Robotic Technology Takes On The Domestic Home

‘Iron Man’ could soon take on a new meaning…
Robot technology is rapidly evolving. At the end of last year Nasa announced its new humanoid robot who is ready to go into space. He looks as if he’s straight out of a comic strip. His name is Valkyrie, or R5 for short, and he was originally created to work in disaster zones. One of his kind was given to MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) where scientists will develop new algorithms to equip R5 for space missions to Mars.
At the University of Berkeley in California, a team is investigating how the American cockroach “is able to squeeze into tiny nooks and crannies so quickly. To do so, they built a palm-sized robot to replicate the behaviour and biology of a cockroach.”
Kaushik Jayaram, the leader of the study, remarks: “What’s impressive about these cockroaches is that they can run as fast through a quarter-inch gap as a half-inch gap by reorienting their legs completely out to the side. They’re about half an inch tall when they run freely, but can squish their bodies to one-tenth of an inch — the height of two stacked pennies.”
The cockroach robot, “Cram”, was filmed using a high-speed camera as it ran and squeezed through very small openings. As they use not only their limbs but also a form of propulsion using “sensory spines on their tibia to push against the floor and propel themselves”, they were unable to squeeze through sandpaper filled openings as this reduced the friction-based movement.
The research looks promising for applications such as rescue missions after earthquakes, where the robot roaches could be sent into inaccessible rubble to locate possible survivors and gather information.
In contrast, the Georgia Institute of Technology has created a “wearable robotic arm”, and when strapped onto the body they create a three armed drum player. The arm itself – which is attached to the wearer’s shoulder – keeps perfect rhythm whilst moving from different parts of the drum kit, as well as responding to human gestures. Gil Weinberg, who is leading the research, says: “If you augment humans with smart, wearable robotics, they could interact with their environment in a much more sophisticated manner.” He added: “The third arm provides a much richer and more creative experience, allowing the human to play many drums simultaneously with virtuosity and sophistication that are not otherwise possible.”
Columbia University, however, have created the most practical robot of all, and the one that’s most likely to be an attractive addition to your personal life: a domestic robot who will do your ironing!
On the 16th February 2016 Li et al published a paper on “Multi-Sensor Surface Analysis for Robotic Ironing”. The challenge of the experiment is for the robot to systematically flatten an uneven surface automatically. In other words, the robot needs to repeat the flattening (ironing) process on different parts of the cloth until it is completely ironed. Li et al present a new way of analysing the cloth surface by joining two different surface scan techniques: “a curvature scan and a discontinuity scan. The curvature scan can estimate the height deviation of the cloth surface, while the discontinuity scan can effectively detect sharp surface features, such as wrinkles.” The information gathered will tell the robot which areas of the cloth need to be “pulled and extended” before ironing, and which regions have wrinkles which need to be ironed flat. Their paper goes on to show that the robot successfully identifies wrinkles across the cloth surface and irons them out.
Once your ironing is done, you can turn to the pancake-flipping, pizza-making robot relative (note: unfortunately these are not in existence yet but we’ll let you know when they hit the market)! RoboHow is the European company developing these daily task-performing robots, while also working on teaching them to understand language. The project is led by the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bremen. Will Knight talks about the big plans: “Once a robot has learned how a particular set of instructions relates to a task its knowledge is added to an online database called Open Ease, so that other robots can access that understanding. These instructions are encoded in machine-readable language similar to the one used in the Semantic Web project.”
This all sounds very exciting! Imagine having your own personal robot around your home, helping with daily activities and basically taking care of us. Mine would also learn how to walk a dog and go to the supermarket! What would yours do?