Today's Top Story

The Robot Report’s database now has over 1,400 robotics links in the following directories:

... Industrial robot manufacturers
... Service robots for gov & corp use
... Service robots for personal use
... Ancillary businesses
... Start-up companies
... Educational & research facilities

In addition to the news briefs shown below, the archive has three years of additional items. Plus in-depth articles and opinion on the Everything-Robotic blog.

Divergent Views on Communicating with Machines

... Most products at CES were demonstrating “smart” in that they are connected to the Internet, have sensors or AI that gather and process data and make decisions.
... The Apple iPad has already changed our expectations as to how we interact with our computers, tablets and phones. And Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Kinect are leading us on to even newer ways.
... Thus the views of Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Mercedes’ Dieter Zetsche were sought out to get their spin on the future. But they differed not only in content but in manner of presentation. Read details of what they had to say.

My kind of movie: Robot and Frank

... Shown at Sundance and starring Frank Langella, Susan Saradon, James Marsden and Liv Tyler.
... Offbeat buddy movie about an ex-jewel thief whose grown kids install a robot as his caretaker.

Upcoming Robotic Events

... Robotics Innovation Challenge, by Robot Dalen, February 9, Eskilstuna, Sweden
... International Expert Days, February 29 - March 1, at the Schunk factory in Hausen, Germany
... HRI 2012, Human-robot Interaction Conference, March 5-8, Boston
... EU 2012 Robotics Forum, March 5-7, Odense, Denmark
... InnoRobo 2012, service robotics conference and trade show, March 14-16, Lyon, France
... National (U.S.) Robotics Week 2012, multiple events, April 7-15, multiple locations across the U.S.
... Hannover Messe automation and technology trade show, April 23-27, Hannover, Germany
... Automatica 2012 trade show, May 22-25, Munich, Germany

Is 2012 The Year That Robot Applications Take Root?

... Three competing ideas on a theme of using the cloud to provide apps, updates and libraries of robotic data are reviewed in depth here.
  - MyRobots, by Canadian RobotShop, will attempt to be a combination app store and Windows-like environment to permit robotics products to be monitored, repaired, and updated seamlessly.
  - Robots App Store, by San Francisco serial entrepreneur Elad Inbar, is developing their portal to be an online marketplace for selling robot apps.
  - RoboEarth, an EU public-private consortium, aims to use the internet to create a giant open source network and database repository that can be accessed and updated by robots around the world.

Google’s Response to Apple’s Siri: Buy Cleversense

... Cleversense, a learning AI with a natural language processing front-end - and the developer of the popular Alfred personal assistant app - has been sold to Google for an undisclosed amount.
... Fear that Apple’s Siri “could provide a new paradigm for searching the Web that circumvents Google’s search engine and ads” may be the reason.
... The first language processing front-end made available to developers by either Apple or Google will be a windfall for human-robot communication systems development.

Robots in the Kitchen: Sooner Than You Think

... “James (a PR2 robot from Willow Garage) and Rosie (a custom lightweight two-armed robot from Kuka and DLR) aren’t specifically programmed with a “left, right, break egg, stir” type command set. They’re taught the ingredients for the dishes, and the order that things work in, and whether they need heating and so on. The robots then make all the decisions about adding items, mixing, turning on the stove and so on. Essentially they’re acting as very dim sous-chefs, and this hints at an exciting future of robotic home assistants that may be useful far ahead of when we’d been assuming.” Kit Eaton, FastCompany.

Intelligrated adding 200 tech/engineering jobs at new Ohio facility

... Intelligrated, a material handling automation integrator, is building a new R&D facility in Ohio. 200 new tech and engineering jobs will be added.
... The new facility will support the company’s plans for strategic growth in the material handling industry, a growth area for industrial robotics.
... Intelligrated’s move gives credence to IFR statement at iRex: “Robots to create more than a million jobs by 2016.” And also Metra Martech 64-page report: “Positive impact of industrial robots on employment.”

Robots Coming Online in 2012, 2013 and 2014

... Harvest Automation’s labor-saving potted plant mover to go commercial in 2012 and 2013
... Sea Robotics hull-cleaning navy robot is slated for 2014
... Foxconn factory robots - from their own robot manufacturing plant to their own factory floors - are planning to deploy 300,000 in 2013 and another 700,000 in 2014 and 2015
... Plus companies like KIVA Systems having record sales.

iRobot to cut 9% of workers from military div; consumer products booming

... iRobot CEO Colin Angle said the workforce reduction will result in a $1 million charge but won’t impact the home robots business unit.
... Federal government cutbacks in military R&D spending are the reason for the reduction in force.
... The home robot business grew 32 percent in the quarter — with 56 percent growth outside the U.S.

MS Donates 2,500 Kinects to F.I.R.S.T.

... The Kinect sensor will be a valuable enhancement to the FIRST robot competition experience. Teams will be able to either program their robots to respond to their own custom gestures, or use default code and gestures.
... The Kinect sensor includes a depth camera and both video and audio sensors to capture video data in 3D.
... During the 2011 F.I.R.S.T. season, 2,072 teams totaling 51,800 students competed at 59 events in the U.S., Canada, and Israel.

Five Finalists Chosen for RoboBowl Healthcare Robotics Competition

... Five finalists in the RoboBowl next-generation competition for healthcare robotic devices hosted by CMU were announced. Each wins $5,000. The best of the five wins another $20,000.
... Proposals include (1) personalized video games and robotics for stroke and trauma patients; (2) toy-like robots that therapeutically interact with autistic children; (3) providing low-cost robots for STEM education and therapy outreach; (4) integrating the latest search and rescue robots with medical diagnostics and treatment technologies; and (5) a haptic feedback system from contact to the surgeon’s fingertips.
... Presentations before a distinguished panel of judges. Winner to be chosen October 13; prize given October 14.

Ubiquitous displays - Corning’s vision for the decade

... In a wonderfully illustrative video, Corning shows how its glass and fiber, with companion technologies, will shape our world and shift our ways of communication in the near future.
... Teachers, healthcare providers, techies, car-buffs, and investors will want to invest 11 minutes to watch this video.

Competition for Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci Surgical System

... Funded by a NSF grant, seven identical Raven II open source surgical robots using open source software (ROS), will be placed in seven universities. Four more universities are in line waiting to get their own Raven II robots.
... “These [seven or eleven universities] are leading labs in the nation in the field of surgical robotics, and with everyone working on the same platform we can more easily share new developments and innovations.”
... “We decided to follow an open-source model, because if all of these labs have a common research platform for doing robotic surgery, the whole field will be able to advance more quickly.”
... The lock that Intuitive Surgical has had with their patented da Vinci Surgical System may be threatened by the results of this new endeavor.

Study shows positive attitude toward healthcare telepresence robots

... In a study to assess how surgical intensive care patients and their families perceived robotic telepresence, 92% of respondents were comfortable with the robot and 84% believed that communication was “easy.”
... Further, 90% did not perceive the robot as annoying and 92% did not believe that “the doctor cared less about them” because of the robot. Also, 92% supported the continued use of the robot.

Iranians Hacked US Drone And Instructed It To Land In Iran

... In an exclusive to The Christian Science Monitor, an Iranian engineer describes how they hacked a U.S. military drone - a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel - into landing at an Iranian airbase.
... First they cut off communications links and then reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land at what the drone thought was its actual home base - but instead was in Iran.
... Iran’s “electronic ambush” jammed the drone’s communications forcing it into autopilot where it used stored GPS coordinates to fly home. But the home coordinates were hacked into and altered to be the coordinates for an airfield in Iran.

Robotics Labs and Companies Open Up for EU Robotics Week

... Today is the start of the first European Robotics Week: from 28th of November to 4th of December 2011. Check events calendar for an event near you.
... In a novel approach to show their labs efforts, more than 45 European Robotics Labs open their doors to the public via live-streaming.

Foxconn to mass produce their own robots

... Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) breaks ground for $223 million R&D and manufacturing facilities in Taiwan to develop and produce robots.
... The project is expected to generate an estimated $4 billion in production value in the next three to five years, create about 2,000 jobs, replace 500,000 mainland Chinese workers with 1 million robots and double the world’s industrial robot population.
... Details in Christian Science Monitor article.

Emerging Underwater Businesses

... ROVs repairing underwater oil rigs; treasure hunters finding $230 million in silver; recovering the black box from a crashed airline; tracking sea creatures - these are just a few of the non-defense/security uses of unmanned maritime systems and devices.
... iRobot, Liquid Robotics and Teledyne Technologies all have maritime operations and each are profiled in this interesting report.

iWalk expanding availability of lower limb bionic prosthetics

... MIT spinoff iWalk now producing a leg system that replaces the combined functions of the foot, ankle and calf regions of the human body for amputees.
... Prosthetic emulates or even augments physiological function through electromechanical replacement.

Notes from IROS 2011 San Francisco

... Week long conference on intelligent robots and systems had presentations, exhibitions, demonstrations and interactive sessions.
... Read one observer’s picks for most interesting, crowd pleasing and unusual presentations and demonstrations at the show.
... See 15 photos taken at the conference by the Denver Post.

Yaskawa Porting ROS to Robot Line

... Southwest Research Institute porting Willow Garage’s Open Source ROS Robotic Operating System to Yaskawa line of Motoman robots.
... Work to be done by Q1 2012.
... “The next step for industrial robotics is to be more sensor aware; to be able to accomodate the many new capabilities showing up in the service sector. It’s clear that ROS is able to handle all of these,” says Erik Nieves, Technology Director for Yaskawa America’s Motoman Robotics Division.

Foxconn to deploy 1,000,000 robots by 2014

... Foxconn is planning to up their factory robot count to 300,000 by 2012 and 1 million by 2014.
... A Taiwanese contract manufacturer with factories in Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Indonesia, Foxconn employs 1.2 million workers, 400,000 of which work on iPad, iPhone and other Apple products.
... Read story in Christian Science Monitor.
... Combining low-cost skilled labor with new-tech robotics will increase Foxconn’s productivity and efficiency and insure that offshoring is economically the best choice for global electronics manufacturers.
... What does it mean to the global robotics industry? And to America? Read more....

Unmanned Agricultural Tractors Gaining Momentum

... Row-crop equipment manufacturer Kinze hooked up a Jaybridge Robotics driverless kit to a John Deere tractor pulling a grain cart and integrated it so that the unmanned tractor and cart pull alongside a harvester, receive a load while moving, drive to a staging area to drop the cart and get a new one and then repeat the process. Watch the video
... Kinze also launched an autonomous row-crop planting system. Here’s that video.

Consumer Robots at CES 2012

... 20+ robotic vendors; 2 or 3 hits; a few duds; and, except for Nathan’s hotdogs, bad food.
... CES is always a wonderful experience. This year the unadvertised theme was digital to smart to every type of consumer product.
... Lots of pictures. Read the review.

Disappointing 4-years for robotic stock investors

... Year-end ROBO-STOX™ results show that robotic industrials are down 28% from their 2007 highs and did poorer than the Dow Jones Industrial Average which is also still down 8.5%. Service robotic stocks are down 15% from 2007 while the NASDAQ is down 2.5%.
... Industrial robot companies represent 62% of the $9.3 billion industry revenue; service is 38% of which 75% was for military/defense.
... Industrials took a big fall from their 2007 highs and have not yet recovered. A small rise in the latter part of 2010 was blown away with the Japanese disasters, Thailand floods and EU economic turmoil.
... Service companies (mostly start-ups or privately held; few are publicly-traded) fall into three main sectors: medical, defense/security and a mixture of academic and consumer niche products. Medical robotic stocks are booming; defense/security stocks are holding steady; and the remainder are all over the place.

ABC Nightline Interviews Lifelike Hanson Robot

... “It feels weird to be a robot sometimes,” the robot said in the interview. “You know, like I shouldn’t exist outside of a science fiction story. It makes me wonder if this is actually real like if it isn’t a dream or a story being written by a science fiction writer.” Throughout the interview and ABC Nightline story, David Hanson’s advanced cognitive artificial intelligent robot projects are visualized and discussed as is David’s passion to have a robot as a friend.
... Similar to the NY Times’ 2010 interview of Bina48, another Hanson robot of a real person, the robot interviewed by ABC Nightline is improved, surprisingly human, not just in mechanics, but also in appearance. It’s a wonderfully illustrative way to end 2011 in robotics with the promise of more wonders from Hanson and others in the years to come.

Two newsworthy examples of healthcare robots

... Children’s Hospital Boston sends Vgo telepresence robots home with post-op patients in a pilot program that includes the robots into its regular post-op care program. Doctors and nurses now have a direct line of communication and observation between themselves, the patients and their family as they recover at home. Vgo telepresence visits take 10-15 minutes with no commute time and, most importantly, appointments can occur every three days instead of waiting six weeks for a post surgical visit.
... In Auckland, NZ, the University of Auckland and four Korean and Japanese robot vendors, have placed 31 robots into a retirement village to help older people be more independent, and more socially interactive. The robots will serve as friend, guide, provide comfort, tutor residents in brain stimulating activities, and provide waiter services.The robots will also do simple tasks giving staff more time to spend with the residents.