The Open Source Humanoid Robot and Its Many Uses 93
ruphus13 writes with a story about the open-source centric Willow Garage project (last mentioned on Slashdot early last year), which is making progress in creating helpful humanoid robots for household use. From the article:
"PR2 is the mobile hardware design for Willow Garage robots, featuring stereo and laser sensors ... Senior citizens are a big part of the target audience that Willow Garage is aiming for. "All industrialized countries are facing aging populations that require assistance and care to remain independent into old age. By 2020 close to 20 percent of the US population will be over 65," the project leaders say. "These numbers are even higher in Western European and Asian countries." Willow Garage is aiming to produce several types of assistive robots." The PR2 robots are capable of performing critical tasks like cleaning rooms and bringing beer from a refrigerator."
A couple design suggestions from an old guy.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks like a metallic, 2-year old child, and it has sensors in its hands, eyes and elsewhere that help it navigate its surroundings.
First of all, not that. It needs to look like a realistic bouncy 18 year old woman. It would also be nice if she/it could change too. That way I don't have to look at the same girl everyday. Change the size of the boobs, length of legs, hair color, race, etc...
Two, not beer. As I get older it's more like 12 year old Scotch or Bourbon on the rocks. So the robot needs to put ice in the glass and pour scotch over it. Martinis would be nice two.
Three, it needs to know the interaction of meds with alcohol and to warn me not to take my meds when I'm about to drink. Yes in that order because if I'm so old and decrepit that I need an assisted living robot, there's no fucking point in taking care of my health anyway.
Re:Beware, the robot is teleoperated (Score:2, Interesting)
The robot is being teleoperated in those videos.
Certainly that's the case. I think the intention of this project is to create a platform for future research.
By making it open-source (and hopefully affordable), it has better chances of being accepted as a standard benchmark for the next generation of embodied AI (which, as its name implies, isn't here yet). Think about it as the physics engine, not the game itself...
Having said that, let's embark on the more interesting discussion of what are the prospects of a robot successfully roaming around our homes. I claim that cleaning is achievable with present-day technology, but more lively interaction with us (humans) around is still far away...
Your thoughts, AC?
Re:article WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, but what if the robots are supposed to watch you for terroristic behavior? Do you think you'll be able to stop them from recording your voice and reporting any suspicious commentary back to Skynet Central?
Re:article WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)
A robot capable of bringing her food and diet shakes from the refrigerator would make it much easier for her to ingest the calories she needs. That would help her maintain her health and her independence for substantially longer than she would be able to otherwise. So, yes. The important thing isn't the beer, but the fact that the robot can retrieve items from the refrigerator. This task is very critical for a number of people suffering from disabilities, age-related or not.
If I myself was in such situation (disability), I would prefer a personal exoskeleton to a robot. It seems so much more versatile.