Does this look familar? Click on the image to see why…

double – which has been working feverishly to deliver their many orders – have announced that they are finally shipping out their devices to the pre-orders in the market. We know here at PilotPresence that double has the kewl and wow factor, but we await a test drive of these devices outside of the “controlled” environments.

Not to be outdone, Cisco and iRobot have announced their newest offspring, the Ava 500. Leveraging the Ava platform and the controls for Ava, Cisco has attached its telepresence solution on top of the Ava – and also providing a height control for the “head” of the remote person.

And now Cisco attaches to the Ava base

And, as mentioned with the Verge article, the Ava 500 does create their own maps of the environment — essentially a plan of the space in order to be able to provide the command and control — or as Colin puts it, “professional” versus “joystick”. The intention is to provide a stark contrast to one of the issues pilots/remote people may have — navigation.

But what we are curious about is this particular snippet in the video below. Why does the replanning/sensor fusion look like someone edited the video like a green screen shot? Granted there is the reflection on the glass on the right, but something seems quite unusual about this particular part of the video.

There are other curious parts to the product — including the fact that it is launching as late as “early 2014″. Our assumptions are that Beam and double, who have been getting a great deal of play from their presence in the media and events like CES and SxSW, have begun to spook the video telepresence players. And with iRobot’s focus on the base and the major telepresence video providers, iRobot is an excellent partner to provide these solutions.

We look forward to seeing how this solution handles the loss of wifi signal, the challenge of a raised doorjam and the dreaded shag carpet!

But that is for our test drives…

The intriguing question is, can a partnership between Anybots and Polycom compete with the likes of InTouch and iRobot? InTouch has spent countless years developing a remote presence solution that brings the doctor directly to the hospital bed of a patient, whereas Anybots is providing a solution designed for nurses and PAs to offer after outpatient services to reduce readmission rates.

The question is — will this be a valuable market? Only time will tell.

The press release reads below the fold:

Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open, standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), today announced alliances with robotics innovator Anybots Inc.

Video-Enabled Robotics: The first in a series of Polycom video-enabled robots from Anybots, the self-balancing two-wheeled “QB” robot is equipped with a tablet running the award-winning Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile software for a secure HD video session. The maneuverability of the QB can be controlled remotely by administrative personnel, specialists such as language interpreters, or medical care practitioners who can use the robot to evaluate the safety and suitability of the patient’s environment. For patients at home, the robot provides a virtual technology option that can help them return to work, school and social activities sooner…

More here.

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Congrats guys.

(h/t to @GrishinRobotics)

Here is the first of four videos that show off some of his humor (or humour for you Commonwealth people):

What a great way to visit the parents!

How can you be in two places at the same time? Dallas Goecker does that, in a way, every work day.
I went to meet Dallas at his parent’s store, Goecker Building Supplies, in North Vernon the other day. We talked face to face and eye to eye, joked with his mother and father, Don and Marsha and walked around the store together. I also took a few photographs of Dallas with his parents.
Funny thing, though, Dallas wasn’t really in North Vernon. He was 15 miles away in Seymour.
Through an ultramodern marvel that Goecker helped create, a Beam Remote Presence System, he was in essence in two places at once.
“Wow, that is amazing,” said one customer at the northside store who saw the robotic-like device while I was there. Other customers were also doing double and triple takes.
“The people coming in this morning seem to like it,” chuckled Don Goecker, a justifiably proud papa.

Read the rest of the article in the PlainDealer-Sun.

If you are one of those who wishes they could help in the next robotics revolution, follow up here and apply with your CV (resume for you Americans!) a-lab@aldebaran-robotics.com. Be sure to include the following:

• Resume with references
• One paragraph summary of research background
• List of published papers, currently submitted papers and patents
• Media and dissemination references if available
• Date of availability

Their blog post follows:

A-Lab Launch: we are recruiting!

Aldebaran Robotics, the company that commercializes the Nao robot, is launching the A-Lab, a fundamental and applied research unit dedicated to advances in five keys domains: Artificial Intelligence, Mechatronics,Dynamic Control, Interaction, Systems.

We are now recruiting young PhDs and senior researchers for permanent positions in Paris covering the following areas of expertize:

Developmental Robotics: sensorimotor grounding and language acquisition (lexicon, grammar, compositional actions).
Keywords: developmental, embodiment, grounding, language games, imitation, intrinsic motivation, learning, categorization, joint attention, social robotics.

Interaction: audio and video signal processing and dialog management in interactive robots. Machine learning, new sensor integration methods.
Keywords: gesture recognition, emotions, voice modulation, world representation, dialog engine, task learning, sound optimization, image segmentation, sensor modeling.

Mechatronics: design of new actuators, sensors and smart dynamical structures.
Keywords: actuators, sensors, dynamic structures, 3D sensors, thermic sensors.

Dynamics: intelligent and advanced body control in key dynamics areas: walking and navigation, grasping and postures.
Keywords: walk, VSLAM, navigation, grasping, procedural motion.

Systems: system design and integration, new languages for robotics, operating systems.
Keywords: software safety, programming languages, URBI/urbiscript, architecture and middleware.

Candidates working on mechatronics, interaction, dynamics and systems will be involved in applied research for the development of key technologies directly integrated in the Aldebaran Robotics product line. They will work in tight collaboration with the production teams.

The Artificial Intelligence group (AI Lab), working on developmental robotics, is a more fundamental research group with long term goals in the continuity of academics research labs. Its goal is to make progress in the understanding and modeling of the mechanisms of development and learning in embodied intelligent robots.

All candidates will be involved in collaborative projects, and will contribute to research valorization in the context of joint labs, partnerships and commercial applications.

Location: Paris in Aldebaran Robotics headquarters
Your Profile: PhD, computer science background (good level in C++/python), excellent level in English, strong vision, references & publications requested.

Companies that showed off their wares seem to breakdown into five general groupings:

• vacuum cleaning robots (or base robots),
• larger humanoid robots,
• military or recon robots,
• general robotic features that can be used separately or in conjunction with other systems (e.g., arms, hands, cameras),
• and other aggregators/distributors of robotic solutions.

But, in our exploration of the event, one of our team wore their Willow Garage jacket they owned from a previous era.   In doing so, a great many people would suddenly come up to us and say “How is everything at Willow Garage?” or say “I heard things are changing at Willow Garage, all good?” After informing them of the former employment with Willow, we asked what was causing such a strong reaction to the change they heard about.

Overall, the tone was both wistful and cautious.

Everyone commented on the tremendous impact Willow has had on the robotics community worldwide. One pervasive idea that seemed to permeate the event was that Willow became a sort of Shangri-la of robotics research where researchers could add contributions to the world of robotics and be recognized worldwide.  Since Willow nurtured ROS, the PR2 and other Open Source initiatives (e.g., OpenCV) along with the free-wheeling robotics research that have come out of Willow, everyone said that the Willow Garage community have forever changed the robotics landscape.

Fear of Lemmings

The reason for the concern is around a fear that the loss of funding for Willow would potentially signal to other investors that robotics, as an industry, was cooling and that other investment may not appear.  Additionally, in eschewing the pure research direction of its past, discovery, creativity and innovation might evaporate for the all-mighty profits.

We think that there are a couple of answers to these fears.

First off, as we described before, the changing of direction of funding for Willow Garage is not a bad thing.  One of the allures of Willow was the freedom to create without limits — not tied to specific tasks or goals, only the selection of the researchers who came to Willow determined the potential direction of the research efforts.  But, research for research sake is something that both well-healed philanthropists, governments and (potentially) large religious organizations are best able to support as patrons.  Other entities with constraints often need more tangible returns-on-investment.

For example, Aldebaran is building the A-Lab (headed by long-time friend Jean-Christophe) focusing on, as put in their recent News page, “fundamental and applied research unit dedicated to advances in five keys domains: Artificial Intelligence, Mechatronics, Dynamic Control, Interaction, Systems.”  Instead of allowing for free-wheeling research to the researchers content, the teams at the A-Lab will focus on the constraints the company has — and leverage the resources of the greater organization to test and develop solutions to their business needs.  It would be their hope to grow their business model and apply their capital where the product can grow, not simply in a more exploratory manner.

So, should Willow Garage lose its research arm?

That is an interesting question.  Recently, a group from Willow left to create Unbounded Robotics, which is rumoured to be creating an alternative research robot.  Additionally, with the connections it has built as both a custom manufacturing operation and a sales function with regard to the PR2, the remaining teams at Willow can more than likely create another robotic development company.  But research needs funding — and we all know that pure research funding is not an easy thing.

Should the government get involved?  The National Robotics Initiative is happening and is getting a public/private partnership going to jump-start the efforts.  Should wealthy interests get involved beyond the original investors?  Paul Allen famously created Interval Research with Dr. David Liddle which was famously given the request “give me less R and more D”.

We think that there are a number of people who can help support the mission of Willow Garage if they choose to support the research arm.  As idealists, we think that Willow should have the chance to have the research arm revamp and revise — this time with researchers and developers that work in tandem and feed off each other like Sergey, Larry and Scott did.

Will someone assist in the grand vision and keep the engine of robotic innovation going?

• Telepresence robots: Your alter ego on wheels – one of our editors worked the The Economist in this story, breaking down the details behind the burgeoning remote presence market.
• Robot Lets You Be in Two Places at Once (Discovery News) – Suitable Technologies decided to take their Beams to SxSW and had at least three booth Beams conversing with passer-bys during the Interaction event.  And one of us got to pilot around the event and took some great photos.
  

  The technology, which the company refers to as remote presence, is designed to enable communication between people separated by distance but who also want more flexibility in sharing a physical space.

  “Video conferencing is cool, walking is cool, so together this is very cool,” said Suitable Technologies CEO Scott Hassan.

  In fact, Suitable Technologies sees its competition as face-to-face interactions rather than other teleconferencing services such as Skype.

  “With a video conference you’re stuck on the wall, but this is mobile,” Hassan said.

• Collection of Remote Presence links including SmartPlanet,
• vGo has been getting a great deal of milage out of their Verizon commercial and showing how the friendly solution can help students in schools in places like Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, West Seneca, New York and Knox City, Texas.
• Anybots at FutureMed 2013 – long-time friend Daniel Kraft and his brethren had an exciting time with FutureMed this year and Tim from Anybots got to discuss how remote presence could be used in telemedicine.  Watch the video below:

• Our friends at RoboLand found a terrific thesis by Researcher Giovanni Mosiello from the Department of Technology at Örebro University, in Sweden which chooses to extend pilot navigation via Augmented Reality. Worth a read here.
• Additionally, our friends at the Microsoft Research Labs have also been experimenting with pilot navigation, this time using the Kinect to do a simple following action (as often done in most robotic research). From their abstract, they are able to show that the “person following” behavior is perceived as safe and socially acceptable by remote users — so much so that all 10 pilots who took part in the research preferred our autonomous following method over manual piloting. See their paper here.

Willow Garage is changing
Submitted by Steve Cousins on Mon, 02/11/2013 – 23:18
Willow Garage has decided to enter the world of commercial opportunities with an eye to becoming a self-sustaining company. This is an important change to our funding model.

The success of the PR2 personal robot and of ROS will continue. There are close to 50 PR2 robots in the world and Willow Garage support of the platform will not diminish. And of course, ROS, as an open source platform, will continue independent of our business model choices. In addition to Willow Garage, its supporters include the Open Source Robotics Foundation and all the other contributors in the ROS community (academic, industrial and individual) who have made it the platform of choice for Robotics.

Erico and Evan got the news from various current and former Willow employees, so we assume that other members of the Willow Garage family were surprised.

But for our money, it sounds like Willow Garage is evolving as it should.

Steve and Scott

Willow Garage History

Scott Hassan founded Willow Garage in late 2006 to accelerate the development of non-military robotics and advance open source robotics software. Named as an homage to the garages that spawned the computer industry, he envisioned an innovative research lab infused with the engineering expertise of a product development company. The goal was simple: to push the frontiers of robotics, both scientifically and commercially. Scott put together a funding package with the unique goals of impact first, return on capital second, with the strong belief that success in the first goal (impact) would provide plenty of opportunities to excel at the second (return on capital). [emphasis ours]

Scott handpicked Steve Cousins to lead Willow into this focus on impact and research first, to enable the development of technologies that were not tied to DOE, DARPA or other military sources of funding.

Over two years ago, Willow had their PR2 launch which showed off the first 11 PR2s going off into the world to help forward robotics. Scott was enthusiastic about the future of robotics and PR2 started the effort (see this video).

Since then, Willow has spun out the Texai project (now at Suitable Tech selling the Beam) with Scott being the CEO of Suitable.

Since then, Willow has spun out the Open Source Robotics Foundation keepers of ROS, Industrial Perception, hiDOF — all given capital funding from Willow Garage (see here, here and here).

So, since the major projects have been spun out — with the exception of the PR2 or the PR2 SE or TurtleBot. And one of the lines from Steve’s post stands out:

The success of the PR2 personal robot and of ROS will continue. There are close to 50 PR2 robots in the world and Willow Garage support of the platform will not diminish. And of course, ROS, as an open source platform, will continue independent of our business model choices. [emphasis ours]

So, it would be our thought that the research-side of Willow Garage may be shrinking and the entity may continue to drive forward the dream of a low-cost, high-functioning robot like the PR2 SE or the much desired PR3 (yeah, never know if it may happen).

While we may not get details any time soon on whether or not the research side of Willow is going to change, the impact of Willow and her alumni will still reverberate across the robotics world. A hearty applause should be given to the teams of people that both Scott and Steve were able to bring to that little hamlet in Menlo Park.

(h/t to Fred Nikoghar and Tim Lenihan of Anybots)