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Robots May Come to Aging Boomers' Rescue
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> The uBOT-5's design was inspired by the human body. Its myriad sensors mimic human eyes and ears, constantly scanning its environment. It is even programmed to detect and respond to worrisome aberrations, including a fallen, unresponsive human. The robot's arms are each capable of handling 2.2-pound loads, and they can extend to reach high or pick things up off the floor (a dropped pill bottle, a package in a foyer, for example). The robot can lie prone to scoot itself under a bed (and then right itself), and it may even someday help with household cleaning and grocery shopping, Grupen said.
And the cost? Right now, the prototypes at UMass cost $65,000 apiece, but Grupen envisions a day when commercial versions would be sold for $5,000 plus a monthly Internet hook-up fee, much like today's computers.
And the uBOT-5 isn't the only such device in the pipeline. Over at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researcher Nicolas Roy, at the institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has developed an "autonomous wheelchair" that only requires a command to whiz users from one spot to another in a hospital or nursing home.
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When first delivered to a facility, the wheelchair -- rigged out with high-tech scanning software -- has no knowledge of the particular layout. But staff will uncrate it, turn it on, and give it a verbal guided tour, walking it past different rooms and nursing stations.
"You talk to it like you'd talk to a new person, a new nurse. And as a side effect of the thing being walked through the facility once or twice, the wheelchair has now been demonstrated a route between all the points," explained co-developer Seth Teller, who helps lead the lab's Robotics, Vision and Sensor Networks Group.
After that, a wheelchair-bound stroke patient or quadriplegic need only say, "Take me to Room 451" for the chair to understand and then do just that. The device will be launched as a prototype ready for testing in a Boston-area nursing home within two years, Teller said.
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Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 11/18/2008
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SOURCES: Rod Grupen, Ph.D., professor, computer science, and director, Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Seth Teller, Ph.D., professor, co-head, Robotics, Vision and Sensor Networks Group, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Charlie Kemp, Ph.D., assistant professor, department of biomedical engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
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