Care-O-bot gets an upgrade, now flirtier and available with optional second arm

The Care-O-bot 4 is designed to be an affable service robot on a budget

Image Gallery (8 images)

Six and a half years after the previous iteration, the Fraunhofer Institute has released an update to Care-o-bot. The affordable service robot for personal and professional use has been made it more agile, more modular and much more personable?, ?bringing science fiction fantasy a little closer to reality.

The third-generation Care-O-bot announced back in 2008 was an advanced piece of hardware for its time that could fetch you drinks, place emergency calls and host videoconferences, but which had the rather uninteresting appearance and demeanor of a timid, somber-looking butler.

Compared to its predecessor, Care-O-bot 4 is a significant step forward. This latest iteration is much more agile, having gone from 20 degrees of freedom to 31 (including spherical joints at the torso and neck to let it bend and twist with grace). Its communication skills have also been revamped, and it can now convey information through a touchscreen, body gestures, sounds, text-to-speech, and even a laser pointer embedded in its arm.

When pitted against the ten-fingered, backwards-running, one-leg hopping Asimo the Care-O-bot doesn’t look all that impressive, but nor was it ever meant to compete with Honda’s flagship robot. Unlike its pricey Japanese cousin, Care-O-bot was designed from the start to be as economical as possible, with large portions of its internals made out of folding sheet metal and one of its standard sensors being a stock Microsoft Xbox Kinect.

The robot consists of six independent and configurable modules, from the rolling base, which can work by itself as an autonomous transportation unit, to either one or two robotic arms with seven degrees of freedom each and that, besides the laser pointer mentioned above, also include time-of-flight (TOF) cameras to measure real-time distance from its surroundings.

"Customers can choose between a wide range of sensors," Fraunhofer Institute’s Dr. Ulrich Reiser tells us. "You might choose to have color cameras in the front and a 3D TOF camera in the back, or several 3D-TOF cameras. The sensor ring is equipped with its own computation unit and receives power supply and Ethernet via standard connector, so you might have several sensor rings and exchange them for different applications."

The Care-O-bot could find use as a high-tech waiter, a mobile information center in museums, stores and airports, to collect and deliver objects or, like its predecessor, as a mobile personal and medical assistant.

Based on their experience from previous iterations, Reiser and team found that social interaction was crucial to making their robot more compelling, engaging, and acceptable to humans. That is why this time around Care-O-bot 4 tries to detect the current mood in its surroundings and react accordingly, communicating emotions (as facial expressions) through a touchscreen. In other words, if you believe its creators, Care-O-bot won’t just care for you as a patient?, ?it’ll care about you too.

Dr. Reiser tells us that battery capacity is 30 Ah (at around 48 V) and will typically last between three and five hours, depending on factors like the specific application and the number of degree of movements used.

Pricing will be announced within the next two months, and sales are set to begin in the second half of the year. The mobile base will be available by the end of the second quarter; the torso, arms and head modules in the third trimester; and the spherical joints by the end of the year. The Care-O-bot 4 will be initially available in Europe only and expand to the US later on.

You can watch the video below for a short demo (warning: includes robot-to-human flirting).

Source: Care-O-bot

自動(dòng)翻譯僅供參考

Care-O-bot護(hù)理機(jī)器人 Care-O-BOT得到升級(jí)，現(xiàn)在flirtier并提供可選的第二arm

護(hù)理-O-BOT 4被設(shè)計(jì)成在預(yù)算

圖片廊（8圖像）

在上一次迭代后的六年半，弗勞恩霍夫研究所發(fā)布了CARE-O-BOT的更新。為個(gè)人和專業(yè)使用的負(fù)擔(dān)得起的服務(wù)機(jī)器人已經(jīng)使它更靈活，更模塊化，更個(gè)性化？？讓科幻幻想更貼近現(xiàn)實(shí)。

第三代保健-O-BOT宣布早在2008年是一個(gè)先進(jìn)的硬件為它的時(shí)候，可以把你的飲料，地方緊急呼叫和主機(jī)視頻會(huì)議的，但它有一個(gè)膽小，憂郁，望著管家的相當(dāng)無(wú)趣的外表和舉止。

相比前作，護(hù)理-O-BOT 4是顯著的進(jìn)步。這個(gè)最新的迭代更加靈活，在經(jīng)歷來(lái)自20個(gè)自由度的31個(gè)（包括球形關(guān)節(jié)在軀干和頸部讓它彎曲和扭轉(zhuǎn)風(fēng)度）。它的通信能力也得到了改進(jìn)，并且現(xiàn)在可以通過(guò)觸摸屏，身體的姿態(tài)，聲音，文本到語(yǔ)音，甚至一個(gè)激光筆嵌入其臂傳達(dá)信息。

當(dāng)針對(duì)該十進(jìn)站手指，向后跑，單腿跳躍Asimo機(jī)器人照料-O-機(jī)器人看起來(lái)并不是那么令人印象深刻，但也不是以往任何時(shí)候都意味著本田的旗艦機(jī)器人相抗衡。不像它的昂貴的日本表弟，護(hù)理-O-BOT從一開始就設(shè)計(jì)得經(jīng)濟(jì)越好，用它的內(nèi)部開出的折疊金屬片以及其標(biāo)準(zhǔn)傳感器是A股微軟的Xbox Kinect的一個(gè)大的部分。

該機(jī)器人包括六個(gè)獨(dú)立的和可配置的模塊，從軋制的基礎(chǔ)上，其可通過(guò)本身工作作為一個(gè)自治傳輸單元，以一個(gè)或兩個(gè)機(jī)械手臂與七度各自由的情況，并且除了上面提到的，也對(duì)激光指示器包括飛行時(shí)間（TOF）相機(jī)來(lái)測(cè)量的實(shí)時(shí)距離及其周邊地區(qū)。

“客戶可以多種傳感器之間進(jìn)行選擇，”弗勞恩霍夫研究所的烏爾里?！べ嚌舍t(yī)生告訴我們。 “你可能會(huì)選擇有正面彩色攝像機(jī)和3D TOF相機(jī)的背部，或幾個(gè)3D-TOF相機(jī)，傳感器環(huán)配備有自己的計(jì)算單元和接收電源和以太網(wǎng)通過(guò)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的接口，所以你可能有幾個(gè)傳感器環(huán)和交換不同的應(yīng)用?！?/p>

護(hù)理-O-機(jī)器人可以找到作為一個(gè)高科技的服務(wù)員，博物館，商店和機(jī)場(chǎng)的移動(dòng)信息中心，收集和傳遞對(duì)象或，像它的前身，作為一個(gè)移動(dòng)的個(gè)人和醫(yī)療助理。

根據(jù)從以前的迭代他們的經(jīng)驗(yàn)，賴澤和團(tuán)隊(duì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，社會(huì)交往是至關(guān)重要的使他們的機(jī)器人更引人注目，有魅力，并接受人類。這就是為什么圍繞護(hù)理-O-機(jī)器人4嘗試這個(gè)時(shí)間來(lái)檢測(cè)當(dāng)前情緒在其周圍，并相應(yīng)地作出反應(yīng)，通過(guò)觸摸屏進(jìn)行通信的情緒（如面部表情）。換句話說(shuō)，如果你相信它的創(chuàng)造者，護(hù)理-O-機(jī)器人將不只是關(guān)心你作為一個(gè)病人？，？它會(huì)在乎你了。

博士。賴澤告訴我們，電池容量是30阿（約48伏），將3到5小時(shí)之間通常會(huì)持續(xù)，這取決于如具體應(yīng)用和運(yùn)動(dòng)的使用程度的數(shù)量的因素。

定價(jià)將在接下來(lái)的宣布兩個(gè)月了，銷售將開始在今年下半年。移動(dòng)基地將可在第二季度末;軀干，手臂和頭模塊，在孕晚期;與球形接頭在今年的末端。護(hù)理-O-BOT 4將首先在歐洲上市僅擴(kuò)展到美國(guó)以后

你可以看下面的視頻進(jìn)行一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)短的演示。（警告：包括機(jī)器人對(duì)人的挑逗）.