WORLD ROBOTICS 2010

Editorial

Service robots, or no service robots

By: Nicola Tomatis, Bluebotics SA Switzerland

Robots are born as service robots!

The word robot has been introduced with the humanoid service robots presented in theRossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.) theater play by Karel Capek in year 1921. Service robots havethen populated books and movies for almost one century .

.. .and then came the industrial robot.

In 1956, George Devol and Joseph Engelberger met over cocktails to discuss the writings ofIsaac Asimov, one of the best-known science fiction writers, and agreed to work on creating a robottogether. In 1961, the Unimate industrial robot was born, and served at a General Motors plant workingwith heated die-casting machines. Nowadays, there are more than one million industrial robots aroundthe world active in welding, assembling, machining, paint-spraying, etc .

.. .but where are the service robots?

The 1980's showed the first use of robots outside the industrial production. The mostsuccessful have then been vacuum cleaning, lawn mowing, and military robots, while otherapplications are for example in hazardous maintenance, inspection, and monitoring .

...and now?

Expectation for service robotics is still high, very high, and we are away from meeting it. Inyear 2006, Bill Gates finished his article on the American Scientific with the sentence: "... as thesedevices become affordable to consumers, they could have just as profound an impact on the way wework, communicate, learn and entertain ourselves as the PC has had over the past 30 years."

Tandy Tower, the man behind the Windows development, who then formed the robotics groupat Microsoft, recently even started his own service robotics company. Andy Rubin, VP at Google, iswell known to be a robotics fanatic and chose a robot as logo for his Android operating system. So, ifthe world best innovators and the most skilled technical gurus all are fan of service robotics, thequestion is...

.. .what is missing to reach Asimov's vision of robotics?

Some say the technology is not ready. Some other claim we miss the right business models.Both are right since, the available technology is not yet ready to perform all the tasks we would likeservice robots to do, and the functionality that has value for the market is still expensive and thusdifficult to sell .

.. .SO, what should we do?

The technology is pushed forward by massive investments by the DARPA in USA, theEuropean Commission, the Korean robotic research program, etc. This is expected to create newfunctionality for our service robots.

On the business side, we probably have more problems. We are missing the step bridgingresearch results to well established companies that would have the power and credibility to bringservice robotics into the market. To fill this gap, we need visionary entrepreneurs ready to go out of theoffice, meet with potential users, discuss with experts in potential application markets, and be open-

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WORLD ROBOTICS 2010

minded and creative to understand how to fit the available technologies into the market creating valuefor the final customers.

Today, any success in service robotics helps building up the market. Competition is not thequestion, every company has to concentrate in delivering quality and to create value for the earlyadopters, who will then help us in growing the market towards the expectation we all are talking about.Going beyond the early adopters phase would guarantee that research investments keep coming, and,even more important, it would make big players aware of the market, and less risky for them to beinvolved in its growth.

To conclude, my advice to the service robotics community is...

Start new ventures, go out to meet users and experts, be open-minded and creative, and teamup with the right partners to create the added value that will bring service robotics to success!

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