Winter/Spring 2007

COVER STORY From Science Fiction to Reality The World with Robots Robot Ethics Bots in the Belfry Robotics Research – In Brief

ROBOTS ARE ALREADY at work in the military, homeland security and space exploration arenas. But a new generation of personal robots is expected to enhance workplace production and safety, and make home management easier.

photo by Gary Meek Professor Wayne Book and his robotics research team have developed a haptic backhoe system that gives the operator the sense of touching a wall when approaching a utility line. (300-dpi JPEG version – 849k)

On the urban battlefield, the military loses soldiers to snipers and mines, explains Henrik Christensen, a professor in the Georgia Tech College of Computing. “But if soldiers could send in a robot first, it could give them a reasonable sense of the layout of an environment,” he says. “Soldiers could see down blind alleys or see something that appears to be a mine before they ever enter a scene.”

In rescue operations, robots are already used, but they are frail, says robotics expert Wayne Book, a Georgia Tech professor of mechanical engineering. Funded by the National Science Foundation, he and colleagues at four other universities are designing the Compact Rescue Crawler, which will extend to robots the significant capabilities of fluid power – technology for the generation, control and transmission of pressurized fluids.

Book and his colleagues are also giving the Crawler six legs – creating a bug-like appearance – to increase its maneuverability. Book’s research lab is contributing its expertise on haptics – the “feel” associated with operating a mechanical device – to build an interface that will aid the crawler’s operators.

In space exploration, robots have made great strides. Roboticist Ayanna Howard, a Georgia Tech associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, developed intelligent terrain-assessment algorithms for NASA’s autonomous rovers that will navigate Mars in the future. Now, in her Human-Autonomous Systems Lab, Howard and her research team focus on increasing the perception and reasoning capabilities of science-driven robots for exploring both planetary surfaces and remote geological locations on Earth.

Robots in the Workplace
Robots also have been used in manufacturing and food processing. But industries have traditionally put up “fences” around robots to prevent injuries to workers and robot malfunctions caused by human error or interference. Now, robots and humans are interacting more, Christensen says.

courtesy Wayne Book The Compact Rescue Crawler robot will have six legs – creating a bug-like appearance – to increase its maneuverability.

Book’s work in haptics is helping make this possible. For example, he and his research team have developed a haptic backhoe system that gives the operator the sense of touching a wall when he approaches a utility line.

In another effort, Book designed robots that yield when pushed upon to prevent injury to humans and damage to the machine. He and some colleagues founded CAMotion Inc., which produces robust, lightweight robots that are marketed primarily for material handling and food processing.

“In a setting like this where humans are working in the vicinity of robots, if a massive robot collides with one of these people, the robot is not even aware it’s pushing on somebody,” Book says. “But with a lighter-weight robot, the potential for damage is reduced a lot.”

In the food processing industry, new intelligent robotic systems under development at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) will be able to operate in unstructured environments and respond to unforeseen circumstances, says senior research engineer Gary McMurray. In a poultry plant, for example, robotic systems on a cutting line would be able to discriminate among a range of bird sizes. “We’ll only be able to do tasks like this with sensor guidance from a variety of sensing technologies – tactile, force, vision, even radar or ultrasonic,” he explains.

McMurray and his colleagues are field-testing early versions of such robots while they work with more sophisticated prototypes in their lab. The latter are five to 10 years from implementation, he predicts.

From Work to Home
Following – if not, coinciding – with the assimilation of personal robots into the workplace will be their use in the home. Christensen predicts that the first robotic assistants in the home will help senior adults and people with disabilities.

“A ‘smart’ robotic wheelchair might help someone get out of bed and go to the restroom,” Christensen says. “If someone has to have assistance to go to the restroom, it’s a deep violation of their personal sphere, and if help is delayed in coming, it may be too late. So a robot could make a tremendous difference in someone’s everyday life.”

Researchers are also examining the concept of robotic sentries that monitor senior adults.

“If you have someone who wants to be in their home rather than the nursing home, one of the dangers is that they may fall or need some assistance when no one is there,” Howard says. “So you may have a robot that just follows them around and checks on them every so often. And if something does happen, it actually will contact someone.”

Once personal robots prove useful in these situations, they will become more commonplace in everyone’s homes, Christensen says. Already available are robotic vacuum cleaners, such as the Roomba, and they are providing an interesting case study in human-robot interaction for Christensen and collaborator Beki Grinter, an associate professor in the College of Computing.

“The first time I turned my Roomba on, I found myself watching it clean the floor,” Grinter says, “and I was a little surprised that I was watching it like it was some kind of spectator sport.”

Grinter and her students found that her initial reaction is quite similar to that of other Roomba users. They also found that people are naming and buying cute costumes for their Roombas, as if they were pets. Some users even expressed guilt about their robotic vacuums getting trapped inside a room.

“As a scholar, I’m fascinated by why people have such a personal response to their Roombas,” Grinter explains. “Robots have occupied a science fiction place in our imaginations for so long. What are the implications of that response when everybody is able to have one of these robots in their home?

“The more practical part of me is interested in understanding these engagements and how we can use this information to design better robots,” Grinter says.

Robots in the Classroom
Making better robots also will require a new generation of computer scientists and engineers. To spur interest in computer science, Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College are piloting a Microsoft-funded program using personal robots to teach introductory concepts (see sidebar titled “Bots in the Belfry”).

“Robots spark interest in students because they can relate to it more easily and directly,” says Tucker Balch, an associate professor of computing who directs Georgia Tech’s new Institute for Personal Robots in Education. “Students can see how a program they’ve written is interacting with the world as the robot senses a light and moves a motor. They get that.

“Some other ways of teaching computer science are disembodied,” he adds. “Students type in their name and print out a sentence with their name in it. Students don’t get why that matters…. But robots help them see the possibilities in computer science. They can make things happen.”

Once the college-level course is firmly established, Balch expects to adapt the personal robot-based introductory computer science curriculum for use in middle and high schools.

Writer Rick Robinson also contributed to this article.