Newsweek reports that real world applications for robots are coming. Of course, they were some interesting applications before, like the Asimo from Honda, the Aibo from Sony or the Roomba, the vacuum cleaner from iRobot. Let's see new real world examples.
Elvis, designed by Pyxis, weighs 600 pounds, looks like a five-foot-tall cabinet on wheels and toils beneath the University of California, San Francisco, hospital, ferrying blood samples and medicine throughout the building.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ Wakamaru, due out early next year, is a three-foot-tall robot designed to serve as a home caretaker for the elderly. It can talk, hug and send e-mail to the owner’s relatives if something seems wrong. But there will be a whopping $10,000 price tag.
Wisor, built by Honeybee Robotics, is due to begin crawling through New York City’s leaky steam pipes to weld cracks later this year. Wisor finds, cleans and fixes the holes in the pipes, and has five cameras to help it navigate the dangerous twists and turns.
And of course, there is the army.
The U.S. military is also pushing the robotics envelope in the wake of its success with the remote-controlled Predator surveillance drone in Afghanistan. In its latest budget, the Army said it plans to spend $1.14 billion between 2004 and 2009 researching unmanned vehicles.
Other companies are working on multipurpose robots.
Sony is currently working on a humanoid entertainment robot, SDR-4X, that will sing, dance and allow hobbyists to customize its moves. Sony believes robotics will be bigger than the computer industry in 30 years, and may constitute the conglomerate’s greatest revenue source.
Source: Brad Stone, with Mary Carmichael and Atsuko Koizumi, Newsweek, March 24, 2003 Issue
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