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Readybot Announces Cloud Robotics "Gamer Bots" |
March 2009
Enables Human Operators to Control Teams of Robots for Real-World Tasks Such as Manufacturing Revitalization
Readybot today announced their Collaborative Cloud Robotics (CCR) technology, a software platform that allows human operators to use a video-game like interface to control human-size robots that do real-world tasks. These “gamer bots” can be used for elder care, janitorial, and inventory control, and manufacturing revitalization.
| | | The technology includes both software and hardware. The software is an application platform and communications protocol that enables human operators to provide the intelligence, decision making, and planning that helps mobile service robots pick up and manipulate objects, open doors, carry parts, inspect machines, and perform other real-world tasks.
This software is designed initially to run on the Readybot “Trainer” robot, a simple hardware platform that gives average business and consumer users a way to experiment with mobile service robotics.
What is Collaborative Control?
For the past several years, researchers have been developing the technology of mobile robots that have real, load-carrying arms…worker bots. But many researchers feel that the development of effective software tools to control those robot in real-world environments, like a kitchen or a factory, is decades away. Many national economies, especially in Asia and Europe, face worker shortages far sooner.
Collaborative control, also called adjustable autonomy, is a way to begin fielding robots earlier. This technique, researched at NASA and many other national and university robotics programs, mixes human control and robotic autonomy, aiming for the best of both worlds: the intelligence and flexibility of human decision-making, amplified into a fleet of robots. Potentially such systems could enable a high ratio of robots controlled per human operator, however the ratio will vary depending on type of job, robot sophistication, operator skill, and other unpredictable factors.
Daily Operation
The Readybot architecture assumes a group of robots, which may be of many shapes and sizes in many different locations, are connected via high-speed internet to call centers staffed by human supervisors. Supervisor control many robots simultaneously, since the robot follows pre-scripted routines to handle most activities. The net result is an efficient, cost-effective way for robots to do real work. For the human supervisors, controlling the robots “is a lot like playing online video games” says one designer “but instead of managing a set of fictional characters, you are managing a set of real-life robots doing actual work. This is going to create a lot of new jobs for video-gamers.”
For more information:
Tom Benson
Director, Readybot Project
www.readybot.com
Email:
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Phone: +1 (925) 264-1187
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