iRobot has had a virtual monopoly on the consumer robot vacuum market since they introduced the Roomba in 2002. But with some new competition this year, there’s now a real perception problem when consumers compare a Roomba’s cleaning technique to that of Mint or the Neato XV-11, which are able to localize themselves, map a room, and clean in straight efficient lines. Irrespective of whether ‘smart’ cleaning is more or less effective (and iRobot argues convincingly that its unstructured patterns do in fact clean better), Roomba’s pseudo-random behaviors seem less sophisticated and ‘dumber’ by comparison. The Roomba, which (I would argue) hasn’t seen a significant upgrade since the release of the third generation 5xx series in 2007, is going to need some kind of upgrade, because consumers are now expecting household robots to be smarter.

This patent application, last updated in April of this year and unearthed by Robot Stock News, seems to suggest that iRobot is at least considering adding localization to their line of cleaning robots. The patent is for a “Celestial Navigation System for an Autonomous Robot,” and works by using (and stop me if you’ve heard this one) a projector to put IR spots on your ceiling that the robot uses to figure out where it is. Yep, sounds a lot (suspiciously a lot) like NorthStar, used by Mint. And just like NorthStar, if iRobot implements this system it’s going to mean that you’d need a projector in every room you want cleaned.

The Celestial Navigation patent does talk about a bunch of potentially interesting features… For example, each room gets its own ID, so you could schedule your robot to clean specific rooms at specific times, and then monitor its progress on a remote. And there’s even the suggestion that the beacons will be powered wirelessly by the robot itself.

Also, since Roombas can sense dirt, they might be able to create a “dirt map” of your house, and then spend more time cleaning the dirtier areas. The patent says that this technology could easily be adapted for “floor waxing and polishing, floor scrubbing, ice resurfacing, unfinished floor sanding, stain/paint application, ice melting and snow removal, grass-cutting, etc” but we’ve heard that kind of thing before.

Using a localization system and cleaning in straight lines would be a notable shift in cleaning philosophy for iRobot. If you remember, iRobot has told us that on surfaces like carpet, the multiple angle approach cleans more effectively than a single pass, so I’m not sure how they’re going to justify what seems to be a very traditional straight line approach. Of course, besides the patent, there’s no actually indication that they’re going to be DOING any of this, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

[ Patent (PDF) ] VIA [ Robot Stock News ]

Thanks Thorn!

Evolution Robotics’ Mint sweeper robot made its debut at CES 2010, where we got a demo of it exhibiting its cleaning behaviors on video. Mint offers flexibility by doing away with the vacuum entirely, and using either wet or dry cleaning pads, Swiffer style. It’s certainly simpler, but does it work as well as the competition? Our review, after the jump. (Read more…)

ETH Zürich’s dancing quadrotors are back (with a friend), dancing to a new arrangement entitled ‘Rise Up.’ You know, it would be pretty cool if they could somehow allow people to submit music and choreography for the robots to act out… I have no idea how that would work, I’m just saying, it would be cool.

Pretty soon, that won’t even be necessary, though… The robots will do all their own choreography, creating a dance on the fly for whatever music you decide to throw at them. And then, the world! Bwa ha ha!

[ Music in Motion ]

EMILY, the lifeguard robot we covered in June, has been getting a workout on the Oregon Coast. Part of this workout took place just a life preserver’s throw from a beach house my parents were staying at, and while they didn’t get any exclusive pictures or video or anything (I need to train them better, obviously), they did send me this footage from the local news:

If you can’t get the video to play (I had to try a few times), the upshot is that EMILY seems to get the rescuing job done without endangering any swimmers. The upshot is also that EMILY has a powerful motor and she doesn’t weigh much, and consequently gets more than a little bit of airtime when she goes over waves. Wheee!

EMILY is cheap at only $4000, and the Depoe Bay fire department hopes to have several of them deployed along the coast within the next few years.

[ Hydronalix ] VIA [ KGW ]

Thanks Mom & Dad!

Have you ever felt uncomfortable asking people for money? So has Chris Eckert, so he built a robot to help him out, named Gimme:

Gimme is a two axis numerically controlled sculpture that pans a room looking for people. Once found, the machine tracks a person, cajoles them into making a donation, and resumes scanning the room searching for potential donors.

The sculpture is controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini. Stepper motors are driven by two Pololu A4983 Stepper Motor Driver Carriers. The microcontroller, stepper drivers, and sensors are all mounted on a custom circuit board made with Eagle CAD.

While I absolutely love the construction of this robot, I’m not quite sure what to make of the bare eyeball… Part of me says “cute!” Part of me says “get it away from me!” But for the purposes of this robot, that’s probably perfect: first it draws you in, and then when it’s too late, you have to pay it to get it to leave you alone. Genius.

[ Gimme ] VIA [ Make ]

You remember that 51 robots t-shirt? The same guys who came up with that have a new one featuring 21 space exploring robots, including one of my favorite space robots of all time, Mars Global Surveyor, which provided a huge number of spectacular pictures of the surface of Mars and helped me write my thesis. Yes, that link goes to a PDF of my thesis. It’s 367 pages. Read it, I dare you.

The shirt is on pre-order for $22, with $5 of that going to The Planetary Society (a good cause) to help further the exploration of space.

[ Chop Shop ]

Damn, that is one big Mars rover… Fully loaded, it’ll weigh nearly 2000 pounds. On Earth, anyway. To keep itself running, Curiosity won’t depend on solar panels, which is a good thing, since they tend to get covered in dust, and you can’t always count on a Martian tornado to clean them off, even if it does happen occasionally. Instead, Curiosity uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which turns decaying non-weapons-grade plutonium into electricity. Lots of electricity. Over a long time. The RTG is designed to output 125 watts, which will gradually decline to only 100 watts… After 14 years. The rover itself probably won’t last that long, but after all, that’s what everybody said about Opportunity, who is now on mission day 2369 out of 90.

[ MSL ]

Remember how Chief Cook tried to cheat at pong at ICRA in 2008 by going “hey, look over there, a dancing robot!” Well, now we know what he was pointing at.

If you want more (you want more, right?) head over to Eric Sauser’s website to watch a video of Chief Cook dancing all around Switzerland (complete with table dances) to some sweet, sweet Buffalo Springfield.

[ LASA @ EPFL ]
[ BeatBots ]

Well, this is pretty awesome:

You’re actually watching the extent of iCub‘s learning process: it took the robot all of 8 trials to figure out how to hit the center of the bullseye. iCub is using a learning algorithm called ARCHER (Augmented Reward Chained Regression), which is optimized for tasks that have an easily definable goal and measurable progression towards that goal. Basically, hitting the center of the target equates to a maximum reward, and the algorithm builds off of past experience to estimate how to alter iCub’s hand positions to improve the aim of the arrow. In this case, the distance between iCub and the target is only 3.5 meters, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be scaled up to larger distances. Or bigger arrows. Or rocket launchers.

This robot experiment was conducted by Dr. Petar Kormushev, Dr. Sylvain Calinon, and Dr. Ryo Saegusa at the Italian Institute of Technology (the same guys who brought you robot pancake flipping). You can read a bit more about it at the link below.

[ Robot Archer iCub ]

Thanks Dr. Kormushev!

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This, I’m told, is a robot swan. A Swedish robot swan, which may or may not explain why it looks like it does… Only having been to Sweden once, I’m not qualified to have much of an opinion on their fauna. This particular Swedish robot swan has been taught to dance, of all things, as part of a collaborative project between the computer science and theater departments at Mälardalen University.

The actual choreography was done by Åsa Unander-Scharin, a professional dancer, who programmed movements into the swan’s wings, neck, beak and feet. Apparently, the performances move people to tears, and spectators have described the experience as “touching”, “fascinating” and “beautiful.”

I won’t go all crazy about this because you’ve heard it before, but it’s a fine example of how expressing emotion is (or at least, can be) entirely unrelated to things like human facial features. If you want to get humans to develop an emotional connection with a robot, forget the literal approach to humanness… All it takes is some simple movements and careful attention to programming to make even the most basic of robots appear to display emotions themselves, and elicit an emotional response from us.

[ Mälardalen University ] VIA [ Physorg ]

BTW, the first Google Image Search result for “robot swan” takes you to a webpage for “robot swan king.”

Just let that sink in, you’ll get it in a sec.