Cover Story
Stanford robotics professor Ken Salisbury picks up a few robot-arm prototypes at Salisbury Robotics Lab on Feb. 26. At the same time the PR1 was being developed, Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, under the direction of Andrew Ng, was developing an operating system for robots to use. Salisbury said the PR1 served not only as a platform to study robotic capabilities but also as a tool to raise funds for the next generation of personal robotics. “The founder of Willow Garage saw what we were doing, saw what Andrew Ng was doing, looking at both the hardware and the software capabilities that we were developing, and became quite excited about it,” he said. Wyrobek and Berger were hired by Willow Garage to head up its personal robot project, which produced the PR2. And the software originally developed at Stanford’s AI Lab would be developed further by Willow Garage and become known as the Robot Operating System, or ROS. ROS is now the most widely used open-source robotics software platform. Because it’s opensource, the code can be freely viewed by anyone.
During his January talk in Palo Alto, Cousins said the open nature of ROS was bringing robotics closer to “exponential growth.” “Suddenly other people can look at what you did, learn from it, build on it, and then do something else and contribute back,” he said. Stanford was also one of the 11 institutions to be loaned a PR2 by Willow Garage in 2010. Salisbury said one of his many dreams in robotics was to have a robot fetch him a cup of coffee. A simple task for a human being but not so easy for an autonomous robot. “That’s a pretty hard problem if you think about it,” he said. “How do I get from here through the doors, through the elevator, somehow communicate with the person serving coffee, take the coffee (and) bring it back down?” Last summer, student Tony Pratkanis was able to program the robot to perform an approximation of the task. The PR2 used laser sensors to detect obstacles, and it used accelerometers and its vision to determine how many floors it traveled.
Communication with the barista was aided by a handwritten note, and an enclosed container of juice was used in lieu of coffee to avoid spillage. All in all, the PR2’s journey took 40 minutes for something that would take a human around 10. “The coffee-fetching robot is a pretty sophisticated example of full autonomy,” Salisbury said. “Yet that is a laboratory demonstration. That robot’s not going to be serving coffee for (a few) years.”
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hile Willow Garage and academicians work on creating a general purpose robot that can be programmed to perform multiple tasks, other people are working on simpler, single-task robots. But if a robot can only perform one task, what’s the difference between it and an appliance, like a toaster? FoldiMate CEO Gal Rozov is developing a laundry-folding robot. He said a robot is characterized by how it responds to changes in its environment.
A detail of an arm extension of the Avatar II, built by RoboteX in Palo Alto, shows the robot’s camera and claw attachments, which are primarily used for missions of the U.S. military and police departments. “If you are aware and do not do anything, you are a sensor,” he said. “If you are aware and you react, then you can start to be considered a robot.” Though Rozov said he was inspired by watching “The Jetsons” on TV as a kid, he’s setting his sights on something a little less ambitious than a humanoid robot like Rosie. “You want to find a robot or a solution that will solve a specific pain point,” he said, “And if we look at it like that, the time to market will be a lot faster.” Rozov identified folding clothes as a pain point. “It’s a tedious task,” he said. He started work on the concept in 2010 and founded FoldiMate, based in San Mateo, in 2012. A
few months later, he was joined by Robert Ford as well as Ted Selker, who designed IBM’s in-keyboard pointing device Trackpoint. Rozov, who has a software background and is writing code for the FoldiMate, said he’s working to have a functional prototype ready by April. Users will place an article of clothing on top of a rectangular box about 2-feet wide and 2.5-feet long. A platform will lower down into the machine, where the folding will take place. Users will indicate whether the garment is a shirt, towel or pair of pants. FoldiMate will sense its size, thickness of fabric and whether it is long-sleeve or shortsleeve and adjust accordingly. (continued on next page)
Left, Steve Cousins, president and CEO of Willow Garage, gives a presentation about the PR2 and robotics at Avenidas in January. Above, he shows a video of the PR2 successfully fetching a beer for programmers. ÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V ÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊÊ >ÀV Ê£x]ÊÓä£ÎÊU Page 23