Major US robotics companies, long obsessed with producing remote-controlled military hardware, are now talking about robotic servants that would one day remind older folks to take their meds, help them up from a fall, and whisk them around the house if they are incapacitated.
But so far, the companies have been mostly just talking. Bedford-based iRobot Corp., of PackBot and Roomba renown, last year unveiled a health care division that will turn out robot helpers. But the company has yet to thrill us with any prototypes or concepts.
Rather, I see the short-term breakthroughs coming from the laboratories of tiny firms like the new Hoaloha Robotics, in Seattle (www.hoaloharobotics.com).
Hoaloha, so small that its chief executive, former Microsoft Corp. exec Tandy Trower, answers the phone himself, last week announced a partnership with the hardware company Robosoft (www.robosoft.com/eng/), of Bidart, France.
Robosoft will make the arms, grippers, and mobile platforms for any robots emerging from the partnership.
Hoaloha will contribute its software, which can place emergency calls, access online medical services, and dispense drugs.
Trower said he is thinking pragmatically about the first assistive robots that will cross baby boomers’ thresholds.
Rather than Rosie, the sassy robot maid on “The Jetsons,’’ Trower talked about “PCs on wheels’’ that would handle basic tasks around the home.
His vision reminds me of Serge, the nonhumanoid butler in the Syfy series “Caprica,’’ who rolls around on a Segway-style self-correcting platform, answers his inventor’s door, and delivers messages from visitors.
A conceptual drawing from Hoaloha and Robosoft shows a tablet PC mounted on a mobile platform, a video screen for remote presence use, and foldable arms that suggest the robot might be able to lift and support people and carry objects.
Trower hopes that — perhaps through deals with iRobot, for example — such assistive aids will begin taking the place of walkers and scooters in three to five years.
No comments:
Post a Comment