Panasonic Robot Does The Dishes
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 19 of October , 2009 at 3:07 am
We’re all waiting for somebody to come up with a robot to do the dishes, and Panasonic is taking an uninspiring crack at it with this complicated setup that includes a robot arm and hand controlled by a camera on an overhead track. It’s nimble enough, and includes sensors to enable it to grip fragile glasses without breaking them, but there isn’t really any breakthrough technology here.
The biggest news is that this is one of the first commercial demos from Panasonic’s fledgling robotics unit (formed last year), which hopes to sell over a billion dollars worth of robots by 2015. It’s always good to see major companies exhibiting continuing faith in the robotics market in general, and the home robotics department specifically, despite what continues to be slow growth in everything but toys and robotic vacuums.
According to this report, Panasonic is worried about potential legal issues stemming from the lack of safety standards and liability laws concerning robots that interact with humans. We’ve been over this before, but I mean, somebody has to take the plunge on this sort of thing… Would it be too idealistic of me to suggest that Panasonic just make the safest robot bed possible and stick it on the market? I’m not sure why the safety standards for a robot bed would be any different from the safety standards for a regular bed and a motorized wheelchair, and iRobot has managed to get Roombas into our homes without killing anyone, so there’s already some precedent for this sort of thing. I dunno… It just seems to me that fear of liability should be the last thing that keeps robots out of our lives.
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