New Generation Of Home Robots Have Gentle Touch

Tag : Juice Bottle

The one-armed robot glides slowly to the kitchen table. With itsthree fingers, it carefully picks up the bottle of apple juice andputs it next to the glasses on the tray in front of it. Then itglides back into the lounge and serves the drinks to the guests.This is how artificial assistants might work in future.
Only 1.45 meters high, Care-O-bot® 3 is the prototype of a newgeneration of service robots designed to help humans in thehousehold. The quick-to-learn assistant was developed by researchscientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for ManufacturingEngineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart.
But how does the robot know where to find the items it needs? Andwhat has been done to make sure the robot does not inadvertentlytouch a human with its arm? It is fitted with numerous sensors toprevent this from happening. Stereo-vision color cameras, laserscanners and a 3-D range camera enable Care-O-bot® 3 toregister its surroundings in three dimensions in real time. If aperson moves into the radius of its arm, it stops moving. Anotherfeature of the small, flexible helper is that it can move in anydirection.
“This is made possible by an omnidirectional platform withfour separately steered and driven wheels,” explains BirgitGraf, who heads the domestic and personal service robotics group atIPA. “In this way, the robot can even pass safely throughnarrow places in an apartment.” The new Care-O-bot® has ahighly flexible arm with seven degrees of freedom and a hand withthree fingers. This allows it to pick up bottles, cups and similarobjects and to operate machines. Force sensors prevent it fromgripping too hard. The arm and the grippers were developed bySchunk.
A tray is mounted at the front of the robot, on whichCare-O-Bot® can carry items such as the requested cup ofcoffee. Integrated in the tray is a touch screen via which theassistant can be controlled. “But the robot can also bedirected by spoken commands.
Unlike its predecessors, it can even recognize and respond togestures,” explains Graf. Numerous household articles arestored in the robot’s databases. It knows, for example, whata cup looks like and where to find it in the kitchen. It can alsolearn to recognize new objects. The user simply places theunfamiliar object in the robot’s hand so that it can gain athree-dimensional impression of the item. However, the new robotdoes not look like a human being. “We deliberately moved awayfrom the existing, humanoid service robots when we designedCare-O-bot® 3,” stresses Care-O-bot-3 project managerChristopher Parlitz of IPA.