P L Y O J U M P
Click the bagpipe for essays & commentary
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Robonexus is the first US
conference that featured consumer robotics, and was open to the public.
First held in Santa Clara, CA, in October 2004, it was a watershed event for
robotics - both the robots and the attendees were amazing (see
below) Kudos to Dan Kara and the Robotics Trends and IDG staff for
making this happen!
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Robonexus 2005
was held Oct 6-9. 2005, and was awarded the "best of 2005" by EXPO
magazine. According to logs of the event (I didn't attend) it had less
of a "hobby" feel and more of a standard tradeshow vibe. Quite a few
small robots were demoed, but they were commercial rather than
homegrown. iRobot debuted their Scooba robot, which can handle floor
spills. 3D frabicators were also in evidence - and it does seem to make
robots we are going to have to move away from standardized parts cobbled
together into robots to custom designed systems.
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Click the image to the left to download VIDEO (Windows Media) of Robonexus
2004!
It is about 10 megabytes in size, 4 minutes long, with lots of little
snippets from my digital camera. In particular, it shows lots of the
little robots wandering around the Expo, and some footage of the Servo
Magazine exoskeleton contest (see below)
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One of the big surprises of RoboNexus 2004 was the number of people that took
up Servo Magazine's Tetsujin
Challenge to build an exoskeleton to allow people to
lift thousands of pounds. The "grassroots" creation of these
exoskeletons in an "X-prize" style contest shows the power of competition for
advancing the state of the art. The winner lifted 1600 pounds, with only
a 4-month development time. Government projects have spent decades
trying to achieve the same. Apparently prizes (X-prize, Grand Challenge,
Servo Tetsujin, Hack-A-Sapien) are a prime way to encourage innovation.
Watch the Jan 2005 Wired for some serious coverage of Tetsujin and the
competitors! |
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The most amazing story from RoboNexus
2004 - bar none - was the huge
number of "echo
boom"/Millennial kids and teens that were there, and the number of teens that
were actually creating robots. This is extraordinary and not trivial!
RoboNexus was different for any trade show I've seen in 20 years -
the Saturday Expo was crawling with kids and the Gen-X parents. The
presence of real people, rather than "digeratti" and "suits" made this
show memorable. Here I've put a picture of teens participating in
competing their homebrew robots for the FIRST robotics competition.
Rock on! |
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One of the remarkable things about the robotics movement in schools, like
FIRST is the number of girls involved in their creation. Compare to the
all-male birth of the PC, and the female-hostile phrases of the personal
computer revolution like "female" components and "motherboard". IMHO,
robotics, spearheaded by the new, "Millennial"
generation, promises more
women involved in technology. Can it be that robots are "real", as
opposed to the phantoms of cyberspace? All I know is that I saw huge
number of (GenX) fathers and daughters at RoboNexus - it felt good! The
boys and girls worked together in a way that older generations could
only dream of... |
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Another wild, custom-built robot by FIRST teen-agers. Dean Kamen, founder
of FIRST (and creator of the Segway) gave a keynote lecture in the Friday
conference, in which he described FIRST as an attempt to make science
and technology as exciting as popular culture (lame music and video) for
the upcoming generation. Kamen had clearly read Strauss & Howe, and has
created FIRST to capture the imagination of this new "Millennial" or
"Echo Boom" generation. Cool! |
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One of the great things about robotics is the cheerful "pirate" attitude -
hijacking technology developed for the PC and Internet for a completely
different purpose. Here, Gameboys have been hijacked and their
electronic brains used to power mobile robots. |
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One of the most awesome humanoid robots in the world is the HRP-2, created
by Kawada Industries (otherwise involved in airplanes), who have spun
off a robot-specific company,
General Robotix. This humanoid has features that allow it to work
for real - in particular, a joint in its trunk allowing it to lie down
and stand up, and recover from falls. These guys rock - I spoke with a
company rep for quite a while and gained respect by the minute. Let the
robots rise! |
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iRobot was one of the biggest exhibitors at RoboNexus (matched by White
Box Robotics), and featured their consumer Roomba (1 millionth sale
reported) plus their military Packbot, and experiments with ant-bots
designed to work in teams.
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I can't emphasize more that RoboNexus was remarkable in the
participation of kids and families. Never, in all the years that I have
gone to hi-tech trade shows did I see a mob of kids. Never did I see the
"tech" itself coming from teens building the tech. I looked for
dotcom-style piercings, even baseball caps worn backwards - nada. There
were no "25ers" at this show - they're chasing the 1990s still. It is
clear that kids born after 1982 (the "Millennial" or "Echo Boom"
generation are going to be the ones to embrace robotics. It was
refreshing, really, to have so many kids around, and so many the
girls mixed with the boys, cheerfully messing with robots - how often do
you see that in tech? |
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A "classic" mobile robot from K-team, displayed at RoboNexus. One of the
big trends was a move to two-wheeled, dynamically-stabilized robots a la
Segway as an intermediate solution to robots working in human
environments. This robot may be a dinosaur, compared to the two-wheeled
bots that roamed everywhere in RoboNexus. |
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One of several mini-humanoids displayed at RoboNexus. The trend to
two-wheeled, dynamically-balanced robots was paralleled by the creation
of small, legged robots that can participate in the Robocup "Humanoid
League". Clearly, we are moving beyond the "trash can on wheels" that
robotics has been prey to for the last 20 years... |
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Military-style applications for robotics abounded at RoboNexus. The
premise is that using robots instead of humans in war will save lives.
Here, a camo-bot rolls its way around the convention floor. |
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Who says robotics can't have fun? The San Francisco Robotics Society had a
major presence at the show, and highlighted the finest achievements of
hobby robotics. This is good, since Silicon Valley as a whole has
ignored robotics - RoboNexus felt almost like a missionary effort to
convert dot-commers chasing after Google to the real "next big
thing" |
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Wany Robotics (France) was one of the surprises at RoboNexus. Apparently,
this company has grown and developed, and poses serious competition to
iRobot. Here, a floor-bot created by Wany. Their goal seems to be the
creation of robot-specific parts rather than complete systems, ending the
necessity of hijacking robot components from other industries. |
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Who doesn't love White Box
Robotics? This Pittsburgh-based company has combined style (from Art
Institute of Pittsburgh students in their new company, Foraxis), along
with with a PC-based robot that is expandable in the way that a personal
computer is expandable. White Box has some great ideas about form,
function, and style - I suspect they'll go far in the US robotics world. |
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Here is a White Box robot with its artistic shell removed, revealing the
"hijacked" conventional PC architecture used for the new purpose of a
mobile robot. It reminds me of early PC creators in the late 1970s
hijacking the microprocessors of other industries to create the soul of
a new machine... |
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Here is the same 9/12 robot with its artistically rendered shell. Those of
you at colleges and universities take note - robots need design, as well
as engineering, in order to succeed. Learn from White Box - don't make a
pile of junky electronics. Invite technically-inclined designers who understand technology
right from the start when you create robotics.
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Osaka, Japan is an emerging "robot corridor" similar in
concept to Silicon Valley for the PC/Internet revolution and Pittsburgh
for robotics.
Osaka had a booth displaying several robots developed in the area, and
calling attention to the huge robot trade show planned there for 2005. |
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My sentimental favorite, and a selection highlighting the accomplishments
of the "Millennial" generation
compared to older generations in robots. This 15-year named Nicholas
Hoza old co-created a robot car, Expeditor, in a team called
The Prodigies destined
to compete for $2 million in the
Grand Challenge 2005. Two VIA mainboards, webcams, custom welding -
this is a youth generation of true "deeds, not words". I can't convey
the optimism I felt seeing the newest generation taking on these
incredible challenges.... |
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Evolution Robotics showed off the Sharper Image
Evac, a competitor
to the Roomba. .Evolution Robotics
was demonstrating several robot vision/navigation systems at the show,
clearly providing the beginnings of standardized "robot sensing" modules
that can be used by any industry. |
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 "There is only one condition in which we can imagine
managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This
would be if every machine could work by itself, at the word of command or
by intelligent anticipation."
- Aristotle, from his justification of slavery in Politics |
