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The August ‘11 issue of National Geographic featured anarticle entitled “Us and Them — Robots Get Real.” The

article went on to state that “sophisticated robots may sooncook for us, fold our laundry, even babysit our children.” Inthe June issue of Control Engineering, an article entitled“The Changing Face of Robotics” mentioned the extremelypopular FIRST robotics competitions as a way to enticeyoung people into the fields of science and technology. Thearticle went a bit further to speak on the emergence ofmechatronics, new delta-style pick and place industrialrobots, and autonomous UAVs and UGVs.

The non-technical media has taken notice on just howrapidly robots have entered our lives and are changing theway that we live. This column centers on how robotics haschanged over the years, so these types of articles alwayscatch my eye. The IEEE Spectrum magazine recentlyheadlined: ‘Next Big Thing in Silicon Valley: Robotics?’ Arewe at some amazing turning point in this science? Are thestrictly computer and semiconductor manufacturers movinginto robotics and automation, or are these key industriesspawning these new companies? Is the heartbeat ofrobotics innovation moving from the east coast areas ofMIT in New England and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh tothe birthplace of microprocessor-based computers — theSan Jose area in California? I believe it is a bit of all three.

Other rapidly growing areas of technology such asAustin, TX and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolinaare riding the latest boom, though an article in July’sFortune by David Kaplan is warning of a potential ‘TechBubble 2.0.’

Robot Industries Shift Away From Michigan And The Auto Manufacturers

Let’s step back several decades and view the state ofrobotics at the start of this new industry. The big push inrobotics in the ‘60s, ‘70s and through the ‘80s wasindustrial robots and their implementation in the boomingautomobile manufacturing industries centered aroundDetroit. My employer (Rockwell) asked me to study howrobotics could be used in the aerospace industry. I went tothe yearly robot conferences that were sponsored byRobotics International of the Society of ManufacturingEngineers. RI/SME is based in Dearborn, MI and producedrobot conferences and exhibits that alternated each yearbetween Detroit and Chicago. Hundreds of robotmanufacturers — both large and small — were scatteredaround the suburbs of Detroit and nearby Canadian cities.The exhibit halls in Detroit and Chicago were crammed fullof robots: industrial, educational, experimental, andwhatevers. Thousands of professionals, members of themedia, university researchers, and some who were justinterested in looking at what was new roamed the aisles,looking at the future. Local TV news crews conductedinterviews with manufacturers of especially cool lookingrobots, and maybe a noteworthy spokesperson such as JoeEngelberger. If it had anything to do with robots, it was atone of these RI/SME conferences either as an exhibit or thetitle of one of the technical sessions.

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HOW ROBOTICS HASCHANGED OVER THE YEARS

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It is always interesting to read articles about robotics in non-robotics magazines or hearpeople talk of the changes in the field. Quite often, when people realize that I writeabout the history of robotics, I invariably hear the comments “I remember when robots...” or “Robotics has really changed since ...” I sometimes answer with “The times, theyare a changing,” and give them a short synopsis of my thoughts on the subject. Theprint and TV media has certainly expressed their ideas on the subject of robotics andthe many changes over the years.

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Most of the speakers were from the manufacturingsector, either representing a robot manufacturer andtouting the many unique applications that their productscould perform, or the user segment from industry thatspoke of the positive ROI (return on investment) and timesavings of using robots. News people rarely interviewedthose of us in the other robot interest groups. In the early‘80s, the exhibit aisles were filled with various sizes andstyles of robots, most from US companies. Soon, the largeJapanese companies began to show their superior robotsand, by the ‘90s, most of the American companiesmanufacturing industrial robots were either bought out byJapanese, Swedish, or German robot manufacturers, or justquietly faded away into oblivion.

My interests were primarily robotic applications for thespace industry and for actual in-space deployment such asspace station applications and Mars/moon rovers. Therewas a core group of us from other companies and industrygroups that gave talks on non-manufacturing robotapplications. Some of the manufacturers of the early homerobots (such as RB Robot, Heathkit, and Androbot) wereshunned a bit as they did not fit the mold of a ‘real’ robot.Our special interest group presentations were wellattended, but nothing like the large groups attending theindustrial robot sessions.

Some of my presentations on space station roboticsmanaged to keep most of the group of 50 or so peoplefrom falling asleep, but it was the presentations fromOdetics and their six-legged, human-sized robot thatreally kept a 100 or more people on the edge of theirseats. The Odetics Odex 1 from around 1983 is shown inFigure 1 and was one of the most interesting robots thatI’ve ever seen. Standing a bit over five feet tall, this robotwas shown climbing out of the bed of a small truck, andthen turning and lifting the back of the truck off theground. It was designed as a possible hazardous dutyrobot, working in nuclear power plants and the like, but themarketing aspect never generated any sales. It was aheadof its time.

National Service RobotAssociation Has Difficulties In The Late ‘80s

After a period of several years highlighting only theindustrial robot sector, the RI/SME began to realize that theother segment of robotics was garnering a lot of interestand attention. This ‘other’ segment included service robots,military robots, police robots, UAVs, and types of robotsthat defied definition. Several of us got together to formthe National Service Robot Association (NSRA) and DougBonham of Heath was elected chairman. Heath was themanufacturer of the very popular Heathkit Hero (HeathEducational RObot) series of robots back in the ‘80s andBonham was the ideal board chairman. To this day, any ofthe Hero educational robots are sought-after collector’s

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FIGURE 2. Heathkit'sHero 2000.

FIGURE 1. The Odetics Odex 1.

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items as it was one of the products that changed the faceof experimental/hobby robotics.

Figure 2 shows the later version of the Hero — theHero 2000. Also, based also in Ann Arbor, MI — the homeof the Robotic Industries Association — the NSRA had greatinitial enthusiasm but garnered little industry support. Asdid the RI/SME, the NSRA seemed to shrink to oblivion,though the parent group (RIA) is still active and presentsmany conferences and exhibits around the country.

Microsoft’s Kinect Gives Robot Builders A New Goal

Robotics has changed in the past decades. Powerfuland cheap computing power coupled with someamazing new sensors have given robot designers newdirections and applications for service robots that werenot only unavailable decades ago, but unthinkable.Electronic Design’s April issue featured Willow Garage’sPR-2 on the cover with the associated article “RobotRevolution” addressing how ‘Cooperation Leads to SmarterRobots.’ Desktop Engineering’s July issue featured an articleentitled ‘Mobilizing Toward a Robotics Revolution’ thatdelved into intelligent robot sensors, in particular, the

Microsoft XBOX Kinectshown in Figure 3.

This amazing devicehas taken the intelligent

robotics field by stormthe past couple ofyears and seems tohave surpassed bipedaland self-balancingrobots as the biggestsubject of interest foradvanced robotbuilders. Robot buildersare now able to use thisdevice to allow theirrobots to not only sensehuman presence, butto allow the sensedhumans the ability tocontrol the robotthrough hand and

body motions without the need for a wired hand controller. For years, artificial intelligence was limited to a handful

of basic sensors to deliver a perception of the robot’s worldto its processor. Ultrasonic and IR sensors could reach outand detect obstacles that might affect the robot’s path.Passive sensors could detect sound, light, and evenunderstand a human’s speech for control. Inventorsattached web cams and other visual imaging devices toallow a robot to perceive the outside world. StanfordUniversity’s AI Lab had built the ‘AI Lab Cart’ shown inFigure 4 and ‘Shakey’ in the ‘70s and ‘80s — robots thatused crude vidicon camera vision systems to navigate. Theresults were amazing for the time but lacked usefulnesscompared with today’s technology. Over a decade later,Sony’s Aibo of the ‘90s was capable of recognizing humanfaces, and robot experimenters soon applied thistechnology to their creations.

Kinect Is An Ideal IntelligentVision System For A Robot

It was not until Microsoft introduced the $149.95Kinect peripheral for their Xbox-360 that robot builders witha limited budget could now create a machine that wouldmake sense of human motion. On November 4th of lastyear, Microsoft released the Kinect, and Xbox gamersjumped on it like bees on a picnic watermelon. So did robotexperimenters. Just as the Scarecrow and Tin Man in the

Wizard of Oz felt they needed a brainor heart to finally be accepted asintelligent entities, robot builderswanted their robots to have a true,functional vision system. This group ofexperimenters saw this new product asa dream come true for their creations —at least as far as the vision part goes.

By March of this year, Microsofthad sold over 10 million of the devices

FIGURE 5. Kinect Quadrotor from IEEESpectrum.

FIGURE 4. The 1979Stanford AI Lab Cart.

FIGURE 3. The hot-selling Microsoft Kinect.

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— far out-selling Apple’s i-Phone and i-Pad launchsales. The device was a natural for hackers. Whenan ex-Microsoft employee offered $3,000 for thefirst person to hack the system, it was hacked withindays of its launch. You-Tube has a slew of videosof Kinect-powered robots. The photo from theIEEE Spectrum Magazine in Figure 5 shows aKinect-controlled Quad Rotor AAV. You can see thefour whirling rotors protected by the yellow ‘fences.’

Xbox gamers saw the jewel that it was, but itwas the robot experimenter community that dug intothe amazing sensor and made it the center of theirrobotic creations. Universities around the world sawthe Kinect as a replacement for previous complex systemsthat cost tens of thousands of dollars and did not work aswell as the $150 Microsoft product. At first, Microsoft — aswith most large companies — strenuously objected to thehacking competition but soon realized that making thedevice ‘open source’ would benefit everyone — especiallythem.

The Kinect enables control of the Xbox through“natural interaction” — a term trademarked by PrimeSense(Tel Aviv, Israel) — the company that developed Kinect’sunderlying optical sensing and recognition technology thattranslates body motion into control commands. It works byprojecting an infrared laser pattern onto nearby people andobjects. A dedicated IR sensor picks up on the laser todetermine distance for each pixel, and that information isthen mapped onto an image on a standard RGB camera.The Kinect sensor has an IR emitter, a depth cameracoupled with a standard RGB camera, and a built-in array offour microphones that track your full-body movements andrespond to your voice.

The Kinect project started out as Project Natal afterthey bought another Israelistartup company (3DV for $35million in early 2009). 3DV was adeveloper of 3D real time depthdetection digital cameras.PrimeSense and Microsoftexamined technology from bothcompanies and ended up usingthe PrimeSensor technology.Figure 6 shows one of theearlier, pre-Kinect PrimeSense-WAVI-Xtion systems. Note thesimilarity to the later Kinectconfiguration.

Figure 3 shows the simplelayout of the Kinect sensorsystem and the three lenses.When the projected IR patternfrom the emitter seen as the farleft ‘lens’ hits a 3D object, thelines are distorted and thisdistortion is read by the depthcamera (the camera to the

right). This camera analyzes the distorted IR patterns andbuilds a 3D map of the room with all the objects andpeople in it.

The center camera is the color camera that is used togather details about people and objects in the viewing area.Figure 7 shows an exploded, hacked view of the Kinect.From the bottom, you can see the four-microphone array,the three circuit boards, and the three cameras. I’m notgoing to elaborate on the aspects of Kinect as you cansearch the Internet and find dozens of sites explaining thedevice, as well as dozens of hacking sites and hundreds ofrobots using the Kinect.

Other Changes In Robotics Over The Years

There are many other technological breakthroughs thatdid not necessarily cause changes in the field of robots, butrather allowed these changes to occur. One might say thatlow cost GPS modules (such as the two Parallax GPSmodules that cost $35 and $80 each) have allowed builders

FIGURE 7. Exploded view of the Kinect.

FIGURE 6. The PrimeSenseWAVI-Xtion 3D sensor.

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to make robots that can traverse outdoors and navigatefairly accurately. The Parallax 28146 module at $79.99 isshown in Figure 8, but there are many companies whooffer similar modules for experimenters. Others have hackedinexpensive handheld GPS receivers for the same purpose,and hacking information is available on the Web. Needlessto say, the accuracy is not what we might expect for arobot that operates indoors within a 10 foot square room,but GPS navigation is ideal for outside events such as theRobo-Magellan contests that havebecome quite popular across the country.

First envisioned by the SeattleRobotics Society, builders haveconstructed winning Robo-Magellanentrants for little more than a fewhundred dollars in parts. Without thecheap CCD/CMOS laptop web camerasand GPS modules available to robothobbyists today, robots such as thesewere unthinkable just 20 years agooutside of university and industry labs.Now, builders can toss in some next stepideas such as high power density LiPo andother battery designs, rare-earth PM andbrushless DC motors, cheapmicrocontrollers, and a wealth ofinformation available on the Internet. 3

axis gyroscopes and accelerometers make stable walkingrobots a possibility.

Closing ThoughtsThis past June, President Obama announced the

National Robotics Initiative — a program to developnext-generation robots for industrial purposes, healthcare,and other service robot applications. Robotics groups

were enthusiastic about this news, butas various administrations in the pasthad proven with previousannouncements about new technology,most will take a wait and see attitude.Will such an initiative prove to be a wayfor our industries to replace skilledtechnical and production people withbrainless button-pushers? Are we,indeed, heading to another roboticsrevolution, as the non-technical mediahas touted for so long? Will thesechanges in sensor, computing, vision,and power systems technology createthe changes in robotics that we are allstriving towards? We’ll just have to waitand see. SV

FIGURE 8. The Parallax GPS sensor receiver.

Tom Carroll can be reached atTWCarroll@aol.com.

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