THEY look like a cross between ET and a vacuum cleaner, but two new robots from Japan are intended to show how droids could help look after the country鈥檚 rapidly growing population of elderly people.
With Japan鈥檚 population growth hovering around zero, the average age of its citizens is rising quickly. So electronics firms are stepping up their efforts to help people function at home while their children are out at work. Options range from intelligent houses (New 杏吧原创, 15 May 2004, p 22) to companion robots.
Last week at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan, Toshiba said two teams working on its 鈥渉ome life support robot鈥� project had each built a wheeled robot with a different skill that could one day be combined with others to create a home-help robot.
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One, called Sharp Ear (in the foreground of the picture), uses a voice recognition system to distinguish between the voices of up to six people, but will only obey orders issued by its owner and will not respond to strangers. The other, named Attenda (in the background), uses an image-processing system to recognise its owner鈥檚 back, so it can follow them through busy shopping streets or markets without losing track of them.
Sharp Ear, a dumpy 10-kilogram droid just 43 centimetres high, has six microphones around its middle that feed sound into a voice processor. The variation in arrival times of signals around the droid allow it to calculate the positions of speakers, and a digital signal processor distinguishes between the voices. 鈥淪o if someone calls to it from behind and someone else calls to it from in front, it will turn to greet the person behind, then turn back to respond to the person in front,鈥� says Midori Suzuki of Toshiba.
Attenda is 90 centimetres high and weighs 30 kilograms. Designed to follow a person, it does not use face recognition technology. Rather it relies on a camera and high-speed image-processing software to identify its owner by their height and the colour and texture of their clothing. An ultrasonic sensor guides the robot around obstacles while it maintains visual contact with the person. It stops when the target stops.
鈥淎ttenda can recognise its owner鈥檚 back, so it can follow them through busy鈥�
Toshiba is now trying to combine all the new features in a single robot called Alpha, which it hopes to launch in five years鈥� time, but there are still some decisions to make: should it include both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections to control certain home appliances? Should the owner be able to control the robot via cellphone? 鈥淲e have to decide which features to include,鈥� said Suzuki. 鈥淚f we include them all, the robot will become far too big.鈥�
