Most often we tend to associate high-end laboratory works or industrial jobs with the term robotics. But when we ask “How can a robot help me?”, we are not really interested to know how a robot in a far away laboratory accomplished a revolutionary task. Rather, we are looking for robots that can make our daily lives easier. In fact, this thought contributes to the rapid growth of the consumer robotics market, where engineers, roboticists, programmers, and designers are continually brainstorming to develop domestic service robot design. Such robots can be used to provide companionship and entertainment, or take care of the sick and injured, or accomplish household chores.
1. Humanoid Service Robots at Your Service
– Romeo was designed to assist the elderly. It can open the doors, climb the stairs, and pick up objects. Thus Romeo can help the elderly to live independently at their homes.
– This humanoid service robot can act as a receptionist, give multilingual speeches, and provide entertainment. It can also accomplish several office chores such as taking out the trash, delivering packages, or watering the plants. It can navigate across the office on its own while helping the workers to carry their items. The inbuilt battery packs keep it online throughout the day.
- Pepper
– This social humanoid robot design can sense human emotions and interact with the humans. It can read facial expressions and listen to the spoken words before responding appropriately. Researchers are considering to use it in nursing homes and hospitals to accompany the patients.
– It is designed to perform a wide range of household-specific chores like operating a vacuum or mop to clean floors, picking something up and keep the items where they belong, etc. Object recognition from multiple angles and interacting with humans are its key features.
2. Specialized Service Robots
Service robots are not necessarily humanoid robots. They can have different shapes and purposes. For example, Leka is a service robot designed like a ball to address the special needs of children. Its lights, sounds, and colors help to engage the children with some learning disabilities. Further, children can play customizable games like color identification, picture matching, etc. Thereby Leka advances the development of specially-abled children.
There are other household robot designs available to accomplish several domestic chores. Though washing machines and dryers have already reduced workload, it still requires a human to load and unload the machines and then to fold and sort the clothing.
The roboticists have long since tried to build a robot that can effectively address this complexity of laundry. As a result, Foldimate and Laundroid – two cabinet like robots are designed that can efficiently fold the laundry with minimal human involvement.
3. Future of Service Robots
The wide popularity of service robot design has led the roboticists to design and develop various forms of robots. With time, robots are breaking the cage of industry and performing various daily chores. For instance, Moley Robotic Kitchen is a cooking service robot that can prepare perfect meals to satiate your appetite. It can even clean up the desk after cooking. Hence the restaurants may not even require multiple chefs to prepare gourmet meals. Can it squeeze the scope of human employment? Or, are we about to see a universe cohabited by humans and robots alike? The future will tell.
Conclusion
We believe this article has helped you to have a wide understanding of service robot design. What is your take about it? Comment below and let us know.
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2020