SFist Tech Roundup: They, Robots
The tech lab crew took a field trip to San Jose last week for the RoboNexus international robotics convention. It's the second year of the convention, and it's the largest robotics convention in the US.
That says more about the state of robotics in the US than it does about the size of the show. Only one of the convention center's exhibition halls was being used, and much of that was empty space. But while it lacked the bloat and spectacle of computer and software tradeshows, it encompassed the entire scope of what people are doing with robotics and what is the state of the art, at least as much as is publically visible.
We were left with the impression that robotics today is what the culture of microcomputers was in the late 70s and early 80s — technology looking for an application. There's no one clear dominant focus, but a wide range of areas of interest: hobby, education, consumer appliances, military applications, industrial applications, toys and entertainment, arts, and world domination. (The last was never stated explicitly, but we believe it's best to remain ever vigilant.)
SFist Chuck, contributing. See all his photos here
Education
Educators and students made up the bulk of the audience when we attended, with groups of elementary school students gathered around tables for building Lego robots or watching other robots battle it out at other booths.
We were most impressed with the Botball educational program. The organization assembles packages of sensors, motors, controllers, LEGO pieces, and software to build and program two or three robots, then puts teachers through a workshop explaining the program and how to incorporate it into their classes.
We liked the program both because of its objective and because of the kit itself. The objective gets everything right: hands-on experience for the students, a non-violent competition with a clear goal, and exposing students to software and mechanical engineering, instead of just programming. And the kit is ingenious — instead of a mass-produced controller unit, they provide a processor, sensors, and motors combined with a re-tooled GameBoy Advance for input. (Nintendo is not a sponsor of the program, but the GBA is inexpensive and familiar to most of the students.) This is a crucial bit of exposure to electrical engineering, as the kids can see the circuit boards without having to actually assemble (or disassemble) them.
While not an official sponsor of the Botball program, LEGO were displaying their Mindstorms packages pre-assembled for educators, one focusing on general robotics and the other themed to the Mars rover. They've scaled back from marketing the Mindstorms package as a consumer-level toy, and put more focus on its role in education. Of particular interest to us were the LEGO-distributed software kits, developed in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University, to program the Mindstorms controller in C instead of the included development kit. Hackers have had this available for years, but it was nice to see a LEGO-sanctioned version.
Hobby
Next to the academics, the hobbyists and hackers were the largest group at the convention, which explains why the show floor didn't evoke Forbidden Planet as much as a Radio Shack. Those so inclined could find several variations on the robotic arm, as well as all the Robogames and Robo Sumo booths. We'll withhold comment except to say this: cut it out. We've seen enough movies about ancient Rome and Pokemon to know that forcing these things to battle each other will only cause them to form their own religion and then turn on us. If you must build your own robot, build something innocuous like a toy dog or a sexbot.
Consumer
The only US company to make a ripple in the field of consumer robotics is Massachusettes-based iRobot, the founding sponsor of the convention. They had the most convention-ready products to show, and their booth was a good example of how disparate the show was as a hole. One side of the booth had a robot cleaning floors, another had a military robot that climbs stairs and looks for bombs, and a third had kids chasing around topless Roombas to see how they worked.
iRobot's new product was the Scooba, the hard-floor equivalent of the Roomba. Their ad text promises it will "clean the floor better than you can do yourself," which to us seems like damning with faint praise, but we imagine is impressive to the less lazy.
New to the Roomba was the remote scheduler, promising to make the thing even more innocuous. We have to admit that we're exactly the target audience for the Roomba — equal parts lazy, slovenly, and obsessed with gadgets — but we've never been compelled to actually buy one. We're more interested in its applications in the arts.
Military-Industrial Complex
Next to its floor-cleaning robots, iRobot was showing off its line of PackBot miliatry robots. They're non-autonomous scouting robots currently being used in Iraq and Afghanistan to scout areas and disable mines and other devices. The show floor display let us see how the remote camera worked and how the bots can go up and down stairs in urban environments.
Sun Microsystems' booth had a display dedicated to the NetBEAMS project, which gathers environmental data from robotic probes throughout the San Francisco Bay and makes it available via the internet. Sun's role in the project with java.net is to network the different probes and compile the data. Previously, each probe had to be read individually; the new system allows many more probes to be placed all throughout the bay.
NASA had a display dedicated to its existing use of robotics in Mars rovers, as well as its educational programs; NASA is one of the sponsors of the botball program, for example. At RoboNexus, they had other space-bound robots on display, all designed to assist humans in Martian exploration before inevitably turning on them and taking the planet over for themselves.
And Segway was showing off its Robotic Mobility Platform, which is being used in NASA's projects. The platform is part of the company's attempt to branch out of "personal transporters" and into industrial, military, and educational robotics applications.
Therapy
Simultaneously heartwarming and disturbing is the Paro Seal Type Mental Commitment Robot. Paro is a robotic baby harp seal, complete with pacifier, developed by the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. It's designed to fill the role of "animal-assisted therapy" in hospitals and nursing homes that don't allow real animals, and according to its developers, it works.
We can't deny that the video of a disabled, incommunicative man in a nursing home petting a robotic mewling baby harp seal is an image we won't forget in our lifetimes. But looking at how bizarre the whole display is, the process of the design of the robot — its intended purpose, its applications internationally, and why they chose a seal — is fascinating.
World Domination
The Japanese External Trade Organization (with its unintentionally folksy acronym JETRO) had a display dedicated to Japan's totally owning the world market for robotics technology, with Osaka as the capital of the new empire. In addition to Paro, they were demonstrating the VisiON and Chroino.
VisiON is an autonomous robot that "plays soccer," in that it can recognize and oncoming ball and block it. Chroino is a remote-controlled or pre-programmed robot that can perform human-like walking and movement, if by "human-like" you mean "like an anime character." Chroino's developer took him through a series of Power Rangers-type movements, and it was an impressive show — most bipedal robots are stricken with the constipated squat-walk.
The displays from Japan were more what we expected when we heard "robot convention." While the US-based displays were mostly of the circuit-board and LEGO variety, a common theme of all the Japanese displays was that of making robots more accessible.
Neither Sony nor Honda had a display at the convention, although the latest model of AIBO was on display for pre-order at a toy vendor's booth. Unconfirmed sources tell us that ASIMO's scheduled appearance was cancelled because of a "shooting incident" backstage; ASIMO's representatives were unavailable for comment at press time.
