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AnyLobby - A robot staffing service debuts

A year ago, Silicon Valley robotics company Anybots started selling their telepresence robot QB. Now they have started a service called "AnyLobby." 

AnyLobby is a staffing service, but instead of sending you a person, they will send you a robot - in this case QB. But it is not just a robot. It comes with a "robot personality" who will be driving the robot from elsewhere, in some cases hundreds of miles away. The robot personality will work as your receptionist or assistant, and a full time robot receptionist will be there for you 40 hours a week for $2,400 a month.

I got to meet Angela Ward, one of the robot personalities, at Anybots last week. She lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina, a suburban town outside of Charlotte, a few time zones away from where Anybots is. I talked to her through the screen/camera/microphone on QB.

"We can do a lot of things," Angela says. QB doesn't have arms, but thanks to digital technology, she doesn't have any trouble scanning the fax and printing documents. The only thing she can't do is provide her signature when a package arrives, but the companies she works for have set up protocols for that  - "Call Bob when there's a package. "

If it's a low traffic lobby, Angela can handle multiple locations at once. Before becoming a robot personality, she used to be a manager at a computer training company. Her background is "helpful but not necessary" in operating the robot. The technology is easy to use, she says. (You can test drive the QB here if you are interested, which is also something Anybots started recently.)

"We can bring different personalities and different expertise to the table through the same robot," says Trevor Blackwell, Founder of Anybots. Since the very beginning of Anybots he had wanted to create a service around his robots. Currently there are 3 companies that have signed up for AnyLobby and one is Elance (which is like the Ebay of services), according to Trevor.

Oftentimes robots are thought as something that can take away jobs, but Angela disagrees. "That is not the case here. It is creating jobs for small towns with high unemployment rates."

But isn't it taking away jobs from people that want to be receptionists in Silicon Valley? No, says Trevor. The main goal of AnyLobby is to provide "virtual employees" to companies that "otherwise would not have hired a receptionist," he says.

Angela has never met the Anybots team in person, but she "feels like she is a significant part of the team." Compared to showing up on a fixed screen, being a robot "makes a lot of difference in how you interact with each other."

(Trevor talking to Angela at Anybots)

Riverside Robot Expo 2011 on Nov. 19

The Riverside Robotics Society presents the Riverside Robot Expo 2011. This is an exposition of robots and robotics that will include live-size replicas of robots including Wall-E and R2D2 as well as presentations on robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotic sensors including the Microsoft Kinect.

This largest robot event in Southern California will be held Saturday, November 19, 2011, 12:00 PM at the Woodcrest Library (Address: 16625 Krameria Ave, Riverside, CA  Phone: (951) 789-7320).

Some of the many exhibits for 2011 include * Life-Size Wall-E * 3D Printer Exhibit (a "matter replicator") * Life-Size R2D2 * Theremin Musical Performance * Life-Size B9--The Lost in Space Robot (Sometimes called "Robby") * Terminator Robots: T100 and A T800 on a Motorcycle * Singing Robot Elvis * Singing Robot Betty9 * Robot Races (You control the robots) * Robot Soccer (You control the robots) * Lecture in Robotic AI * Ghostbot and lecture by bestselling author Albert Taylor - Ghost Hunter * Door Prizes * The Build-a-Bot Robot Building Workshop * Demonstration on using the Kinect for Robotics * And MUCH MORE! 

The Riverside Robotics Society hopes that through robotics they will inspire children to get into math, science, or engineering.

Photos are from the Expo last year, by courtesy of Thomas Messerschmidt.

Infusing PC Prowess to Produce Sellable Robot: A Chat with Tandy Trower

We are starting to see an influx of experienced people from the so-called 
"IT industry" into the "robotics industry." The boundary between these
two industries is starting to collapse, and GetRobo feels that this 
phenomenon will accelerate the commercialization of consumer robotic 
products. One such figure is Tandy Trower,  former General Manager at 
Microsoft, who after 28 years at the behemoth, has left to form a 
robotics startup called Hoaloha Robotics. He shares with us his vision 
and an overview of the robot he is trying to develop. 
(This interview was originally conducted for a robotics column on the 
Wall Street Journal Japan.) 

Q. According to your website, Hoaloha Robotics is developing 
software and services to support new “socially assistive” robot 
designs and that it will focus on "delivering pragmatic applications 
that extend and augment human capabilities." Please give some 
concrete examples on the kinds of tasks that you are aiming to 
achieve using a robot. 

A. First, let me say that delivering applications that provide value at an appropriate cost is definitely a core objective and one missing from being deliverable by most robots, outside of industrial, medical, search and rescue, surveillance, or military applications. That doesn't mean there aren't imaginative demonstrations that propose expectations like folding clothes, cooking foods, etc., but many of those demos are of expensive robots that most people would not be able to afford and they do not have any real user interface. It is even more obvious in the realm of "personal robots". In all my travels around the world, meeting some of the smartest people in robotics, I have found no one able to define a successful definition that combines the current technical capabilities, appropriate price, and user value beyond toys and gadgets.

But I digress, so back to your question. Hoaloha Robotics is targeting users that need assistance with daily activities as its initial starting point, so not the business user nor the general consumer. These latter markets will come, but it is much harder to create a value proposition at the present time for them. Meanwhile the worldwide population of people that require assistance with daily living activities is growing, fueled in large part by increasing life longevity and the aging of the baby boomer generation, while at the same time the human resources to help care for them is shrinking. So there is not only a business opportunity here, but a important social need that many already refer to as the Silver Tsunami.

With that context then, I can talk about applications areas that Hoaloha Robotics is focusing on as core to its solution. The first area is cognitive assistance. It is clear that as we age past our 50’s, our mental function - especially our memory -  begins to decline. So a simple example of an application in supporting cognitive assistance would be a medication reminder. Most seniors commonly take an increasing requiem of medications. Helping them keep track of what to take and when to take them would be a valuable application.

Another application area is supporting physical assistance. Because we are designing for an autonomous - or semi-autonomous if you assume the robot is being directed by the user - mobile platform, it can serve as a simple transport for common items from food to items the user frequently may need to move with them, including the increasing number of biometric monitoring devices. And because the robot has a camera, actually multiple cameras and a display screen, the robot could be used as to magnify printed information or possibly even read that information to the user using OCR style technology.

Another important application area is supporting social/communications assistance. Humans are social beings and it is important to our health, regardless our age, to have regular communication with people around us and often as people age into their later years, their social network shrinks. Most of us already find social communication through a variety of forms (e.g. email, chat, texting) and it is important a part of our lives and not simply through our phones, but through our PCs and tablets.

And that brings me to the final area of the core application set. Because the robot is being built on top of PC technologies we have today, we should expect to see similar applications and services that are already available for PCs, such as information services like news, weathers, sport, financial info, and entertainment, such as games, music, videos, photos, etc.

Now some may say, why do we need a robot to deliver this when we could already deliver many of these applications on existing platforms today. To that I would respond that we already live in a world where we have technologies that overlap. I have a PC on my desk, carry a smartphone, and also travel with an iPad. Each form factor has its benefits and preferred usage scenarios, and the fact that I can do email, browse the web, check news and stock information on each does not invalidate any one of them.

But I would also add that the robot that we are defining offers a new form of interaction not found on the other platforms, one that enables the technology to be more interactive and proactive because it is self-mobile and because it is designed to be socially interactive. It is not just a stationary or passive platform that the user must go to or carry around to interact. In this way the robot offers the greater potential for interaction, more like a pet than an appliance.

One final point on the applications space here: I have tried to illustrate some of the types of applications we are developing, but it is also important to know that what we are developing is not simply to host our applications, but a platform that will allow for the integration of existing and new applications. Today as we see technologies moving into the assistive care space more and more, they each have their own interface and so require the user to be the integrator. However, our goal is to provide a common platform for integration of complementary technologies, and also provide a channel for third parties to bring their own ideas and creativity to this important market, a formula that Apple has so successfully done with the iPhone and iPad.

Q. Your website also states, "at the heart of the Hoaloha design is its human-centric user interface." Can you please elaborate on what kind of interface you are trying to develop?

Dr. Dennis Hong talks about Humanoid Robots

RoMeLa is on a roll. This summer, the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech, led by Dr. Dennis Hong, took home five major awards from the international robot soccer competition RoboCup 2011. The small humanoid robot DARwIn-OP that they developed won first place in the Kid Size league, and this open source robot is quickly gaining worldwide popularity. Their bigger bipedal robot CHARLI-2 won the Best Humanoid Award (Louis Vuitton Humanoid Cup), making them the first U.S. team to win this title. Moreover, the group is now developing the world's first 2-legged fire fighting robot named SAFFiR for the Navy that will autonomously help humans put out fires on a ship. (The group is also developing a car for blind drivers, but we're going to save that for another story.) We asked Dr. Hong about the past, present and future of his group's humanoid robot research. (Photo credit: Virginia Tech)

Q. First I want to ask about your victory in the RoboCup Humanoid Kid-Size League with the DARwIn-OP. The match between you and the Darmstadt Dribblers was fascinating to watch. What do you think was the key to your victory?

A. Our kid size DARwIn team is a collaborative team between Virginia Tech and University of Pennsylvania. We at Virginia Tech (RoMeLa) are the experts on humanoid robots and system integration, and thus lead the platform development. Prof. Dan Lee at the University of Pennsylvania (GRASP), who is well known in the field of machine learning, and his team lead the software development. We had the best hardware platform with DARwIn-OP, so we decided to work with Dan to bring the best of software and the best of hardware together.  It was a beautiful story of successful collaboration.

Photo: Team DARwIn at RoboCup 2011 (Credit: Virginia Tech)

We know DARwIn-OP's system inside out because we are the ones who developed it. When you develop software, you actually have to know a lot about the hardware. That’s the advantage we had over other teams.

Another reason for the success, I think, is that the DARwIn-OP is a brand new platform whereas for example the Darmstadt team has been using their platform for many years. So I think their platform is starting to see its age. So as you can see in the match, the first half and second half it was 5 to 5 and then after that, during the overtime, it looked like their hardware started to get tired. The motors overheat and then things get “shaky.”

Another interesting side note. I do know that a number of teams are very interested in DARwIn-OP and I believe they are planning to use DARwIn-OP as their platform for RoboCup 2012. This year, the Darmstadt team actually brought one DARwIn-OP unit and they used it in some of the earlier games. We could see that they were testing it. So technically we were not the only team that had DARwIn- OP at this year’s RoboCup.

Q. Can we step back to the beginning of this project? How and when did your research project on DARwIn-OP that was funded by NSF start? And how much was the grant?

A. The DARwIn project started in 2004 without any funding. When I first joined Virginia Tech, I had some startup funds so I started a miniature humanoid project. I’ve been interested in many types of locomotion. Leg-wheel hybrids, 6 legs, 3 legs…. So naturally the next step was to investigate 2 legged robots and I’ve been very interested in human locomotion. I thought the best way to study how humans walk is to build a humanoid robot and try to make it walk. And during that process we’ll get a better understanding about the dynamics and controls of human walking. Then in the future we will be able to use this knowledge to develop better prosthetic legs and those kind of things.

 So that was my main reason I started the DARwIn project. We were NOT thinking about RoboCup at all at that time. And so DarWiN 0 was developed in 2004, in 2005 DARwIn 1, in 2006 DARwIn 2, and then around 2006 or 2007, Prof. Oskar von Stryk at Darmstadt Dribblers saw our robot and invited us to join RoboCup.

Once we started participating in RoboCup, DARwIn started to become popular. Many research laboratories and universities contacted us saying they wanted to use DARwIn for their research and educational tasks but as a university we couldn’t sell it. So I wrote a NSF research proposal with Prof. George Lee at Purdue University, asking that if you can give us the funds, we’ll develop an open source version of DARwIn and give it out to the universities so that we can contribute to the robotics community. We received a total of 1.2 million dollars for a 4 years project. We are in the second year right now.

DARwIn-Op is a fully open source robot which means that the software AND hardware are open source. All the CAD files, the blueprints and documentations on how to make and assemble it are all online for free, so other teams can build it. I already know that some groups are building the robot themselves, but you can also buy it from a company called ROBOTIS.

Q. The NSF grant is for Virginia Tech and Purdue University. How did you get to cooperate with Purdue?

A. I had been talking with Prof. George Lee about humanoid robots and we thought that we have a fantastic opportunity with our DARwIn series so it was an idea that we came up with together to write the proposal. Purdue’s role in the DARwIn project was to try to figure out what the community needs, to set the specifications and what the universities might be able to use it for different types of research. It can be used for network communications, vision processing, autonomous behaviors, locomotion, mobile manipulation - all the robotics disciplines that people are interested in. Then based on those specifications, we designed the hardware and electronics. We brought in Universtiy of Pennsylvania later on to get some help for the software.

Q. How did the company ROBOTIS get involved?

Can Silicon Valley be the center for robotics too?

"Yes," says Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics at SRI International. And to make sure that people know it, he and his colleagues at SRI along with local robotics companies such as Adept Technology and Willow Garage have formed a group called Silicon Valley Robotics (SVR). The goal of SVR is to "nurture the robotics industry in this area and help create an environment where other companies would want to come here and start up," he says.

There are other robotics centers in the U.S., most notably the Boston area surrounding the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pittsburgh where Carnegie Mellon University resides. The greater Silicon Valley area has Stanford University and UC Berkeley, and quite a heritage of robotics accomplishments too, but compared to these other regions, the area has been "overlooked in some ways as being a center for robotics," says Mahoney (photogragh). The reason for it may be that "there was so much other activity going on here and that robotics was lost relative to all the other things."

Mahoney had already been in robotics for over 20 years before he came to work in Silicon Valley in Sept. 2008. Once he arrived, he was surprised to find there was a real cluster of robotics companies and research groups in this area, and yet unlike Boston and Pittsburgh, there was no organization representing that industry. So he started talking about the idea of forming a group where people in the robotics industry can get together to network and discuss important issues. He, Philip von Guggenberg and Regis Vincent at SRI started having weekly meetings to talk about ways to make it happen and put together a mailing list. The group grew organically with volunteers organizing meetings, but it was not until this year's National Robotics Week when Silicon Valley Robotics endorsed and managed the Robot Block Party at Stanford that they decided to get exposure.

The group consists of about 40 organizations and is still in an informal grass roots stage. They get together at members' facilities for networking events. Right now the plan is to form a "leadership council" by the end of this year which will define the structure of the organization so that it can move on to the next stage. SRI, Adept, Willow Garage and German electronics company Robert Bosch, which conducts robotics research at its Palo Alto Research and Technology Center, are interested in participating in this council, according to Mahoney. Currently there is no membership fee and "any organization in the greater Silicon Valley region interested in the robotics industry can be a part of it," he notes.

(Photo: An SVR meeting in March was held at Bosch's Palo Alto research center. A PR2 demo was shown to participants.)

As robots jump out of the factory floors into homes and communities, the robotics industry will grow dramatically and Silicon Valley will be competing with other areas for talent and investment. Recently, French robotics company Aldebaran Robotics decided to set up its U.S. operation in Boston. Mahoney says that Aldebaran had been looking at San Francisco as a potential location. "I am absolutely convinced that if there was a Silicon valley Robotics fully organized that I could have referred them to, to promote and attract them, that they would be in San Francisco," Mahoney points out.

On the other hand, there is also the need to cooperate with the other robotics regions to get their message heard in Washington, in regards to regulations, immigration and liability issues, which need to be made clear for the market to grow. And from that standpoint, a group like SVR will play an important role as the region's "single voice" so that it can "cooperate to elevate the resources and attention of the whole country."

SVR is also planning on organizing an "investor forum" to get the local venture capitalists interested in the robotics field. Much of the funding in robotics research in the U.S. has so far been from the military budget and for the robotics industry to bloom there is need for investment from the private sector - just as the Internet started with military funding and then blossomed into an industry. When Mahoney gave a talk on the state of robotics at a local industry event, he got "blank stares." "There's a whole industry here that's starting to emerge and if you are in the investment community, you have to pay attention," he emphasizes.

"As an outsider coming in, I find Silicon Valley a remarkable place with an aura, a concentration of technical know-how combined with an innovative spirit. I have no doubt that once the dots get connected, that things will happen quickly."

Yes, the ride has begun.