IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2012 - 120

Figure 2. Microsoft's Roborazzi robot
features a Kinect for navigation and a
camera for snapping pictures of people.
(Photo courtesy of Microsoft.)

now-popular Microsoft three-dimensional (3-D) sensor. Being cheap and
easy to use, Kinect made 3-D mapping
and motion sensing accessible, and the
robotics community embraced it wholeheartedly. "People have been searching
for a low-cost alternative to laser rangefinders, and now we have one (for
indoor use, at least)," one of the panelists
commented, adding that she expects to
see a surge in usage. Indeed, the Kinect
2, which may appear sometime this year,
will feature a higher resolution and
frame rate that will allow the device, if
you believe the rumors, to read lips. New
types of cameras also promise to expand
the possibilities of 3-D sensing. The socalled computational cameras-such as
the Lytro, based on technology developed at Stanford-capture both intensity and angle of light and allow the
refocusing of already-snapped pictures
and the creation of 3-D images. The
new wave of 3-D sensors may not only
give robots better eyes but could also
provide an effective way of 3-D scanning
everyday objects, generating libraries that
robots would access to finally understand
the thing we call the real world. "3-D
sensing is already hot," said another one
of our researchers, "but with the Kinect
and the next generation of similar cheap
sensors, the sky is the limit."
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3) Cloud Robotics:
The Forecast Calls for Clouds
Several research groups are exploring
the idea of robots that rely on cloudcomputing infrastructures to access
vast amounts of processing power and
data. This approach, which some are
calling cloud robotics, would allow
robots to offload compute-intensive
tasks such as image processing and
voice recognition and even download
new skills instantly (see IEEE Robotics
& Automation Magazine, vol. 18, no. 2,
June 2011). A lot of activity should be
happening in this area this year. As one
of the researchers said, "the cloud will
explode." In particular, Google has a
small team creating robot-friendly cloud
services that, if they become popular
among roboticists, could cause a tectonic
shift in the field (imagine every robot
using "Google Maps for Robots" for navigation). In Europe, a major project is
RoboEarth, whose goal is to develop a
World Wide Web for robots, a giant
cloud-enabled database where robots
can share information about objects,
environments, and tasks (Figure 3).
Many other projects are taking shape
and we expect that, in 2012, cloud
robotics will sound less like a buzzword
and more like a serious research domain.
4) Compliant Actuation:
Robots with a Soft Touch
When robots interact with humans,
safety is a key concern. Conventional
position-controlled arms, such as the
ones that dominate factories, just
won't cut it. Making robots that have
a soft touch is key to a future where
humans and robots can share spaces

Figure 3. A robot connected to
RoboEarth serves a drink to a patient
during a trial of the system. (Photo
courtesy of RoboEarth.org/TU Eindhoven.)

MARCH 2012

Figure 4. The Meka M1 compliant robot
with custom series-elastic actuators.
(Photo courtesy of Meka Robotics.)

and collaborate closely. For this reason, we expect to see numerous improvements to compliant actuation
and tactile sensing technologies in
2012. Examples of this include better
series-elastic actuators (Figure 4) and
tactile skin. In addition, we expect
researchers to think outside the box-
developing new, clever types of compliant systems far removed from electromechanical motors. For example,
in 2011 we saw a number of soft-bodied robots that, much like their meatbag biological counterparts, are inherently squishy. These include iRobot's
Hexapod JamBot, based on particlejamming actuators, and OtherLab's
Ant-Roach Pneubot, an inflatable robot
made of fabric and pneumatic actuators. These and other projects point to
a tantalizing future filled with compliant and soft-bodied robots that we
expect to start taking shape in 2012.
5) Smartphone-Based Robots:
The New Robot Brains
Almost every robot these days needs a
combination of sensors, CPU, display,
and network connectivity. Smartphones and tablets offer a combination of sensors, CPU, display, and
network connectivity. Do you see
where this is going? At one end of the
spectrum, iRobot has demonstrated a
remote presence prototype robot
called Ava, which uses a tablet to control its mobile base. At the other end
of the spectrum, two Seattle engineers
quickly raised more than US$100,000
on a fund-raising Web site, Kickstarter, with the promise of developing a
cute little smartphone-powered robot
(Figure 5). These are just two

http://www.RoboEarth.org/TU

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2012