Robots gaining popularity in Catalan homes A helping hand

Do­mes­tic ro­bot­ics in Cat­alo­nia are no longer some­thing of the fu­ture; they are al­ready here. The au­to­mated Roomba vac­uum cleaner has won sup­port­ers for its ef­fec­tive­ness. They take up lit­tle space and with the sim­ple press of a but­ton clean the floor thor­oughly, avoid­ing all ob­sta­cles and, if needed, mak­ing sev­eral passes over tougher areas. Then, all on their own, they re­turn to their base to charge as many times as needed and can be pro­grammed to do their job when we are out. The US com­pany iRo­bot, a pi­o­neer in the in­dus­try and that has sub­se­quently seen their prod­uct copied by other firms, proudly says that Spain leads the world in wel­com­ing Roomba into its homes.

“One of the major chal­lenges of ro­bot­ics, specif­i­cally in the field of home con­sump­tion, is to in­crease the cred­i­bil­ity and ef­fec­tive­ness of ro­bots, and es­pe­cially so in the area of ro­bots ded­i­cated to clean­ing tasks. Grad­u­ally, con­sumers are re­al­is­ing that they can rely on do­mes­tic ro­bots to ful­fill that promise,” said Colin Angle, CEO and founder of iRo­bot. The most ad­vanced model the com­pany has in­cor­po­rates a smart nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem and reg­u­lates the clean­ing power de­pend­ing on the level of the dirt it de­tects. Con­nected by Wi-Fi, it can be ac­ti­vated from any­where by mo­bile phone, or sched­uled to clean up to seven times a week. The next step, link­ing to the In­ter­net of Things, is for it to de­tect when we are not around so it can just get on with its job.

They are white, im­mac­u­late and shiny. They are al­ways wear­ing a smile and are will­ing to help us to with­out a word of com­plaint. The first time you are faced with one, in­evitably you feel as ner­vous as a child, or at least a lit­tle un­cer­tain. “Is this the fu­ture? Will it work? Or is it a joke and some­one is se­cretly film­ing me?“ But once every­thing is run­ning smoothly it be­comes a com­fort­able re­la­tion­ship. Too com­fort­able, in some cases. Robot an­droids are in­creas­ingly be­com­ing per­fect: we found a place for them in in­dus­try and now, sud­denly, they seem to be knock­ing on the doors of our very homes.

One of the most in­ter­est­ing as­pects of an­droids has al­ways been the abil­ity to em­u­late human be­hav­iour. In our en­vi­ron­ment, so far we have mainly seen them in ac­tion at tech­nol­ogy fairs and lit­tle else. In Japan, how­ever, there are shops and even banks which have begun to use them in some deal­ings with the pub­lic. Ob­vi­ously, their main use is in in­dus­try, where they are able to per­form re­peated me­chan­i­cal tasks far more ac­cu­rately than hu­mans, and with­out the phys­i­cal ex­haus­tion and psy­cho­log­i­cal stress that en­tails. Their de­vel­op­ment in this field has been ex­tremely rapid and Barcelona re­cently wel­comed, Yumi, an an­droid that can work side by side with hu­mans, with­out being teth­ered for se­cu­rity rea­sons. Yumi's pro­gram­ming is sim­ple: just pick it up and move it so it learns that this is the ac­tion it needs to em­u­late re­peat­edly.

A few weeks ago, the IREX trade fair took place in Tokyo, an in­ter­na­tional ro­bot­ics ex­hi­bi­tion show­ing the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in the in­dus­try. Al­though the ma­jor­ity of the ex­hibitors in­volved in­dus­trial ma­chin­ery (ap­prox­i­mately 70%), what at­tracted more at­ten­tion for their nov­elty were small, in­ter­ac­tive robot an­droids de­signed for do­mes­tic use. Per­haps what drew most at­ten­tion was the in­no­v­a­tive RoBo­Hon, from con­sumer elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­turer, Sharp. It is a robot that is 19.5 cen­time­tres tall and weigh­ing 390 grammes, and it works just like a smart­phone. Among its unique abil­i­ties is tak­ing pic­tures that are then pro­jected on to flat sur­faces, such as a wall or a table, but what might be more use­ful is its abil­ity to read and write emails at the re­quest of the user through voice com­mands. Of course, as any good robot should, RoBo­Hon is able to re­mem­ber the faces of the peo­ple who reg­is­ter with the front cam­era and then ad­dress them by name. Al­though orig­i­nally de­signed for the Japan­ese mar­ket to be com­mer­cialised in the first half of 2016, given the in­ter­est that has been sparked world­wide, Sharp is now con­sid­er­ing ex­port­ing it to other coun­tries.

The most ad­vanced and iconic an­droid of all, how­ever, is still Pep­per. In fact, so much so that this cre­ation of the Japan­ese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giant, Soft­bank, was even given the job of vis­i­tor re­cep­tion at other com­pa­nies' ro­bot­ics dis­plays. Ac­cord­ing to its cre­ators, Pep­per is the first hu­manoid de­signed to live with hu­mans: “It might seem dis­ap­point­ing, as it doesn't clean, cook or have any super-pow­ers, but Pep­per is a so­cial robot able to con­verse with hu­mans, recog­nise emo­tions and react, as well as move and live in­de­pen­dently. Charm­ing and friendly, it is much more than a robot: it is a part­ner ready to com­mu­ni­cate with you with the most in­tu­itive in­ter­face that we know of, using voice, touch and emo­tion,” the mak­ers ex­plain.

But apart from the en­ter­tain­ment mar­ket, there are other areas where the de­vel­op­ment of an­droids can play a very im­por­tant role, such as in home care and as­sis­tance in health cen­tres. Also, the Japan­ese firm, Pana­sonic, which in re­cent years has boosted the busi­ness of pro­vi­sion for in­tel­li­gent homes, re­cently pre­sented Hospi, a cylin­dri­cal robot with a mon­i­tor in­stead of a face that gen­er­ally draws a big smile. The func­tion of this au­toma­ton is to dis­trib­ute med­i­cines and it is al­ready being used in hos­pi­tals in Japan and Sin­ga­pore.