A Closer Look At Personal Service Robots
Carnegie Mellon’s
NurseBot, Pearl
The US certainly has not been lax
in advanced medical robot research.
Aside from the high-level surgical
systems, personal patient care by
robots has been investigated by several
universities. Initial thoughts of
potential medical robot research
projects always look at autonomous,
higher-level medical intervention first,
but practical designs with less legal
implications always come into play.
Injections of medicines, and internal
and external probing — even with a
stethoscope — require a trained ear and eye to
make an accurate diagnosis. For this reason, teams
from the different universities steered designs
away from more complex nurse designs and
towards benign robots that verbally interact with
patients, offering them snacks and souvenirs to be
taken from a tray. The Carnegie Mellon University’s
SnackBot shown in Figure 9 is the latest version
of the original 2001 CMU Pearl NurseBot concept.
Pearl relied on a touch screen command system
whereas SnackBot relies on verbal
communications. SnackBot has a SICK laser range-finding system for navigation with face recognition
to distinguish different people and is used
primarily as a human-robot interaction study
model.
“SnackBot is a mobile autonomous robot
intended for both fully autonomous and semi-autonomous operation, built by an interdisciplinary
team at Carnegie Mellon University. SnackBot has
two jobs. One job is to serve as a research
platform for projects in robotics, design, and
behavioral science. We welcome new partners or
sponsors for this work,” said CMU. “SnackBot’s
other job is to serve snacks.”
FIGURE 13.
PR- 2 conceptual
drawings.
Robots in the Home
the most capable and beautifully-designed
personal robots as demonstrated by the rows
of beautifully-machined grippers you can see in
Figure 11. Figure 12 shows some of the
interior components of a prototype, with the
caster base and two anthropomorphic arms.
Steve Cousins, CEO, is quite proud of their
designs and anticipates 10 qualified researchers
to be using PR- 2 beta models (shown in the
conceptual drawings in Figure 13) for further
research. Interchangeability and upgradability of
various systems, three to six hours of operating
time on a 1.3 k Wh battery power system, four
full Intel Core Duo 2 computers, and two 7DOF
arms round out a few of the key systems of
the PR- 2.
Safety was a key factor in the robot’s design
as all large robots working in close proximity to
humans have some degree of inherent danger if
used incorrectly. As Cousins states, “The safe use
of a robot in close proximity to people is a difficult
problem, and is an active area of development in
the robotics community. By developing a robot
that is safe enough to interact physically and with
the level of PR2, we hope to support and advance
research development in the area of true robot
safety.” Go to willowgarage.com for more
information.
Here are a couple personal service robots that
just might make it to our homes soon. Armar
(shown in Figure 10), created by the Institute of
Product Development at the University of
Karlsruhe in Germany, was created as a machine
that closely cooperates with humans. With stereo
cameras in its head, as well as hands, the robot
has been mostly “trained” for kitchen tasks.
The PR- 2 from Willow Garage
Final Thoughts
Home experimenters are producing cutting-edge robots in garage workshops. Universities and
companies around the world sense the great need
to create robots that work and serve alongside
people in their daily lives. The new decade is sure
to bring some amazing progress in personal
service robots. SV
Willow Garage — located in Menlo Park, CA —
is anything but a ‘garage’. It has produced one of
Tom Carroll can be reached at
TWCarroll@aol.com.
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