They won't make beds, but will they do windows?
"Driving a car autonomously across the continent would be easy. Opening a door turns out to be really hard, and making the bed is absolutely impossible."
The same robot technology that guides massive machines around Australian mine sites could be delivering cups of tea in aged-care homes within a decade, a robotics expert says.
Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte says the era of the robotic "healthcare assistant" is closer than many people thought, and innovation in mining and agriculture sectors was driving the technology.
Pointing to massive autonomous drill rigs and driverless haul trucks now being used on mine sites in Australia's Pilbara, Prof Durrant-Whyte says its a matter of time and scale. "We've got (robotic) systems that we can put on a $2 million haul truck or a $100,000 tractor," says Prof Durrant-Whyte, who is research director at Sydney University's Australian Centre for Field Robotics.
"Soon we'll put them on a $10,000 thing like a car, then it will be put on a $1,000 thing in your home."
Hospitals and other care-related environments were where Australians would see "a lot more robotics more immediately", he says.
Existing and emerging technologies could produce robots able to monitor patients, help carers with labour-intensive tasks like lifting, and even provide entertainment for the ill and infirm.
"You'd like it to be able to recognise expressions, to have enough knowledge to say: `Okay, I think that person is asking for a drink'," Prof Durrant-Whyte says.
"Then it must be able to navigate down the hall to someone without, obviously, running over the patient ... In effect the robot will have some subjective understanding of what the people it is working with want and need. And I think that's definitely coming - I wouldn't say there are prototypes, but certainly there are deployable examples - and the sort of healthcare assistant I'm talking about is within a decade."
While the prospect of a household care assistant may also sound enticing for many, Prof Durrant-Whyte cautions that some seemingly mundane tasks are still far outside of a robot's reach. Manoeuvring though a series of tunnels - be it a mine or hospital corridors - was one thing, but making a bed was another, he says.
And if you're really interested in how robots can help seniors--and disabled people as well--keep an eye on Japan.
"TSUKUBA, Japan -- A robotic suit that reads brain signals and helps people with mobility problems will be available to rent in Japan for $2,200 a month -- an invention that may have far-reaching benefits for the disabled and elderly.
HAL -- short for "hybrid assistive limb" -- is a computerized suit with sensors that read brain signals directing limb movement through the skin. The 22-pound battery-operated computer system is belted to the waist. It captures the brain signals and relays them to mechanical leg braces strapped to the thighs and knees, which then provide robotic assistance to people as they walk.
Cyberdyne, a new company in Tsukuba outside Tokyo, will mass-produce HAL. Two people demonstrated the suits at the company's headquarters on Tuesday. A demonstration video also showed a partially paralyzed person getting up from a chair and walking slowly wearing the HAL suit.
Comments