TITLE OF PAPER: iRobot URL OF PRESENTATION: _URL_of_powerpoint_presentation_ PRESENTED BY: Helen Greiner, iRobot president and cofounder REPRESENTING: iRobot CONFERENCE: O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference DATE: February 10, 2004 LOCATION: San Diego, CA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- REAL-TIME NOTES / ANNOTATIONS OF THE PAPER: {If you've contributed, add your name, e-mail & URL at the bottom} Used in hundreds of thousands of homes. Used to explore the egyptian pyramids, in Iraq, and save time, money and lives. Most of their market leadership is in the roomba, but a lot to the military as well. Their goal is to make robots part of the mainstream. They send people to defuse bombs and into combat situations, which is crazy. Vision video: Matrix play, Roomba Reloaded Consumer robotics: You should be able to choose between doing household chores or letting the robot take care of it. Helen was inspired when she was 11 by R2D2, a compelling creature. Her mother told her "I don't want a creature, I want a vacuum" [the design cues, especially in the audio design of the roomba evidence this...] This technology is not new. People have been thinking about mobile robots since the beginning of the computer market. Demo/Sales Video of Roomba: "If it's down there, we'll get it" First national consumer robotics ad. Most people watching it don't think of it as a robot. Technology: navigation: coverage algorithms, wall following (specialized IR sensors), edge detection, escape algoritms cleaning: edge cleaning, transition, low power (two phase particulate pickup, allowing for smaller nozzle) [TFS: It's a lot louder than I would have guessed] aggressive intellectual property protection: 3 issued patents, more than 20 pending [TFS: I do wish that this was a lot less of a sales pitch and more about the actual technology] Roomba demo, old school salesman style of throwing dirt on the floor A car is not a horseless buggy A personal computer is not a paperless typewriter What is the deep change? sensing tiles through algorithms to action behavior control lets us build up competencies respond to the world, not a model of the world What happens when these autonomous sensors get tied into the network? Currently in development: go into homes go into dangerous situations play fetch and soccer map unknown spaces recognize people voice recognition take turns in communication find power and recharge Defining a new standard: Convincing people: how long does it take? how well does it vacuum? how much does it actually clean? Auto appliances -> no hassle maintenance -> human assistance and care lots of technological hurdles to get to this level AI and CS labs merged at MIT: CSAIL shows pics of new lab building "vision as an inverse problem": inherent ambiguity a book? a picture of a book? or just a shape that matches that of a book? - shows some optical illusions: checkboard illusion - articulated pose sensing real-time performance, "intent-sensing" Government and Industrial Division: "The robot should go in first" -anonymous colonel in Afghanistan Packbot tectical mobile robots (US$45k): shows demo video of them being dropped off buildings and thrown through windows Chemical agent sensor packages Future combat systems: unmanned ground systems, contract with united defense and honeywell [TFS So, killer robots, then. Right.] In the long run, we need swarms of robots controlled by a single human operator. Cory: Mentions Yale NJ project with robot dogs Burton: What are your ethical constraints? HG: When you send a robot in, you're reducing the risk to the person who would be going in otherwise. And there are people controlling these robots completely. There are export restrictions. Our rule is to make our soldiers safer, and once you've chosen to send people into combat you want to send them with the tools to take make them safe. No more questions, please. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- REFERENCES: {as documents / sites are referenced add them below} http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0BFU/13_88/98539745/p1/article.jhtml SEE ALSO: Natalie Jeremienko's [who is great] feral robot dogs: http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/mt/archives/000226.html [I'LL BE POSTING THIS ONLINE HERE http://trevor.typepad.com/blog/2004/02/oreilly_emergin.html ] [SO MAKE YOUR EMAIL OF THE FORM user (at) domain dot com] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTRIBUTORS: {add your name, e-mail address and URL below} Trevor F Smith, trevorolio (at) mac dot com, http://trevor.smith.name/ Andrew Donoho, awd (at) ddg dot com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-MAIL BOUNCEBACK: {add your e-mail address separated by commas } phil (at) gyford.com, pbradley (at) clarity (dash) innovations (dot) com matt (at) blackbeltjones.com [These notes will be here, too: http://trevor.typepad.com/blog/2004/02/oreilly_emergin.html] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES ON / KEY TO THIS TEMPLATE: A headline (like a field in a database) will be CAPITALISED This differentiates from the text that follows A variable that you can change will be surrounded by _underscores_ Spaces in variables are also replaced with under_scores This allows people to select the whole variable with a simple double-click A tool-tip is lower case and surrounded by {curly brackets / parentheses} These supply helpful contextual information. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright shared between all the participants unless otherwise stated...