4 ms·

2011: The Year of the Personal Robot?

11 points by Rickasaurus 16y ago

kiba 16y ago
The PR2 robot seem to be overpowered and overengineered, making it cost too much. I think the robot could do better by being easily producible by hobbyists and by using off the shelf component. That being said, I am not an electrical engineer.
- psilokan 16y ago
  Agreed, no reason for this thing to have 8 core processors and insane amounts of RAM. It's not like this thing is sentient, there's only so much data to process.
  - lukeschlather 16y ago
    I've done some work on image processing and read a substantial amount of literature, and nowhere have I seen anyone seriously trying to achieve sentience. I have seen people using 30 node clusters where every node has roughly the processing power of this robot to track a ball with two cameras. Now, this was undergrad stuff and certainly could have been done better, but I'm sure the engineers who built this robot knew what it needed to do its job. It's done as cheaply as anyone has done it up to now, which is important. Though it probably is still too expensive to be widely used, it sounds like a good step towards research to bring down costs to a reasonable level for consumer use.
- baalexander 16y ago
  While the PR2 is beyond the reach of a hobbyist, the company's meta operating system ROS (http://www.ros.org http://www.ros.org) can be installed on any personal computer for free. You can run the same navigation, vision recognition, and other algorithms the PR2 uses (among other robots) on most capable computers. And with the new AVR bridge (http://www.ros.org/wiki/avr_bridge http://www.ros.org/wiki/avr_bridge), you can even interface the "hobbyist" Arduino with the OS.
- jerf 16y ago
  It sounds like it is a development platform, not a deployable product. Development environments for the Wii cost much more than one Wii does, not that this metaphor is perfect.
erikstarck 16y ago
A common platform for robot development could really boost innovation in robotics. I smell disruption.
- rman666 16y ago
  Sorry, there will be no disruption in personal robotics for many years. There have been articles proclaiming the year of the personal robot for at least a decade. The biggest problems in personal robotics are not computer hardware or software, but mechanical components and actuators. It still costs too much to build something that doesn't get boring after a week of working with it. Look at the Abio. It was beautiful but it got boring after a week because it couldn't do anything. Why not? Because it was too limited mechanically. If it was simply a matter of more computer power, there'd be people people hacking on more powerful processors and more memory, but there aren't. People want there $10K personal robot to be able to do something more useful than running a demo program. That requires power and robust and flexible mechanical system that can mimic what people can do. It may even require new materials (muscle wire, anyone?). Just my 2-cents.
  - erikstarck 16y ago
    It got boring because it wasn't part of a platform that could extend it - or be extended by it. It's like an operating system that only has a drawing program. Edit: let's say the Aibo was an open sourced software plus blueprints for a 3D-printer. Anyone who wanted a "walking"-component for their robot could simply download it and build and extend it themselves. You could even run the entire thing in an emulator and then just press "print" when you wanted it in the physical world. Now that _is_ disruption.
    - rman666 16y ago
      Yeah, we saw a lot of that happen with the Abio.
bradhe 16y ago
What about the Linux desktop :(

11 points by Rickasaurus 16y ago

kiba 16y ago

The PR2 robot seem to be overpowered and overengineered, making it cost too much. I think the robot could do better by being easily producible by hobbyists and by using off the shelf component. That being said, I am not an electrical engineer.

psilokan 16y ago
Agreed, no reason for this thing to have 8 core processors and insane amounts of RAM. It's not like this thing is sentient, there's only so much data to process.
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  I've done some work on image processing and read a substantial amount of literature, and nowhere have I seen anyone seriously trying to achieve sentience. I have seen people using 30 node clusters where every node has roughly the processing power of this robot to track a ball with two cameras. Now, this was undergrad stuff and certainly could have been done better, but I'm sure the engineers who built this robot knew what it needed to do its job. It's done as cheaply as anyone has done it up to now, which is important. Though it probably is still too expensive to be widely used, it sounds like a good step towards research to bring down costs to a reasonable level for consumer use.
baalexander 16y ago
While the PR2 is beyond the reach of a hobbyist, the company's meta operating system ROS (http://www.ros.org http://www.ros.org) can be installed on any personal computer for free. You can run the same navigation, vision recognition, and other algorithms the PR2 uses (among other robots) on most capable computers. And with the new AVR bridge (http://www.ros.org/wiki/avr_bridge http://www.ros.org/wiki/avr_bridge), you can even interface the "hobbyist" Arduino with the OS.
jerf 16y ago
It sounds like it is a development platform, not a deployable product. Development environments for the Wii cost much more than one Wii does, not that this metaphor is perfect.

erikstarck 16y ago

A common platform for robot development could really boost innovation in robotics. I smell disruption.

rman666 16y ago
Sorry, there will be no disruption in personal robotics for many years. There have been articles proclaiming the year of the personal robot for at least a decade. The biggest problems in personal robotics are not computer hardware or software, but mechanical components and actuators. It still costs too much to build something that doesn't get boring after a week of working with it. Look at the Abio. It was beautiful but it got boring after a week because it couldn't do anything. Why not? Because it was too limited mechanically. If it was simply a matter of more computer power, there'd be people people hacking on more powerful processors and more memory, but there aren't. People want there $10K personal robot to be able to do something more useful than running a demo program. That requires power and robust and flexible mechanical system that can mimic what people can do. It may even require new materials (muscle wire, anyone?). Just my 2-cents.
- erikstarck 16y ago
  It got boring because it wasn't part of a platform that could extend it - or be extended by it. It's like an operating system that only has a drawing program. Edit: let's say the Aibo was an open sourced software plus blueprints for a 3D-printer. Anyone who wanted a "walking"-component for their robot could simply download it and build and extend it themselves. You could even run the entire thing in an emulator and then just press "print" when you wanted it in the physical world. Now that _is_ disruption.
  - rman666 16y ago
    Yeah, we saw a lot of that happen with the Abio.

bradhe 16y ago

What about the Linux desktop :(