Mass High Tech has posted an interview with iRobot’s CEO, Colin Angle, on their plans for the future. Angle discusses their plans to combat the “demographic shift” of a 4:1 caregiver to care-needer ratio to a 1:1 ratio in the next 20 years. In other words, in the next 20 years, there will be a huge need for people or robots to take care of the elderly. iRobot is now focusing on how to help people perform physical tasks that may become difficult as we age. They are starting with plans for a “robot buddy” – probably much like the iRobot ConnectR prototype from a few years back. The new initial products will have a consumer focus, but will leverage government funding to make them cost effective.

As for other home innovations, Angle says, “We’re not done there by any stretch of the imagination.”

What do you think will be the next cool robot to come out of iRobot?

[Via @iRobotSPARK via @Transbotica]

This little gem came to me courtesy of my friend Greg Baker, who is a lecturer in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University. Thanks Greg! This one was too cool to pass up.

Gåågle - It’s not as weird to pronounce as you’d think. It’s actually pronounced like Google and you’ll begin to see why soon enough. Gåågle Bot is a modified remote-control Roomba that bears a webcam, fueled by real-time AJAX calls that zips around taking pictures and indexing the real world as it sees it. Vacuum, index. I love efficiency!

The name GåågleBot is a play on the words gÃ¥ and google bot. The Swedish word for go is gåå. Googlebot, is the name of Google’s web indexer. If you don’t know what Google is, you are either lying or out of luck. Hence GåågleBot is a “going” indexer, indexing the real world around us while vacuuming your home at the same time! Can’t find that library book that is due tomorrow? Relax, just Gåågle it!

Excited about this bot? Head over here and give it a try. There is also a pretty nifty video as well showing the bot in action. The main site has all of the components listed, the source code, and other tidbits to get you started building your own remote-control crawler.

If Presidents, Veterens, and Laborors get only a day, what do we give robotics? How about a whole week! That’s right, National Robotics Week has been announced and is slated for April 10-18, 2010.  The event is headed up by iRobot, along with a whole slew of robotics companies and organizations.

During National Robotics Week, a week-long series of events and activities is aimed at increasing public awareness of the growing importance of “robo-technology” and the tremendous social and cultural impact that it will have on the future of the United States.

Sounds pretty sweet. The stated goals are to:

• Celebrate the US as a leader in robotics technology (because we’re falling behind).
• Educate the public about the ongoing social and cultural impact of robotics technology (let’s avoid robomageddon).
• Advocate for increased funding for robotics technology research and development (well, at least their being honest. It’s not like most of iRobot’s funding doesn’t come from this).
• Inspire students of all ages to pursue careers in robotics and other science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) related fields (see the first bullet point).

So, what do you think? Is National Robotics Week worthwhile?

As we say goodbye to the 200x’s and welcome the 201x’s it’s good to pause a bit and think about the world as it was ten years ago. There was no Wikipedia, no YouTube, internet access was still dialup for a huge portion of the population, and we didn’t have a whole heap of really cool robots. To highlight some of the great inventions of the past ten years, we’ve selected 10 of the best robots fom the past 10 years.

With any sort of list like this, things are pretty arbitrary, but we tried to pick robots that have made an impact in our culture or have impacted the hobby or science of robots in a major way. Below you’ll find 10 amazing robots from the military, toy industry, consumer industry, and science community that have had a lasting impact on robotics.

Take a look and tell us what you think. If you had to nominate 10 robots of the decade, who would they be? Keep reading for our picks for robots of the decade.

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I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but iRobot just posted a music video to their YouTube channel featuring the music of Lansdown and lots of footage of Packbots blowing up things. See it below:

Jon Stewart and his crew tackle the difficult ethical questions of involving robots in war. Hidden behind the humor, there’s some decent points.

[Via The Robot Report]

Shown below is a video of a robot that uses the perceived vanishing point of an image to navigate through a corridor. The robot, based on an iRobot Create, uses a standard webcam and video processing to locate the vanishing point of what it sees, and navigates towards that point. Such navigation works very well in office-like environments with straight walls, windows, and ceilings. The robot also uses visual clues, like orange traffic cones, to recognize specific locations.

I was responsible for vision-based navigation of the robot within the hallways. I used the vanishing points from the parallel lines present indoors to compute the robot heading. This was then fed into a controller to control the direction of the robot for navigation. The computation was made robust to change in light conditions, false detections, occlusions by a layered filtering approach that included RANSAC and least squares filtering among others.

Such navigation has some very interesting implications for simple navigation through common environments (houses, offices, shopping malls, etc.). Has anyone tried this using RoboRealm? You can read the project report (PDF) here.

[Via Hackzine]

Robot Stock News has an interesting post about a new robot company, SmartMow, and their self titled product, a robotic lawnmower. The mower, which is currently available for preorder, will retail for $999 and features lithium batteries, a self-charger and can supposedly mow 1/3 of an acre on a single charge. SmartMow is currently offering this mower for a special price of $749 ($175 reserve price, and the rest when the product delivers in the Spring).

The SmartMow requires a perimeter wire to tell it the boundaries to mow, but only weighs 17 pounds – much lighter than other robotic mowers. You may also remember that iRobot has filed a patent for robotic lawnmowers, so we may be seeing some significant market competition in the coming years. This is a good thing.

Personally, I think laying down a perimeter wire is a significant barrier to entry. SmartMow will have to work very well to attract new buyers and word-of-mouth marketing. The Roomba hasn’t sold millions of times just because of it’s price point, but because it, like the iPod, does what it’s supposed to do excellently – SmartMow should take note.

The Christmas season is upon us, and it’s time to whip up your gift lists. Why not put a little robot love on there? Here’s some great suggestions for robotic gifts. We’ve featured 10 great products that will make excellent gift ideas for your robot loving friend or relative.

LEGO Mindstorms NXT

I wonder if LEGO fully understood what they were getting into when they first released their “Robotics Invention System”, or “RIS” in 1998? Now, two revisions later we have the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system, which is about as perfect of a product as you can imagine. Involving a tight-knit team of LEGO and robotics enthusiasts, LEGO developed NXT from the ground up and surprised the public with their new system in 2006. The NXT system supports over 40 different programming languages, and supports a wide range of additional sensors created by 3rd parties. The kit comes with 3 motors (with feedback), 4 different sensors, and 571 pieces. You can check out some of the fabulous NXT creations over at The NXT Step Blog.

Mindstorms NXT retails for $250 USD.

Buy LEGO Mindstorms NXT from RobotShop.

Wall-E RC Toy and DVD

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Pixar is known for creating beautiful, heartwarming, and sophisticated animated films that appeal to both children and adults. Their latest masterpiece is the story of Wall-E, a trash robot stranded and alone on Earth.

One of the more interesting product tie-ins is the U Command Wall-E “interactive robot” which uses an IR remote for control and can be programming with hundreds of different actions and combinations. This may be ripe for hardware hacking and is extremely cute, to boot.

Of course, if you’re looking for something a little less costly, the 3 disk Special Edition of Wall-E on DVD would make an excellent gift for your robot loving friends.

Buy U Command Wall-E from Amazon.com.

Buy 3 Disk Special Edition Wall-E from Amazon.com.

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The US Army has decided to move it’s Robotics Systems Joint Project Office to Warren, MI, outside of Detroit. In response to this, many large robotics companies are following suit and opening offices in the area. The office is currently hiring engineers and designers to create robots to do “dull, dirty or dangerous” jobs.

Robot ground vehicles are said to be the main focus and officials say that should produce about 100 new jobs by next year and maybe double that in the future. Which future is still in question, though. Already, money is flowing into local universities for robotics research and iRobot, Foster Miller, and QuinetiQ are looking to open local branches.

So, is robotics the hot new industry for Southern Michigan? It sure looks like they could use a few new ideas.

 

In what is pretty stunning news to me, iRobot has purchased Nekton Research for $10 million USD. The reason this is so stunning, is because Nekton is 30min down the road from me, and I’ve interviewed there! Nekton is a small business located in Durham North Carolina and specializes in underwater robots. You can see one of their robots, the Transphibian, operating after the jump. Up till this point Nekton has based it’s business on government research contracts and hasn’t done any large scale product sales – this looks to change. iRobot says they plan on moving their “Maritime Programs office” to the Raleigh-Durham area. Eventually iRobot plans to have all their underwater research and development happen at this location. This will be where the Seaglider program eventually moves to.

iRobot has updated their website to reflect the new acquisition and features the Seaglider, Ranger, Transphibian, and “High Speed UUV“. I’m looking forward to see what exciting things will pop out of the water, so to speak.

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I saw this video linked from our friends at robots.net. “Roomba song,” I say. “It’s probably bad, but I’ll give it a shot.” Well folks, I was wrong. Great song. Great voice. Great robot. Check it out.

Thorn, over at Robot Stock News, recently stumbled upon some very interesting patent filings from iRobot that may be a new lawnmower. The 84 page filing has several potential designs for robotic lawnmowers listed – electric, gasoline, Roomba-like, different cutting systems, navigation systems, etc.

Apparently iRobot is considering several different barrier systems, including the standard “electric fence” type system, and a more exotic solar-powered boundary marker system. Also being considered is the use of GPS, “lawn learning” capabilites, clipping collection, and more.

The arrival of a robotic lawnmower (Mowba? Lawnba? Mowr?) has long been rumored, but this news definitely pushes the possibility into the “highly likely” category. One key question is what will the price point be?

Robot Stock News has more details. You can also read the full patent filing online here.

The Automaton blog is reporting the NPR featured robots on its weekly "Science Friday" talk show.

According to Automaton,



I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, so let me know what you think.

 

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You may remember our posts on the sad plight of iRobot, who had accused their ex-employee, Jameel Ahed, of stealing their design, only to have the US Military award a whopping $280 million dollar contract to said ex-employee, and rejecting iRobot. Oh the injustice!

Weep no more, fellow shareholders and Roomba lovers, because justice has been served! Unfortunately, the price of that justice was a cool $2.9million dollars. But, nobody said good ol’ Lex Rex came cheap.

In addition to the judges in both lawsuits rulling in favor of iRobot – one ruling that Robotic FX had infringed iRobot’s patent, and the other ruling that, Robotic FX stole proprietary information – Robotic FX will now be dissolved and its assets given to iRobot as payment.



In response to the news, the US DoD awarded iRobot the $280 million dollar contract that was previously awarded to Robotic FX. While iRobot’s stock price has a long way to go from the $24 high it was before all of these events transpired, the future is looking much brighter.



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