The engineers that have come up with this clever, albeit, practical robot, did so by developing techniques with use of artificial intelligence, optimization algorithms and applying them to everyday business operations.  While doing this, they recognized that these same techniques could be used in the robotics field. Thus the Readybot idea was born.

While this is not the most advanced robot and it does not try to mimic human motion, it gets the job done. The designers are quite honest about what it can and can’t do. “After activation, it rolls out (from under the counter), deploys several antenna-like cameras, and raises itself up to human height to begin work.  Slowly but steadily, it picks up cups, bowls, and plates, dumps food, loads the dishwasher, scrapes and scrubs the countertop.  When needed, it grabs one of several custom tools to scrub, sponge, or maneuver.”

At the moment, the prototype can do about 30-40% cleaning tasks, with 80% being the ultimate goal. They hope to get a purchasable model within the next 2 yrs.

When it is identifying a wine, it will tell you the type, brand, and what flavor it may have. At the moment it can only identify a few dozen wines though. It can also tell you if a food is too salty or fatty and if a fruit is ripe or not.

The discovery this robot made about how we taste was found during a media event when a reporter and cameraman placed their hands in front of the robot’s infrared light. The analysis came back that we taste like pork. Hopefully robots are vegetarian.

Well Khoshnevis, who is also the director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies at the University of Southern California, has been working on the idea for about 10 years. He thinks the idea of robotic home building is simple, just a matter of having “the large-scale technology”, which is what he has been trying to fine tune. His idea is called Contour Crafting and the process is as simple as the name. A robot with one arm deposits a concrete mixture in a row, and then goes back over that first layer with another layer, rinse and repeat. Of course there is a computer giving the robot the blueprint.

Khoshnevis hopes to have a full scale building done by the fall of this year at the University of California, but only if he can create a large enough machine to support the weight and be exact enough to construct a stable structure.

The main purpose that the inventor sees for this type of robot is for affordable housing and maybe even for rebuilding after an earthquake or hurricane. “It is very early, but I think we see that it could change how at least some buildings are done in developing parts of the world and in remote sites where you don’t want to bring in a lot of outside material”.

The Guardrobo with its cameras and various sensors will be on the look out for intruders, fires, and water leaks. When it finds these troubles the 109 cm tall robotic guard will alert human guards via radio and video footage so the humans can see the severity of the trouble and then act accordingly. The Guardrobo is not completely reliant on us humans though, it can take action into its own hands by putting out fires. Cool.

The Sohgo Security Services Co. has yet to determine a price point but they are planning to offer this robot style security within a year’s time

The robot is the one on the left. I think…..

Source: National Geographic

Robots move well on their own, especially when nothing is in the way,” Lumelsky explained. However, change the environment and a different picture emerges. “Robots should be able to react, but today’s robots can’t,” he said. “That’s the difference and that’s got to change for exploration.

This ‘Robo Skin’ is undergoing research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The touch sensitive skin said to be critical in situations where humans and robots work side by side in space, where the slightest touch could be the difference between life and death, for human and robot alike.