Program Overview
Our Vision
Our vision is that hardware and software platform for Personal Robotics – robots that do tasks for humans in human environments – will enable breakthrough robotics applications, much as PCs and DOS enabled a new set of computing applications two decades ago.
Our Focus
Our team is developing a release hardware and software platform for researchers and developers mobile manipulation community.
Building a Community
The Personal Robotics program is a collaboration between Willow Garage, Stanford University, and other academics institutions to create an open-source codebase and freely available hardware platform for mobile manipulation.
Background
Over the past 40 years robots have made great strides in solving special purpose automation problems in manufacturing, medicine, household chores, and industry in general.
Many software problems in personal robotics seen as unsolvable in a robust, general way have been solved for special purpose applications and in research laboratories: navigation, vision, planning, controls, human interaction, manipulation, etc. However, integrating them together has never been possible due to a lack of an appropriate approach to robot architecture, either hardware or software.
Consequently, there are still no robots that are capable, safe for humans, flexible, and affordable. The industry has not thought of personal robots as integrated hardware and software platforms open for third party developers to take into new areas of application.
An Uncommon Opportunity
All industrialized countries are facing aging populations that require assistance and care to remain independent into old age. By 2020 close to 20% of the US population will be over 65. These numbers are even higher in Western European and Asian countries.
With the new awareness of the rights of people with disabilities, all industrialized countries are working on mainstreaming disabled children and adults. Independence and assistance are seen as key for this model to succeed. The market for assistive products (excluding vision aids) in the U.S. is estimated to reach over $11B by 2010.
The market for personal productivity tools and lifestyle enhancing technologies has been skyrocketing in the past ten years. Populations in industrialized and industrializing countries spend more and more on wants and not needs. A personal robot at your beck and call is the ultimate productivity tool and life-enhancing product.
Target Applications
The hardware and software platform is being designed from the ground up to be applicable in many applications of interest in personal robotics. The first prototype of the robot has been tested on many of those real applications under remote control and the robot’s ability to deal with the objects and environments humans deal with every day has been demonstrated. The platform is being designed with the following types of applications in mind.
Around the House: doing the dishes, tidying up, laundry, cleaning
Aging Populations: carrying heavy things, remembering where things are, retrieving items, preparing food, cleaning
Assisting People with Disabilities: telemanipulation, feeding, doing chores, monitoring health and activity
Operations: Starbucks, pick and pack, stocking grocery stores, tracking inventory, retrieving items, searchable physical file system
