Citation
(2009), "RoboBusiness 2009", Industrial Robot, Vol. 36 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2009.04936eab.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
RoboBusiness 2009
Article Type: News From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 36, Issue 5
The Sixth Annual RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition, produced by Robotic Trends, took place in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, April 15 and 16, 2009. More than 700 professionals representing more than a dozen countries around the globe attended this international business development event for the mobile robotics and intelligent systems industry.
The event featured over 30 sessions of exclusive content on today's most critical robotics issues. Topics included: Business development and investment; Technology and standards; Security, defense, and first responders robotics; Autonomy and mobility; RoboMedicus/Healthcare robotics; and Consumer robotics.
In his keynote speech, How Robots Make War More Survivable, Vice Admiral Joseph W. Dyer (US Navy, Ret.), President, Government and Industrial Robots Division at iRobot Corp., told an audience that all several thousand deployed military iRobots are teleoperated with a one-to-one relationship between the operator and the robot. He added that autonomy will continue to progress in stages. In answer to the question, “Will we ever see autonomous killing machines?” Admiral Dyer responded that life and death decisions should not be made independent of a human, and that iRobot's architecture plans always includes a man in the loop with no plans of that changing.
Holly Yanco, Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, gave a presentation entitled, “Assistive robotics, making the leap from the lab to commercial development”. She reported that there is a current accepted and growing market for the use of robotics in surgery and therapy. Both of these markets involve a health care professional in the loop. There is a growing need for technologies to be used by patients alone, but the market needs to be defined. According to Yanco, there is no funding institution in the USA to support the health-robot field.
Highlights on the exhibition floor included.
A new firefighting robot introduced by Segway. The four-wheeled Segway® robotic mobility platform 400 can travel at 18 mile/h for 10-12 miles while carrying up to 400 pounds. It features a water cannon that can fire ten gallons of liquid per second. Segway envisions the robot being used for mostly fighting forest fires, but it can also be used for crowd control.
A small mobile robotic system developed by Harvest Automation as a container handling system for the nursery and greenhouse industry. The robots navigate, identify pots, and measure and maintain the necessary distance between them. This can save suppliers millions of dollars on the labor-intensive process of growing commercial potted plants.
RobuLAB10, a service robot manufactured by Robosoft and integrated with SRI's Karto™ navigation software. The robot, which can navigate its environment, follow, and assist a person from room-to-room is designed to assist the elderly in their own homes. It is also designed as a platform for developers and integrators seeking to build home-centric service robots.
Additional information on Robo Business 2009 can be found at: www.robobusiness.com/