone crosses its path or waiting
patiently as a person loads or unloads its pallet
of materials. These basic personal robots have cut
operating costs in factories, warehouses, offices,
and hospitals around the world. The Pyxis
HelpMate robot shown in Figure 3 is a good
example of an AGV used in hospitals to transfer
materials. It was first designed by Joe
Engelberger’s company in the ‘80s, that was later
bought out by Pyxis.
FIGURE 2.Christine Hsu of Paro Robots US holding
Paro, the baby harp seal.
Dr. Robin Murphy’s
Rescue Robots
Enter the Inuktun Extreme robot developed by
Dr. Robin Murphy. With a multi-media
communications ‘head’ attached, it can act as a
‘survivor buddy’ to a person trapped under rubble.
In many cases where people have been trapped,
(as in a mine collapse), the use of the Inuktun
robot shown in Figure 4 to confirm survivor
FIGURE 3. The Pyxis robot used in hospitals.
Emergency Services Robots
War, extreme weather and other natural
disasters, man-made disasters, terrorism, and
political unrest are making the headlines every
day. With each of these strikes against mankind,
rubble and destruction are the result. People
often are trapped under many tons of debris.
Military and law enforcement robots have
been used in search and rescue operations, but
a more specialized type of robot is better suited
for use at these disaster scenes. With uneven
ground, possible fires, and other hazardous
situations, plus obstacles and very small areas in
which to traverse, traditional robots are not
well-suited for this.
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