The idea of a mobile robot to provide assistance either in the home, office or in more hostile environments (e.g. bomb-disposal or nuclear reactors) has existed for many years and such systems are available today. Unfortunately, they are typically expensive and by no means ubiquitous in the way that 1950s and 60s science fiction would have had us believe.
The major limitations to including robots in homes and offices are the infrastructure changes they require. Computer vision however means that robots can be monitored from just a few inexpensive cameras and the recent availability of wireless network solutions has decimated the infrastructure they demand.
The final step to the package is how humans are to interact with such a system. It may be that people wish to interact with their robot either “face to face”, via a home or office workstation or even using their mobile telephone on the train. Operations may then be invoked on our robot from anywhere in the world and it is functionality that increases the possible applications by orders of magnitude.
For example, Household robot. Imagine that you have a dog at home. Many people’s pet is able to alert them if there is an intruder in the home, but how many can do it whilst you are at work? And how many can pass a message to the kids that you’re going to be late home?
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