Robots Are Cute, But Can You Put Them to Work?

The faces of kids and adults light up the first time they see Sony's Aibo or Honda's Asimo robots as the robots' demeanor and lifelike movements bring a smile to almost every face. But wait a second: cute as they are, whatever happened to The Jetsons' ideal of an army of robots to do our cleaning, water our plants, and wash our car?

To date, the cost of developing and building robots has meant that, around the home at least, they are much more suited to entertaining than doing the types of complex work that you or I do every day, but that may be changing. Researchers at several companies in Japan are working on robots that perform simple tasks and can help around the home.

One such project has been going on for just over five years at NEC's Central Research Laboratory in the leafy Tokyo suburbs.

Putting It All Together

Everything started when a group of researchers studying a diverse range of applications, such as speech recognition and optical sensing, realized they could put all of this together to build a robot, says Yoshihiro Fujita, senior manager at the lab's Personal Robot Center. The first product of the project was the R100, which was unveiled in August 1999. Almost two years later, in March 2001, a smaller, more intelligent successor called PaPeRo was announced.

PaPeRo stands 15 inches high and has a round body, 10 inches in diameter.

"It is basically a notebook computer with some sensors, a case, and a few motors for movement," says Fujita. The researchers decided to use this simple design because they are more interested in the human-computer interface technology than cracking challenges of mechanical technology to make the device look more like a person or pet.

A pair of CCD cameras act as eyes for PaPeRo. It is through these that the robot senses its surroundings, the location of major obstacles, and also recognizes up to 10 people. Four microphones act as its ears, three for sound direction detection and one for voice recognition. The major interface to PaPeRo is through speech and it can recognize up to 650 phrases.

Getting Chatty

Through a combination of these functions, things start to get interesting. During a demonstration, the robot recognized Fujita and was able to carry out some small talk before being ordered to take a message. The function is something like an audio mail and PaPeRo will store it until he meets the person it was intended for, and then play the message back.

Its talents don't stop there.

"PaPeRo, switch on the TV," Fujitsu says, and a couple of seconds later a TV in the room comes to life. "NHK," Fujita says, mentioning the name of Tokyo's channel 1, and PaPeRo switches the TV to the channel using an infrared controller buried inside its body. "TBS," and the TV switches to channel 6, "Fuji," and PaPeRo switches the TV to channel 8, and so it goes.

Now, none of this is rocket science and wouldn't drive most people to rush out and buy one (PaPeRo is a research project only and so not for sale at present anyway) but Fujita offers the functions as a taste of things to come. They are also essential elements to NEC's goal in producing a robot "to partner [with] people in their homes with the underlying aim of improving [the] human-machine interface through introducing robots into our everyday lives."

In the Real World

The robots are already with some 70 families to take part in real world tests and the results of those trials are providing NEC with much needed feedback.

"In the laboratory lighting is very good and engineers know the limitations of the robots so we also look at it straight in the face," says Fujita. "At home, there is limited lighting so sometimes half the face is light and half is dark." This, or people looking at PaPeRo from an angle, makes facial recognition a much harder job and so is a much better test of the software.

The trials have also given the researchers a chance to see how PaPeRo interacts with pets.

"At first, dogs are very wary and they stay at a distance but after a while we find the dogs ignore it," he says. For its part, PaPeRo treats pets as nothing more than moving obstacles.

But despite the trials and constant improvements to software, Fujita fears his work could never end.

"I think the project is impossible to complete. People always compare it to a human but its ability is very different. We can keep improving its ability again and again."

Cleaning Up

NEC isn't the only company looking to employ high technology to perform mundane tasks. Matsushita Electric Industrial, better known by its Panasonic brand name, recently unveiled an automatic vacuum cleaner.

Packed with sensors for avoiding obstacles, adjusting the power depending on the amount of dirt to be cleaned and also avoiding drops such as those on stairs, the cleaner will run unattended for 55 minutes on one charge. Trials of the device in real Japanese homes are currently underway and the company plans to review the results before deciding on a schedule for commercialization.

And at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May, Evolution Robotics unveiled its ER1 Personal Robot System. The $499 build-it-yourself kit lets you design a robot around your notebook PC. Billed as the first Internet-enabled, completely autonomous consumer robot, the ER1 includes a strong vision system (through a USB-connected PC camera) that allows it to maneuver around your house and track people and objects.