In the midst of the pandemic, robots became one more option when it came to assisting humans in cleaning and disinfection tasks with different proposals and developments. As a precedent, iRobot business models did their thing at home with the Roomba line of equipment.
Now it is the turn of Alphabet X, the research, development and innovation division of Alphabet, the technology company that groups Google and all its services and products. On this occasion, the note was given by its fleet of cleaning robots that it deployed in the San Francisco, California offices, which are part of the project known as Everyday Robots.
This team is focused on creating “A general purpose learning robot”. These are essentially robots that have arms on wheels, with a multipurpose gripper at the end of a flexible arm attached to a central tower.
This robot is equipped with a articulated arm that allows you to manipulate objects and tools, along with a camera offering you a sense of perception of the environment. Along with a series of sensors, the Everyday Robots prototype can move through the corridors of an office and perform its cleaning tasks safely, in coexistence with company employees.
The great goal of Alphabet X with the project Everyday Robot aims to achieve a fluid learning process, where robots can understand a demonstration performed by humans or other robots. In this way, the prototypes began to separate waste for recycling, a task that for now they perform slowly.
According to Hans Peter Brøndmo, Alphabet’s chief robotics manager, there are more than 100 different versions of this type of robot to perform various tasks in Alphabet offices. The company’s main objective is to promote the development and fine-tuning of this technology in real environments, without interfering with or affecting company employees during tests.
In turn, the robots in this project can exchange their functions without problems. “The same robot that sorts waste can also have a broom to sweep, or use its gripper to grab glasses from a table and turn the door handle,” said Brøndmo.
For now, these robots work on a limited basis in offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, and for now it will take years of development to reach homes at some point.
Alphabet’s goal is to get robots to do simple tasks that humans do every day, which is extremely difficult and costs millions of dollars. In contrast, humans would be cheaper and more efficient than robots for these jobs for the foreseeable future.
The robot made with recyclable materials that helps those who are isolated by coronavirus
A home robot designed by Indonesian villagers and scientists for fun found a new use during the pandemic, bringing food and hopefully a smile to residents in isolation who contracted COVID-19.
The robot is called “Delta robot”, in a nod to the highly contagious variant of coronavirus that has spread across Indonesia, and is comprised of Home furniture like pots and pans and an old television monitor.
The robot head consists of a rice cooker and is operated by a remote control with a 12 hour battery life. It is one of several robots manufactured in the village of Tembok Gede, which has earned a reputation for its creative use of technology.
Tribute to The Rolling Stones: Boston Dynamics robots mimic Mick Jagger’s dance steps https://t.co/if5aZg7rIo
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