Thursday, April 05, 2007

Have a great and safe shopping experience with Reborg-Q

u037028m Azhar Risyad Sunaryo (Picture: Reborg-Q in action) Reborg-Q, product of a Japanese company, ALSOK, is designed to boost security of a place. It can patrol a pre-defined path or controlled by joystick using wheels underneath. While on patrol, the robot will take a look at the surroundings using its sensors that can detect water leaks, fire, or humans. If one of the sensors, for example the fire sensor, is alarmed, the robot will deviate from its path and follow the source. It then sends an alert to the computer in the security room and with four cameras on its head and shoulders, send the video of the problem. The person in the security room will then decide what to do, for example extinguish the fire using fire extinguisher that can be equipped on it. These videos can record anything during its patrol and the image will be sent via wi-fi to the security room. With the help of monitor on its chest, it can also provide various informations, such as the location's map. This will help lost children or for shoppers to find a way to their destination. Armed with a voice synthesizer, it can tell the time, weather or even make a promotional announcement. The robot can also ask for identification using a card reader equipped on its shoulders. With all the applications above, this robot can surely enhance the safety of a building. It indeed gives a new height to the shopping experience.

10 comments:

Assistive said...

I think that such a robot will definitely help enhance the safety but there also a few factor which would effect its usage.
One of these factors may be cost since they would surely be more expensive than humans guarding a building. This would limit its usage to high security buildings.
Another factor maybe its response time during emergencies.

Home said...

Cool robot that may help the security guards to save some work. I feel like its more like a moving CCTV. However if it needs people to control it, why not just let the security guards do the walkaround instead. Moreover, from what I see, the robot cannot travel up stairs and have no hands to press the button for the lift. Thus, mobility is a problem and human may still be better in this area.

Choo Teck Kwang Adrian U036224U

dars.security said...

Hi,

yup, the robot indeed cost some money, according to the source website, it is up to S$3,200.

To Adrian:
According to the source, the robot can also be equipped with functions to control elevator. I am not sure on how this is implemented though, maybe some signal is sent to the elevator's control.

For hands, the robot is equipped with two hands, even though they are small hehehe

Azhar Risyad Sunaryo u037028m

Industry said...

Maybe this robot can be used as a walking billboard putting up advertisments of sales and offers that various shops in the shopping centre would like to offer. this could help recover costs.

Industry said...

Maybe this robot can be used as a walking billboard putting up advertisments of sales and offers that various shops in the shopping centre would like to offer. this could help recover costs.

Ranjan
U036030X

Industry said...

With regards to safety, so far I think the combination of human beings, sensors and cameras still works better than the Reborg-Q.

Xue Chao
U037176U

Anonymous said...

I think if we can combine the navigation functionality of Reborg-Q with the bomb threat detecting robot (from blog entry “bomb-sniffing robots for military use”), we’ll have ourselves a useful guard robot. We can use the services of such robots at the custom, airport or even some important buildings to detect threats. However, I would agree that such robots might not be very practical as compared to a human guard at the moment. These robots have to be able to function without control by men before they can really be practical. Or unless it has some extra functions to detect weapons or gas leakage, that will give such robots advantage over human guard.

Su Shiyan U036793W

dars.security said...

Hi Shiyan,

Wow, great idea! yeah, if this is combined with the bomb sniffing device, it can enhance the safety of a building even more! Hmm great idea :D

Azhar Risyad Sunaryo u037028m

Medical said...

Haha, i agreed that the robot may not seem very practical with the current functions. Human guard is still a cheaper and more usefull alternative. However, development of such robots is still a necessity to reduce its cost and add in more fuctions like the "bomb snifting" mentioned by the previous comment.

Anonymous said...

Haha, i agreed that the robot may not seem very practical with the current functions. Human guard is still a cheaper and more usefull alternative. However, development of such robots is still a necessity to reduce its cost and add in more fuctions like the "bomb snifting" mentioned by the previous comment.

Khoo Yuan Jin
U036997M