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History of Robotics: Timeline
History of Robotics: Timeline This history of robotics is intertwined with the histories of technology, science and the basic principle of progress. Technology used in computing, electricity, even pneumatics and hydraulics can all be considered a part of the history of robotics. The timeline presented is therefore far from complete. Robotics currently represents one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments and is the single greatest attempt of mankind to produce an artificial, sentient being. It is only in recent years that manufacturers are making robotics increasingly available and attainable to the general public. The focus of this timeline is to provide the reader with a general overview of robotics (with a focus more on mobile robots) and to give an appreciation for the inventors and innovators in this field who have helped robotics to become what it is today. RobotShop Distribution Inc., 2008 www.robotshop.ca www.robotshop.us Greek Times Some historians affirm that Talos, a giant creature written about in ancient greek literature, was a creature (either a man or a bull) made of bronze, given by Zeus to Europa. [6] According to one version of the myths he was created in Sardinia by Hephaestus on Zeus' command, who gave him to the Cretan king Minos. In another version Talos came to Crete with Zeus to watch over his love Europa, and Minos received him as a gift from her. There are suppositions that his name Talos in the old Cretan language meant the "Sun" and that Zeus was known in Crete by the similar name of Zeus Tallaios. -
Robotics Irobot Corp. (IRBT)
Robotics This report is published for educational purposes only by students competing in the Boston Security Analysts Society (BSAS) Boston Investment iRobot Corp. (IRBT) Research Challenge. 12/13/2010 Ticker: IRBT Recommendation: Sell Price: $22.84 Price Target: $15.20-16.60 Market Profile Figure 1.1: iRobot historical stock price Shares O/S 25 mm 25 Current price $22.84 52 wk price range $14.45-$23.00 20 Beta 1.86 iRobot 3 mo ADTV 0.14 mm 15 Short interest 2.1 mm Market cap $581mm 10 Debt 0 S & P 500 (benchmarked Jan-09) P/10E 25.2x 5 EV/10 EBITDA 13.5x Instl holdings 57.8% 0 Jan-09 Apr-09 Jul-09 Oct-09 Jan-10 Apr-10 Jul-10 Oct-10 Insider holdings 12.5% Valuation Ranges iRobot is a SELL: The company’s high valuation reflects overly optimistic expectations for home and military robot sales. While we are bullish on robotics, iRobot’s 52 wk range growth story has run out of steam. • Consensus is overestimating future home robot sales: Rapid yoy growth in 2010 home robot Street targets sales is the result of one-time penetration of international markets, which has concealed declining domestic sales. Entry into new markets drove growth in home robot sales in Q4 2009 and Q1 2010, 20-25x P/2011E but international sales have fallen 4% since Q1 this year, and we believe the street is overestimating international growth in 2011 (30% vs. our estimate of 18%). Domestic sales were down 29% in 8-12x Terminal 2009 and are up only 2.5% ytd. -
Service Robots in the Domestic Environment
Service Robots in the Domestic Environment: A Study of the Roomba Vacuum in the Home Jodi Forlizzi Carl DiSalvo Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University HCII & School of Design School of Design 5000 Forbes Ave. 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Pittsburgh, PA 15213 [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT to begin to develop a grounded understanding of human-robot Domestic service robots have long been a staple of science fiction interaction (HRI) in the home and inform the future development and commercial visions of the future. Until recently, we have only of domestic robotic products. been able to speculate about what the experience of using such a In this paper, we report on an ethnographic design-focused device might be. Current domestic service robots, introduced as research project on the use of the Roomba Discovery Vacuum consumer products, allow us to make this vision a reality. (www.irobot.com) (Figure 1). The Roomba is a “robotic floor This paper presents ethnographic research on the actual use of vac” capable of moving about the home and sweeping up dirt as it these products, to provide a grounded understanding of how goes along. The Roomba is a logical merging of vacuum design can influence human-robot interaction in the home. We technology and intelligent technology. More than 15 years ago, used an ecological approach to broadly explore the use of this large companies in Asia, Europe, and North America began to technology in this context, and to determine how an autonomous, develop mobile robotic vacuum cleaners for industrial and mobile robot might “fit” into such a space. -
A National Imperative
TorchbearerTorchbearer NationalNational SecuritySecurity ReportReport A Transformed and Modernized U.S. Army: A National Imperative An AUSA Torchbearer Issue April 2007 April 2007 9 April 2007 A speaker at an AUSA-sponsored Land Warfare forum in January 1992 spoke on the U.S. Army in the post-industrial world and outlined some Army requirements: a family of combat vehicles capable of fi ghting on the ground together at full tempo; Army air vehicles that complement the ground vehicles in a synergistic way, multiplying the capability of ground forces; systems that enable commanders to command and control the force, enhancing a common perception of the battlefi eld; and the ability to sustain the force—not only with mass quantities but with precision. Th e continued operational requirements Soldiers have encountered in the subsequent 15 years have only served to validate those requirements, and it is gratifying to see the Army make steady progress toward satisfying them. Th e strength of the Army results from whole, cohesive units and Soldiers that are fully manned, equipped, trained and ready to conduct full-spectrum operations today—and modernized to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Th e Army has adopted a new comprehensive, innovative modernization strategy. Th at strategy provides the best equipment currently available to Soldiers fi ghting the Global War on Terror while simultaneously developing new capabilities essential for future operations. In this latest installment of AUSA’s signature Torchbearer series, we provide an in-depth analysis of the Army’s modernization plan—centered on Future Combat Systems technologies and a holistic, system-of-systems approach—to prepare the Army for success in the complex environment of the 21st century. -
Irobot® Warrior™ X700 a MULTI-MISSION, MODULAR ROBOT with SUPERIOR POWER
iRobot® Warrior™ X700 A MULTI-MISSION, MODULAR ROBOT WITH SUPERIOR POWER The iRobot Warrior is a powerful critical in a variety of missions, FLEX THE ROBOT’S MUSCLES and rugged robot that can carry including explosive ordnance The Warrior is highly configurable • CBRN greater than 150 lb payloads, travel disposal (EOD), reconnaissance, and to meet the demands of real-world • Battlefield Casualty Extraction through rough terrain and climb firefighting.Funded by the Technical situations such as: • Physical Security stairs with heavy loads. The robot’s Support Working Group (TSWG), • Explosive Ordnance Disposal design offers an advanced digital Warrior is currently under develop- • Firefighting • VBIED architecture and an extremely sturdy ment and is expected to become • Surveillance • SWAT platform to support the weight of available for sale in early 2008. • Target Acquisition • Reconnaissance heavy payloads, such as firearms • Weaponized Missions and hoses. The Warrior robot will be • HazMat iRobot Warrior Chassis Capabilities and Specifications Length Software Battery Endurance Deployment 40 inches First robot designed specifically – 9-Pack Sincgars Radio Lithium Rapidly deployable from non- Width for AWARE 2.0 Ion Batteries specialized vehicle 29 - 32.5 inches Navigation – 1.45 - 16 hours depending Mobility on mission profile. (depending on configuration) Leverages odometry waypoint Dual track system for enhanced 1.0 minute change-out for bat- Height navigation via built-in GPS model mobility teries 18 inches (stowed) Supports assisted tele-operated Maintenance behavior: Hardened Electronics Weight Fast pit-stop like plug and play – Obstacle avoidance sensors MIL-STD-461 – Approximately 250 lbs. concept using 3-tiered – Intelligent CG shifting MIL-STD-464 maintenance concept: – Total weight of platform and flipper control and mission payloads: Communications – Field Maintenance 400 lbs. -
Intelligent Robotic Behaviors for Landmine Detection and Marking
Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction Volume 11 Issue 2 The Journal of Mine Action Article 42 April 2008 Intelligent Robotic Behaviors for Landmine Detection and Marking David Bremmer Idaho National Laboratory David Few Idaho National Laboratory Curtis Nielsen Idaho National Laboratory Miles Walton Idaho National Laboratory Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal Part of the Defense and Security Studies Commons, Emergency and Disaster Management Commons, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Commons Recommended Citation Bremmer, David; Few, David; Nielsen, Curtis; and Walton, Miles (2008) "Intelligent Robotic Behaviors for Landmine Detection and Marking," Journal of Mine Action : Vol. 11 : Iss. 2 , Article 42. Available at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol11/iss2/42 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction by an authorized editor of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Bremmer et al.: Intelligent Robotic Behaviors for Landmine Detection and Marking should absorb most of the blast energy.6 Also, During a recent visit to Cornell University, all the expensive sensors and computers are Nobel Peace Prize Co-laureate Rae McGrath had enclosed in a watertight, rugged box, which is the chance to meet with Cornell MineSweeper. being refined to meet military specifications “I really want to congratulate Cornell for allow- Intelligent Robotic Behaviors for Landmine Detection and Marking for explosion proofing. -
Helen Greiner 11 Gage Road Wayland MA 01778 617-669-6665
Helen Greiner Prepared Testimony 11 Gage Road Senate Commerce Committee Wayland MA 01778 The Case for Space: Examining the Value 617-669-6665 October 23, 2009, 2:30PM [email protected] My name is Helen Greiner. I am currently the CEO of a startup company called The Droid Works. I received my Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Masters Degree in Electrical and Computer Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between 1990 to 2008, I cofounded and served as President and later Chairman of iRobot Corporation, a company that went from an apartment based startup to a publicly traded company and is a worldwide leaders in robot product sales and cutting edge robotics research. I currently serve as a trustee for MIT, the Boston Museum of Science, the National Defense Industrial Association, and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. I also serve as the elected President of the Robotics Technology Consortium, an industrial and academic consortium of 179 companies including top tier defense contractors, top universities and non profits, and over 120 small businesses – we have members from over 2/3 of the states. In other words, I am an engineer, entrepreneur, and active in representing the robotics industry. My own career and iRobot’s history is inextricably intertwined with NASA. I was an intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I worked on manipulators for satellites. This internship provided the opportunity to learn from NASA engineers and the support that I needed to pursue an advanced degree. Upon graduating, I founded iRobot in 1990 with Rod Brooks and Colin Angle, and NASA helped by purchasing robots from us – specifically an 18 degree of freedom walking robot and two portable tracked robots our very first sales. -
Arduino® Tutorial
Arduino® Tutorial Power Serial I/O Powering an Arduino while leaving the USB port open for • To keep the Create 2 alive while you are talking to it, we programming is tricky. There are a few options; which is best recommend tying the Create BRC pin either to a spare depends on your circumstance. output on the Arduino which is kept low most of the time, or else directly to ground. 1. The recommended Vin input range on Arduino is 7 to 20V, • To hook up the TX and RX lines, see the Create®2to5VLogic due to its input regulator. When the robot is not charging, tutorial, taking note of the necessary PNP transistor if you you can plug this directly into Create’s main battery are using the hardware serial port. ® voltage, but while the Create 2 is charging, this bus • Depending on your Arduino, there are a few choices as to can get as high as 21V. If you choose this option, be sure which RX and TX lines you choose to use. Most Arduinos to unplug your circuit from the Create 2 when charging. have only one hardware serial port. This is shared We don’t recommend this option, as it could be easy to with the bootloader/programming port. It is possible to forget to unplug your circuit before you charge your robot. use this port to control the Create 2, but it may conflict with 2. One hack around this problem would be to “drop” a volt the robot when you are programming, and will conflict with from the robots Vbatt before feeding it into the Arduino. -
SAFER: Search and Find Emergency Rover Zachary Agustin Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses Engineering Senior Theses 6-8-2016 SAFER: Search and Find Emergency Rover Zachary Agustin Santa Clara University Charles Lewis Santa Clara University Elizabeth McMahon Santa Clara University Cameron Pierce Santa Clara University Pranav Pradhan Santa Clara University See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/mech_senior Part of the Mechanical Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Agustin, Zachary; Lewis, Charles; McMahon, Elizabeth; Pierce, Cameron; Pradhan, Pranav; and Tamshen, Michael, "SAFER: Search and Find Emergency Rover" (2016). Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses. 63. https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/mech_senior/63 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Engineering Senior Theses at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Author Zachary Agustin, Charles Lewis, Elizabeth McMahon, Cameron Pierce, Pranav Pradhan, and Michael Tamshen This thesis is available at Scholar Commons: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/mech_senior/63 SAFER: SEARCH AND FIND EMERGENCY ROVER By Zachary Agustin, Charles Lewis, Elizabeth McMahon, Cameron Pierce, Pranav Pradhan, and Michael Tamshen SENIOR DESIGN PROJECT REPORT Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering of SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering Santa Clara, California Spring 2016 ii SAFER: Search and Find Emergency Rover Zachary Agustin, Charles Lewis, Elizabeth McMahon, Cameron Pierce, Pranav Pradhan, and Michael Tamshen Department of Mechanical Engineering Santa Clara University 2016 Abstract When disaster strikes and causes a structure to collapse, it poses a unique challenge to search and rescue teams as they assess the situation and search for survivors. -
Repurposing a Roomba: Evaluating and Training Behavior in a Simple Agent
Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2007 Repurposing a Roomba: Evaluating and training behavior in a simple agent Donald Samuel Abbott-McCune Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Computer Sciences Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/1077 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2ii © Donald Samuel Abbott-McCune, 2007 All Rights Reserved Repurposing a Roomba: Evaluating and training behavior in a simple agent A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University By Donald Samuel Abbott-McCune Director: Dr. David Primeaux Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia May 2007 3iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. David Primeaux for his mentorship, advising, and for introducing me to new horizons of education. I would also express much thanks to the professors that guided me and taught me valuable lessons in Computer Science and to Deanna Pace for helping with scheduling and general counsel. Much appreciation goes to fellow graduate students whose bond and idea sharing helped create an ideal learning environment. To my wife Valerie and my daughter Rebecca, I cannot express the gratitude I have for your support while many hours were exhaustively used to research. -
Robot Ranger Sets Untethered 'Walking' Record A
Out of the gait: Robot ranger sets untethered 'walking' record a... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100722143905.htm News Articles Videos Images Books Health & Medicine Mind & Brain Plants & Animals Earth & Climate Space & Time Matter & Energy Science News Share Blog Cite Out of the Gait: Robot Ranger Sets Untethered 'Walking' Record at 14.3 Just In: Drug May Help Overwrite Bad Memories Miles Science Video News ScienceDaily (July 23, 2010) — The loneliness of enlarge the long-distance robot: A Cornell University robot named Ranger walked 14.3 miles in about 11 hours, setting an unofficial world record at Cornell's Barton Hall early on July 6. A human -- armed with nothing more than a standard remote control for toys -- steered the untethered robot. Computer Scientists Program Robots To Play Soccer, Communicate With Bees Ranger navigated 108.5 times See Also: around the indoor track in Cornell's Computational Neuroscientists And Engineers Barton Hall -- about 212 meters per Build Robot That Teaches Itself To Walk Up And Matter & Energy lap, and made about 70,000 steps Down Hills Robotics Research before it had a stop and recharge. The robot Ranger, which set an untethered walking Mimicking Insects to Avoid Sinking Using Surface Engineering record in Barton Hall. (Credit: Image courtesy of Tension Vehicles The 14.3-mile record beats the former world record set by Boston Cornell University) more science videos Computers & Math Dynamics' BigDog, which had Robotics claimed the record at 12.8 miles. Ads by Google Artificial Intelligence Internet A group of engineering students, led iRobot® Official Site — Learn More About the by Andy Ruina, Cornell professor of Newest Roomba & Scooba Floor Cleaning Robots Reference theoretical and applied mechanics, Now! Robotic surgery announced the robotic record at the www.iRobot.com Robot calibration Dynamic Walking 2010 meeting on Humanoid robot July 9, in Cambridge, Mass. -
LNCS 4717, Pp
“My Roomba Is Rambo”: Intimate Home Appliances Ja-Young Sung, Lan Guo, Rebecca E. Grinter, and Henrik I. Christensen GVU Center & School of Interactive Computing College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA, USA 30308 {jsung,languo,beki,hic}@ cc.gatech.edu Abstract. Robots have entered our domestic lives, but yet, little is known about their impact on the home. This paper takes steps towards addressing this omission, by reporting results from an empirical study of iRobot’s Roomba™, a vacuuming robot. Our findings suggest that, by developing intimacy to the robot, our participants were able to derive increased pleasure from cleaning, and expended effort to fit Roomba into their homes, and shared it with others. These findings lead us to propose four design implications that we argue could increase people’s enthusiasm for smart home technologies. Keywords: Empirical study, home, robot, intimacy. 1 Introduction As robots enter the domestic sphere in the form of pets, caretakers, and vacuum cleaners, a growing body of research argues the need to make robots fit into people’s lives [5,7,12,22,31]. Yet, far fewer studies have sought to empirically understand (with the exception of [11]) whether robots change domesticity as people adopt them. In this paper, we address this omission by reporting the results of our study of one type of robot (iRobot’s Roomba™ shown in Fig. 1) to learn whether, and if so, how, householders responded to their presence. What we learned suggests that people do form strong intimate attachments to these technologies. Studying domestic robots is timely, given globally rising adoption [38], and the increasing popularity of Roomba itself as evidenced by the media123.