Robot Exhibiton 2009 in Japan

Highlights from the International Robot Exhibition 2009, Nov. 25-28 at Tokyo Big Site.

Source: Japan Times

Despite fast robotic development in Japan the leading robot engineer Prof. Tomomasa Sato of the University of Tokyo and chairman of the Japan Robot Association warned earlier this year that it still could take decades until practical humanoid robots are ready for the market. Mr. Sato called for the development of a standardized robotmodel based on an open-source operating system in order to kick-start the mass production of humanoid robots. Only when a standardised robot model is created and shared by tens of thousands of scientists and innovators across the globe, will the development of practical robots begin to be met.

Denmark invests € 4,5 Million in Therapeutic Robots from Japan

The Centre for Robot Technology at the Danish Technological Institute started in 2008 an extensive national project with focus on Paro, a human-interactive robotic seal, and its therapeutic qualities within the field of care and welfare. This testing of the robotic seal was the first of its kind outside Japan. Denmark has signed an aggreeemnt with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to purcase 1,000 of Paros for use in health care facilities. Paro has scientifically demonstrated the ability to elicit emotions, activate the mind and calm nerves in patients at hospitals and nursing homes. Although the well-traveled Paro now resides at welfare institutions in more than 20 nations around the world, the Danish government is the first organization to make a large-scale purchase. Denmark aims to have the Paro robots in their new homes by 2011.

€11 Million for a Companion Robot

Researchers from six European countries and 18 reseach institutions are working together to provide the synergy of Robotics and Ambient Intelligence technologies and their semantic integration to provide for a care-giver's assistive environment. The CompanionAble consortium lead by The University of Reading, UK, has 48 months and a budget of €11 million to address the issues of social inclusion and homecare of persons suffering from chronic cognitive disabilities prevalent among the elderly, a rapidly increasing population group. Those people need support of carers and are at risk of social exclusion, yet this problem not well addressed by ICT technology, but would lead to a social and economical pressure for staying at home as long as possible.will

1st Demonstration of the CompanionAble Robot will be helt at the Conference Marking the European Day of People with Disabilities from the 3rd to 4th December in Brussels.

Cultural Acceptability for Educational Robots

Reseachers at the Cheongju National Univ. of Education in Chungbuk, South Korea have compared the cultural acceptability for Educational Robots between Korea and Europe (Spain). Their findings, pubished in the Journal of Information Processing Systems, Vol.4, No.3, September 2008, are that Spains are much more rigid in their thinking on robots and especially have a negative view on robots as peers since they regard robots as labor machines. Recently, Korea invented several educational robots as peer tutors. Korean parents have a strong tendency to see robots as 'the friend of children,' while on the other hand, European parents tend to see educational robots as 'machines or electronics'. Meanwhile, the expectation of children on educational robots showing identification content was higher in Europe than in Korea since European children are familiar with costume parties. This result implies that the Korean market for educational robots is earlier than the European market, but European children will be eager to play with educational robots even though their parents have a negative view of them.

Acceptance of Healthcare Robots

The rapidly ageing population is placing increasing strain on healthcare services. Robots have been proposed as a way to assist people to stay healthy and safe in their own homes. I en recent published article in the Int. Journal of Social Robot researchers at the University of Aukland, NZ, who have reviewed the literature about human responses to healthcare robots and summarises the variables that have been found to influence responses, propose that despite the need for such assistive devices and the success of some healthcare robots, other robots have had a poor response.

They come to the conclusion that it may be possible to increase acceptance of healthcare robots by properly assessing the needs of the human user and then matching the robot’s role, appearance and behaviour to these needs. Because robots have limitations in their abilities, another way to increase acceptance may be to modify the expectations of users to better match robots’ abilities. They ask for more research in potential users’ needs and expectations in specific situations and whether interventions to increase the match between robot and human can increase acceptance.

$ 1,5 Million for 50 Ton Robot Statue

In Kobe’s Wakamatsu Park a new 18-meter tal and 50 ton heavy metal Robot Statue of Gigantor – or Tetsujin #28 as it is known in Japan has been built in commemoration of the devastating 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake. The new tourist attraction has cost $ 1,5 million (135 million yen) to build.

€ 0,6 Million for Fully Autonomous WheeL Loaders

Researchers at the AASS Learning Systems Lab at Örebro University collaborate with Swedish construction company NCC and truck builder Volvo CE to develope a generic, modularized system for autonomous wheel loaders that carries out all parts of the material handling cycle in the context of an asphalt production site.

This project is co-sponsored by the KK-foundation, Vinnova and Robodalen.

€ 2 Million for Domestic Robots

French robot manufacturer ROBOSOFT is coordinating a three year € 2 Million EU-project with 8 partners from France, Austria and Hungaria to find out, evaluate and demonstrate the relevance and efficiency of an evolutionary integration robotics platform. The consortium will study the needs in robotics, sensors and 24/7 communication services for the elderly and the deployment of the proposed system in realistic environments. Overall project goal: to have products available at the end of the project 2012.

Two robot platforms will be evaluated: RobuMate will be used to evaluate verbal and visual interactions with the user, cognitive and memory assistance, sending video stream for scene analysis in case of emergency alarm, stimulation for doing physical exercises and watching user behaviour.

RobuWalker is a robotic walker for physical interaction with the user assisting the sit-to-stand and walking, supervising, monitoring the heart rate and sending data to processing centre.

Exploring the Future of Robotics

What are the greatest opportunities and risks with Future Robotics?
How are todays society systems influenced by the development of technical system with a higher degree of autonomy?
Will new vulnerabilities emerge by transfering important society tasks to robots?
What will happen, when robots take over tasks in the home?

These and other highly critical issues are now discussed at Robotland Open Forum.

Cyberdyne in Sweden

Today I attended a seminar at Danderyds Hospital about innovative Technology in neurorehabilitation. Prof. Sankai, Tsukuba University gave a lecture about his research and demonstrated his latest version of robot suit HAL. His company Cyberdyne has signed a letter of attention with DS to conduct clinical trails. This is a great opportunity for Sweden to evaluate forefront robotics.


















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€36 million Q3 loss for ABB Robotics

ABB has no plans to sell its Robotics division despite $36 million loss in Q3according to ABB CEO Joe Hogan. In the long run he believes in Robotics because robotics solutions will be demanded the coming 5-6 years to other industry segments and not as now concentrated to the auto industry. ABB is repositioning now and will return stronger when the recession is over.

A positive sign comes from China, where ABB´s robots have become the highlight of in the new hall of the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing. With a creative theme and interactive program, the ABB robots have The presentation allows the audience, especially young visitors, to experience the excitement of robotic technology, providing an informative and memorable science lesson.

This May, ABB Engineering (Shanghai) inaugurated a new multi-business manufacturing facility in Shanghai, doubling ABB’s manufacturing capacity for robotic products in China.

IEEE Spectrum 11/09

Robots for real - Androids of Hiroshi Ishiguro

http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-report-robots-for-real

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$750.000 for Moondust Robot

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute-sponsored team Paul’s Robotics took home first place at NASA’s 2009 Regolith Challenge, beating out 22 other teams of professional engineers, and college, university, and high school students from across the country, for the $500,000 top prize. The competition was held Oct. 17-18, 2009 at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and was part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program, which exists to help inspire innovative solutions to technical challenges in the aerospace industry.

Since fall 2007, WPI has offered the nation's first bachelor's degree program in robotics engineering, and in 2009 began offering a new master's-level robotics program.

$700 Million for Military Robots

Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle(SUGV) have fast grown into a multibillion-dollar business. Massachusetts company iRobot has already delivered around 2,700 robots to militaries around the world. Some of those were part of a December 2007, $300 million U.S. Defense Department contract that iRobot won after prevailing over an upstart that purloined its technology. A second Massachusetts firm, Foster-Miller, won a contract in 2008 for another $400 million to supply thousands of its TALON robots. Both iRobot's PackBot and Foster-Miller's TALON are mostly used to locate and detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which have proved to be one of the Taliban's deadliest weapons.

$10 million for a RoboBee

A multidisciplinary team of computer scientists, engineers, and biologists at Harvard received a $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Expeditions in Computing grant for RoboBees, a colony of small-scale mobile robotic devices.

US Spherical robot

Colorado State grad student Greg Schroll has developed a spherical robot as a thesis project at MIT. Among those applications for this robot are use on environmentally hazardous sites, underwater and space exploration. Schroll has been named one of Popular Mechanics' 10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009.

A similar robot called Groundbot designed to detect and report intruders has been developed by a Swedish start-up company Rotundus.

$20 Million for Feeling Communication Robots

At the $20 million Keio-NUS CUTE Center in Singapore more than 50 researchers from Japan and Singapore are inventing next generation Social Networking Robots for children to communicate in multisensory ways. The first robot called Petimo is an interactive robotic toy designed to protect children from potential risks in social networks and the virtual world and it helps them to make a safely connected social networking environment. Together, Petimo and Petimo-World is a new mediator in cultivating positive social behavior and better familiarization to computing environments among young growing minds.

iPhone controlled bipedal walking robot with multi-touch gestures

A novel operating method for a bipedal walking robot through personalized gesture expressions of fingers has been developed by researchers at Keio University, Japan.

Bipedal walking robot mimics the human walking for a certain extend and fingers can be used as analogy to human legs. Moreover, fingers not only have visual resemblance but also can mimic actions of legs such as walking, running, kicking or turning, very easily.