Sunday, April 02, 2006

Do you want to buy a home robot?

U0204569 Tan Wen Pin
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. Dread doing the housework after a hard day at work? Is the floor dusty and the carpet smells musky? The solution is here! Join over 1.2 million Roomba owners who have discovered the smarter way to clean. Get a Roomba 4230! At only USD$329, you can programmed Roomba to vacuum your floor and clean your area anytime including the time you go to sleep or go to work! Roomba has a low-profile design that fits under your bed, sofas, and other tight spots where conventional vacuums can’t reach; guaranteeing you a more automated cleaning experiences ever! With sensors, an close feedback loop to the processor controls the movement! Watch the demonstration in the link provided!
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Be surprised by the robot’s intelligence! Its sensors can navigate between walls and furniture legs and adjust for carpet, tile, and wood floors. Be surprised by its virtual wall mechanism that can establish invisible perimeters for vacuuming specific zones by using well defined sensors and internal "area-specifying" algorithms. Fully battery powered, the docking station is easily accessible by the Roomba with a click of the finger. With Roomba, indoor household chores now become a breeze!
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Now what happens if the swimming pool walls get dirty? Get AquaBot! AquaBot is a robotic pool cleaner that scrubs, vacuums and filters any pool in length from floor to waster line. Using an complete computer guidance system to systematically move around the pool, power water jets and rotating scrubbing brushes loosen debris on surfaces down to two microns, 1/50th the width of a human hair. The filters’ large capacity and microscopic cleaning capabilities results in a healthier pool with fewer bag changes and less backwashing. The cleaner can be set to run autonomously, controlled by routine movement instructions by a mini processor. By simply looping of movement instructions, the robot coordinates between its wheels, scrubbing action and clearing actions. A customizable digital timer also allows you to personalize the clearing schedule. For a limited time only, it is now going at USD$1499. If you produce NUS matriculation card, you will get 90% off. OK, just joking.
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Enough for all the cleaning, its time for rest and relax! Get our SCOTY which stands for Smart Companion Operating Technology. Alright, our robot here does not clean, nor does it walk, roll, or make disgusting noises but it greets you, read your email aloud and even play your favourite tune! Standing at two feet tall, it consists of ABS plastic metal frame with a series of illuminated rectangular panels. The two uppermost panels are articulated so that the integrated camera can watch every angel of the room. Built as part of a joint venture with Philips Electronics, SCOTY is designed to be intelligent media hub. Although it has little internal intelligence inside its metal body, it relies mainly on connected PC software. The software provides facial recognition, text-to-speech and media management. By industrial pre-programming "speeches" and "words", SCOTY becomes an articulate piece of masterpiece by matching the word to its database. Anytime you need a piece of music, or want the stock updates, and you are too lazy to get up from that crouch, just “ask” SCOTY and it will read out for you ! Double up as a remote babysitter and surveillance unit. It can scan a room and detect human faces through face recognition software. It even sends an image captured with its video camera and capture video at 10 frames per second. All of the above at the price of USD$399 (Excluding PC)! What are you waiting for! .
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Be prepared to be amazed by our technology gadgets! Embrace technology! If you do not keep up the pace, you will be thrown behind! Do not be afraid of the fast pace of technology advancement, remember that the ultimate aim is to bring about greater convenience and automation for you, a human!
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lin Ming Zheng u0204840
I kind of like the vacuum cleaner robot. Being flat in design, it can clean up hard-to-reach areas under table or bed easily. It can also return to the charging point once it has finished cleaning.
However there isn't much mention about the robot being able to avoid moving obstacle like a human or a pet dog. Maybe it isn't as efficient in that.

Anonymous said...

U020672 - Rajen Suchede

The SCOTY certainly seems something like I would like to own. What would be more interesting is if it could have a large video display unit as well. Then I could just shout out "Play Star Wars" and voila! Lol.. not too difficult to incorporate, adds to the price, but hey, why not! It increases the utility ten folds and makes it a more attractive product to purchase. Cheers!

Security said...

U0307999
ZHAI NING

I always dream about having a brother in my family since young and now if the robotic can really act as human beings then there should be some market.

let's look into the articles carefully. and i will talk about each section accordingly. For speech section of this kind of robotics, how to make them sound like human being is interesting but not critical. Because a dog cannot speak but it can understand you, to understand is more important than speaking.

For Vision, it is really important to locate objects' positions in conditions of that there are no other ways to sense. Why we only use vision, rather than other senses?

For artificial intelligence, this is way we are learning now. i would argue that artificical intelligence may not be the way we should build robotics. We may like to have a person with high human intelligence in our family? even take control of our lives?

It is cool to have a robotic in a family which like a normal person or servent. But what may a robotic really promising is the kind of robotic that really fill the needs of human beings: may not need to speak and may not need to high in IQ.

Hope it will stimulate some future researches.

Industry said...

U0308353 Chua Xiaoping Shona

That sounds interesting.... the robot can do all the housework... that will benefit all the families especially the women in the world. With its flat design, it can clean all the hard to reach areas...

I will definitely consider buying it....

Anonymous said...

just think of something:

what if the household accidently loses something important on the floor such as room key, passport,..., everything will be aten by those creatures!!!.
Will it be smart enough to differentiate the rubbish and the non-rubbish items, and then pick them up, deliverring to certain place by default

Exploration said...

U0205298 Li Si

It is quite amazing! I also feel this little robot should be smart enought to distinguish trash from valuable items, such as important letter or ID.

Security said...

u0204982 Wang Huiwen Karen

The vacuum cleaner robot looks cool. But i was wondering whether it can reach sharp corners. In addition to that, when considering meeting up with obstacle wall, i wonder if it would be smooth enough not to bang into walls and yet able to clean the parts near the wall efficiently. Obstacles may come in different shapes, thus turning around different types of obstacles would be a concern.