Domestic robots have been "just around the corner" for so long they have become a bad joke. But now a homebot is on sale by mail order for just under $800. Called Cye, it can serve you a TV dinner and even vacuum-clean the carpet.
Homebots have been much tougher to design than some AI experts first imagined. Probotics, a small Pittsburgh-based company, took ten years to crack the problem. It succeeded by keeping things simple.
Resembling a dustpan with two cogged wheels, Cye is controlled from a PC via a wireless link. A pod containing the transmitter plugs into a computer's serial port.
Before Cye can do any work, it has to map its environment. You use the computer's mouse to guide it to key landmarks such as doorways and corners, says Ray Russell of Probotics. Cye then explores the space in between to fill out its world.
The robot has no sensors, but can learn about its environment by detecting resistance in its wheels when it bumps up against an obstacle. It keeps track of where it is by counting the number of turns of each wheel, like counting steps-but at 500 times a second. Cye's patented wheels, which resemble bicycle sprockets, are designed to minimise slip. Their polyurethane-coated tips dig deep into the carpet.
Once Cye has got its bearings, it will faithfully drag a vacuum cleaner across the floor or pull a trolley loaded with drinks and food. When it has finished doing your bidding, it discreetly trundles back to its pod and recharges its batteries-taking your dirty dishes as it goes. The robot inevitably gets tangled up with the cleaner's cord, but its inventor, Henry Thorne, says this problem will disappear when Probotics starts selling a cordless vacuum cleaner in September.
"We wanted to make Cye more like a servant where it does its work while staying out of your way," says Thorne. But to give it a friendly feel it comes with a host of whistles and chirps like R2-D2 from Star Wars.
The owner uses a program called Map-N-Zap to control Cye. At the moment this allows the robot's master to load a variety of tasks into the robot, which are then carried out either on a timer or by interacting with the world. This is done by dragging and dropping icons on the screen.
Probotics is working with Illah Nourbakhsh of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on software that will make Cye more autonomous. This will allow it to prioritise its actions, says Nourbakhsh. If it's doing the vacuuming but is low on battery power, for example, Cye places its own needs above its domestic duties and rushes back to its charger.
But, says Nourbakhsh, with the more autonomous software Cye will become more like a creature that responds to the world unpredictably. And the way Cye's interface is designed means that AI researchers can write programs in a variety of different languages and load them into it. Probotics is working on a voice-activated version. Russell says it will also respond to a sharp kick in the butt.
Duncan Graham Rowe reporting from the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence in Orlando, for New Scientist magazine.
Issue 31 July 1999
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