Robot servants–sooner than you think

Sony’s Aibo robot and Honda’s Asimo robot lines have proven that there is at least some level of acceptance of robots in the home. Now the question becomes when will those robots wash windows and trim hedges?

In the suburbs of Tokyo, researchers from NEC have been working on robots that can “help around the house.” It all started when the researchers realized that several of their ongoing projects, including speech recognition and optical sensing, could come together to allow a robot to see and hear.

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PaPeRo’s “eyes” consist of two CCD cameras, and with them PaPeRo can recognize up to ten faces. Four microphones–three to detect the direction from which a sound came and one for speech recognition of up to 650 words–act as PaPeRo’s “ears.”

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In a demonstration, PaPeRo recognized Fujita, engaged in a bit of small talk, and then accepted the verbal order to take a voice message. When PaPeRo met with the person for whom the message was intended, he would recognize the person’s face, and offer to play the voice message for them (“Obi-Wan, you are our only hope.”). Fujita then asked the robot to turn on the television, which was accomplished via PaPeRo’s infra-red transmitter. PaPeRo was also able to change stations for Fujita, accepting requests by name of the station.

NEC’s vision is “to partner (with) people in their homes with the underlying aim of improving (the) human-machine interface through introducing robots into our everyday lives.” While PaPeRo certainly does not threaten the jobs of butlers and maids just yet, this demonstration was merely a taste of things to come. 70 families in Japan have PaPeRo robots in their homes, doing real-world testing.

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Fujita says a robot builder’s work is never done, as robots will always be compared to humans rather than appliances.