Chickens and eggs - which come first?

Citation

Loughlin, C. (1999), "Chickens and eggs - which come first?", Industrial Robot, Vol. 26 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.1999.04926baa.001

Chickens and eggs - which come first?

Chickens and eggs ­ which come first?

In a recent issue of JARA Robot News (Vol. 11 No. 2, published by the Japan Robot Association) there is an outline proposal for the design and development of a "Robotic system capable of harmonious coexistence with humans" being undertaken by the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) which is part of their MITI.

This outlines the size, weight and mobility requirements of a useful service robot which by happy coincidence agrees more or less with the Honda "HUMAN" described in this issue. The basic idea of the five year research programme (which was started in 1998) is to develop a general purpose robot platform with a range of real world capabilities such as walking upstairs and lifting objects, which can then be applied to a variety of tasks, rather than the alternative approach of designing a robot from the outset to do a particular task.

Only time will tell how successful this R&D effort will be, but it is very laudable that the AIST is co-ordinating such a large scale research effort. When I first read about this project I questioned whether or not they were actually going about it in the best way. Would it not be better after all to design a robot for a specific application so that the researchers have something highly defined to work towards? But then I recalled that in the early days of industrial robots the manufacturers adopted a very similar approach.

While the early industrial robots may have been sold into relatively few applications such as spot welding and paint spraying they were largely designed in terms of reach and payload. It was a case of build the robot and then ask the customers what they wanted to do with it.

This strategy worked reasonably well but there were still a large number of applications which were attempted but failed. Over the years robot designs have evolved to be much more application specific and this issue (Mini Features) includes a good example of this in the form of ABB Robotics IRB340 "Flex-Picker". This is designed for very high speed (two per second) pick and place operations for the electronics and food industries.

I am still not sure if it is a good idea to start with the aim of producing a general purpose robot platform but either way I fully expect that in the future we will see this robot evolve into various specific application areas.

This Christmas I was reminded of an additional design consideration in the form of a Radio Shack "Andy the Android" inflatable robot. This is a mobile base platform to which the inflatable robot is attached so you end up with a rather cute two foot high robot that is able to rotate (clockwise only) and move forward when commanded by a two button radio control transmitter. The clever aspects of this design are that even with this limited control the robot can move in any direction (on the flat), the control takes about five seconds to master, and you get a large volume of robot for your money. I showed Andy to my next door neighbour's two year old child and he immediately burst into tears. However this emotion was rapidly transformed into joy when the child was shown how to control Andy himself. This brought home to me the importance of psychology in any man/robot relationship. It is most important that we are not frightened by the robot and this aspect of us being in control is of fundamental importance.

I also discovered a very useful spin off application for our intrepid Android. The neighbour's cat no longer ventures to use my garden for its daily ablutions. Perhaps we do need to have the tools before we find a use for them?

Clive Loughlin