SERVO 11.2015 19
JIBO’S GOT THE MOVES
Movement is a critical part of Jibo’s character. He enjoys 360 degrees of
motion thanks to his multi-revolute movement.
There are two reasons his design team went
this direction. The first is his ability to orient to
people all around him, offering full
expressiveness regardless of where people are
positioned. The second? Honestly? Cynthia Breazeal and her team wanted to be sure Jibo can
dance in a really fun and cool way.
When you watch Jibo, he looks like he has a supple spine (line of action) that seems to
“bend.” He can fluidly interact. There isn’t a point where he hits his range of movement and just
stops.
The team explored a wide range of concepts
before landing on this one. Many were not
capable of 360 movement — let alone multi-revolute movement. This design maximizes
expressiveness with minimal complexity in terms
of degrees of freedom. It is also safe to touch —
no pinching joints or points of collision like a
swinging arm.
From a social robotics perspective,
movement is very important. It ties to how much
of human communication is non-verbal. As
humans, we express through our bodies all the
time. Having a physical robot body capable of
expressive movement plays an important role in
giving the robot a physical presence in the room.
Jibo was founded by Breazeal, the famed
roboticist at MIT’s Media Lab and a pioneer of
social robotics. Jibo is designed as an interactive companion and helper to families. Breazeal says
Jibo is unique because of its emotion and its ability to treat you like a human being. Jibo will come
equipped with an initial set of apps that will allow it to play different roles, including a
photographer that can track faces and take pictures so you can be in the photos. Jibo can also be
an assistant who reminds family members of their schedules.
MARKING YOUR TURF
Have you ever given much thought to how the field marks are painted on soccer and football fields? You know, the marks that designate the sidelines, the penalty
box, the circle in the center of the field, etc. The groundsmen who mark these lines
need to be accurate. It also takes an incredible amount of time.
Now, there’s a robot to do this job.
Intelligent One is being positioned as the first automatic robot for line marking
sport fields. The company — which hopes to begin shipping in November 2015 — uses
GPS technology to achieve precision of ± 2 cm. The robot is powered by a lithium-ion
battery and can complete one soccer field in 30 minutes. It can complete 7-8 soccer
fields per charge.
Here’s the super cool part: The robot can be customized to meet the needs of
each particular field and it’s all controllable via tablet. The company’s pitch is that “every line
made is money saved since time, paint, and overall resource consumption are significantly
reduced. Intelligent One allows groundsmen to do other tasks while precision is increased
and the fields are line marked without supervision.”
