Softbank Sells Controlling Stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai

Interesting development.   In TechExplore.  Had not recalled their connection with Google.

SoftBank sells controlling stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai

Japan's SoftBank Group will sell an 80 percent stake in robotics firm Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, the trio said Friday, in a deal that values the US company at $1.1 billion. 

Boston Dynamics has drawn huge attention with viral videos of its humanoid and dog-like robots, whose uncanny movements and impressive tricks have helped stoke fears that androids could one day become a threat to humans.

The engineering firm was founded in 1992 and bought in 2013 by Google, which sold the company on to SoftBank three years ago.

The Japanese conglomerate will keep a 20 percent stake through one of its affiliates and will work with South Korea's Hyundai to "propel development and commercialisation of advanced robots", the companies said.  ... " 

Apple Using Boston Robotics Spot

 Been following various uses ot the 'Spot'  robot.   And how it makes its telepresence felt by its new subjects.    Here  new and different application, working with the construction of a building, apparently during the design and construction phase. 

Meet Apple’s telepresence robot

In APPLE HOLIC  By Jonny Evans, Computerworld

A Boston Dynamics robot called Spot is helping Apple and its architects design a new HQ at an iconic location.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced every industry to improvise and innovate to build agility and resilience to get through the crisis. Now, a key Apple partner is using telepresence robots as it leads construction of a Apple’s new headquarters in London. .... 

Apple’s billion-dollar Californian headquarters is somewhat under-used at the moment, but the company continues to invest in new centers worldwide as it continues to experience global growth. Apple in the UK has taken over a large part of the globally recognized Battersea Power Station for its new UK headquarters.   ... " 

Japanese Robots Learn Food Prep: Resemble Kangaroos

Note the proposal that at first the food will be prepared by humans  remotely, and those motions will be learned.  Then the system will use that learning to prepare foods afterwards.   By robots resembling kangaroos.

Japanese Robot to Clock In at Convenience Store
Reuters
Tim Kelly; Kevin Buckland
July 15, 2020

In August, a robot from Japanese developer Telexistence will prepare food at a FamilyMart convenience store, with plans to expand its deployment to about 20 outlets in Tokyo by 2022. Human operators initially will operate the Model T robots remotely with virtual reality goggles and motion-sensor controls until their artificial intelligence can learn to mimic human movements. Telexistence uses human operators to train its robots, which is far less expensive than complex programming. The Model T vaguely resembles a kangaroo, a design choice meant to put shoppers at ease by avoiding a more unsettling human like appearance.  ..." 

Home Robotics with a Reaching Tele-Assistant

What looks like a minimalist robot, but with a great reach.  Evidently primarily for tele-operation. And thinking about it, reach is a big component of convenience in a home, say for assisting a disabled person.  Unclear if it is enough to be a universal assistant.   Also potential for other functionality.

Ex-Google robotics head unveils automated home assistant    by Peter Grad , in Tech Xplore

The former head of Google's robotics division has unveiled a new robot named Stretch that he hopes will prove to be an economical and handy assistant around the home.

And it's no stretch to say that it could provide a blueprint for future efforts in practical, low-cost automated devices to assist with household chores.

Aaron Edsinger, along with partner Charlie Kemp of the Georgia Tech Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, say simplicity was key. They devised a lightweight machine consisting of a wheel base, a three-foot-high center pole and a telescoping touch-sensitive arm that, as its name suggests, stretches, and intelligently grabs and handles objects. It can carry items weighing up to three pounds.

"What sets this robot apart is its extraordinary reach, which is why we named it Stretch," said Edsinger. The arm, which moves easily along the center pole from top to bottom, can stretch out about 20 inches from its base.  ...  "

See also:  Home Robot Control for People With Disabilities
Georgia Tech's augmented-reality interface gives control over complex robots to the people who need them   .... By Evan Ackerman

See also Tele-operation video examples at:   https://hello-robot.com/

Cisco's Ava Telepresence Robot

Saw something similar demonstrated at the Cisco smart home innovation center in the late 90s.  Somewhat surprising that this coming for them now, would like to see more. Perhaps the time is now right.  Note 'telepresence', e.g remote human controlled, not autonomous.  Also, Ava was mentioned here before in 2018, see the tag below.

Webex Powered telepresence robot.
Collaboration
Ava: A Virtual Best Friend
Madisen Andersen

The Customer Story blog series highlights how Cisco’s collaboration technology has helped customers solve their business challenges. Learn how Cisco is meeting customers where they are helping them achieve their business goals.

An Easy and Fast Way to Stay Connected with Ava

 Wouldn’t it be great to have a way for patients in hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, and other long-term care facilities to stay connected with their loved ones during the current time and beyond? Connected in a way that it seems they are together, in person?  After all, being with family is what helps us get through tough times. Unfortunately, during these recent challenging times, most of these facilities have been forced to close their doors to their patient’s loved ones.  

Strict rules put in place have made it nearly impossible for patients to have any in-person interaction with their families. So how can healthcare facilities enable patients to communicate and connect with their families in a secure, safe, and simple way? 

Fortunately, there is a way: Ava.  Ava is like a friend to everyone in need.    ... "

Telepresence Robotics Acquisition

We looked at Telepresence for remote meeting presence or interaction with plant systems that benefited from remote control movement, voice interactions, image capture and control.   Not necessarily automated operation. At the time the capabilities were inadequate.

Today, Blue Ocean Robotics, a Danish robotics company, is announcing the acquisition of Suitable Technologies’ Beam telepresence robot business. Blue Ocean has been a Beam partner for five years, but now they’re taking things over completely.

The Beam robot began its life as an internal project within Willow Garage. It was spun out in 2012 as Suitable Technologies, which produced a couple different versions of the Beam. As telepresence platforms go, Beam is on the powerful and expensive side, designed primarily for commercial and enterprise customers. 

The most recent news from Suitable was the introduction of the BeamPro 2, which was announced over a year ago at CES 2018. The Suitable Tech website still lists it as “coming soon,” and our guess is that it’s now up to Blue Ocean to decide whether to go forward with this new version. Blue Ocean calls itself a “robot venture factory.” I’m not entirely sure what a “robot venture factory” is but Blue Ocean describes itself thusly:  .... " 

Telepresence for the Home with Assistant

We examined a number of telepresence solutions for office environments,  trying to allow people to casually inhabit new environments,  office or business, or industrial, without going there.   With the user given the option of what they saw, who they spoke to,  how they gathered information.   It never worked well.  The recent 'Facebook Portal' ads where the device could follow the face of a remote person also made me think of other social aspects.  Now a device that aims to insert an assistant.    Not sure that the current skills in 'assists' would be very useful, but could think of others that would be.

Robotemi is adding Alexa to its personal telepresence robot
It'll basically be a rolling Echo Show.

By Nick Summers, @nisummers  in Engadget.
Telepresence for the home

Temi (pronounced "Timmy," I think) is a personal robot with a 10-inch tablet for a head. It can play music and videos, control your smart home hardware and handle other basic assistant stuff, such as ordering takeout. In short, Temi is a friendlier telepresence robot for the home. Today, the company is announcing plans to integrate Amazon's Alexa assistant and, by extension, offer "Echo Show-like experiences" through its LCD screen. Now, Temi already offers video calls to mobile devices and other Temi robots. Echo-enabled calls, however, would increase the number of devices -- and by extension, it's usefulness -- that Temi owners can call. .... "

Telepresence Robotics with Autonomy

Been a while since I  have seen novel telepresence robotics.   Here is an Ava Robotic telepresence system with autonomous navigation.  We experimented with meeting attentendance telepresence.

Ava Robotics Introduces Autonomous Telepresence Robot
Founded by ex-iRobot engineers, this startup is building a remote presence robot powered by sophisticated sensors and autonomous navigation   By Evan Ackerman in IEEE Robotics

Seven years ago, iRobot introduced us to Ava, a sort of tech demonstrator designed to show how robots were capable of doing things like—well, the company wasn’t entirely sure, but telepresence was one of the ideas. The robot’s autonomous navigation was certainly impressive, and Ava could avoid moving obstacles at the speed of a brisk walk, which wasn’t something we’d seen a lot of back in 2011.

In 2012, iRobot announced RP-VITA, a medical telepresence robot based on the Ava platform. And in 2013, iRobot and Cisco collaborated on the Ava 500, a commercial telepresence system with integrated autonomous navigation. We haven’t heard too much about it since then, but today a startup called Ava Robotics is coming out of stealth mode to announce its plans to bring the technology behind Ava to market.

Ava Robotics, based in Cambridge, Mass., was founded by former employees of iRobot, which holds a minority position in the startup. Ava has licensed some key remote presence technology from iRobot and wants to (re?)launch the Ava platform as a “new video collaboration solution that offers users ‘practical teleportation’ with the ability to transform remote work and site visits.” A telepresence robot, in other words.   ... " 

Immersive Terf

Immersive Terf.  Was reminded of Qwaq, which we examined for 3D Immersive collaboration.   To provide a virtual-world style collaboration.   Is it useful to have cartoon-like figures representing you and your collaborating colleagues, to provide an avatar inhabiting world with spaces that represent real conference spaces?  And is this more efficient than using advanced video driven spaces like Cisco's Telepresense? 

Telepresence Robots

These robots should be called 'minimal presence portable robotics',  we looked at them to test the idea of having someone who was very remote introduced to a team in a unique way.   They have lots of problems.  We discovered most of these in our tests.  The article is quite good and complete, covering several devices, and exposing many of their issues.

In particular that the remote person has to be trained on the device and wastes most of their time just navigating and engaging.  And people don't engage well with them, end up just hiding.  Unless there is a very clear need to move about, like oberserving some detailed experience,  like a store layout, you are better off just having a stationary video camera somewhere.   This might seem like a cute idea, but test carefully before you buy a fleet.

The Best Telepresence Robot
After spending 20 hours researching telepresence robots and testing two of the most promising models in office and home settings, we don’t think these devices are ready for prime time. But if you want a telepresence robot to give remote employees a physical presence in your office, the Suitable Technologies Beam Enhanced is the only bot that’s reliable and user-friendly enough to consider. .... " 

Tele Cooking, Personal Learning

Teaching Italian cooking using telepresence.   As a long time amateur cook, nice to see the example. We have had seen visual expertise delivered for a long time.  How does the movement to the interactively virtual provide additonal value?  Deeper personalization too.  Connections to applicable knowledge too.  May be learning there.

Audi Telepresence Robotics

Maintenance was an area we looked at for tele presence and augmented reality.  Overlay blueprints and manuals over a machine for making update and repair more efficient.  Audi is doing this for repair.   In CWorld.

Lack of Broadband Limits Telemedicine

 In CWorld: 

A lack of broadband service is limiting the deployment of telemedicine services in some places of the U.S., and not just remote rural areas, some experts say.

Panasonic of North America, while providing Internet-based heart monitoring services for elderly residents of the New York City area, found several places were there were no wired broadband, Wi-Fi or strong mobile signals available, Todd Rytting, CTO for the company, told a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday.

The SmartCare monitoring service significantly reduced the numbers of heart patients who had to return to the hospital, but "the biggest problem we faced was the lack of broadband to some of our citizens," Rytting said. Some potential users of the service couldn't get a broadband connection in "downtown New York City," he added. .... "

Rural Telemedicine

Lots of news out there on using video conferencing systems for Telemedicine.  Some hospital systems are starting to use it broadly to extend their reach, especially for rural applications:

" ... A growing number of South Dakota health care providers are being assisted by a 24-hour emergency medicine hub based in Sioux Falls that uses two-way audio and video feeds.

The operator, Avera Health, has a telemedicine network that includes 86 hospitals in seven states in the West and Midwest. It expects to have contracts with 100 facilities by the end of the year.

The rapid expansion in telemedicine has led facilities to link up with providers well beyond their immediate region. ....   "

Telepresence via Mobile Robotics

Story of the visit of a conference via a mobile robot.  The idea is simple, practical to a certain degree.   Has been mocked in TV ads. Not quite the same experience as being there, but there has also been considerable increase in just using web conferences for the same idea.  We examined the idea for maintenance support in plants, but the cost was too high at the time and added another layer of maintenance.  The article here links to video of the experience. Device used was from Double Robotics.  Shown at the right.

Does this mean we can all have doubles, or more?  Of course this is just the earth-bound kind, the drones have now arrived as well.  Easier telepresence  is here.

Augmented Collaboration: Cisco Spring Roll

Some of this discovered rather late, but Cisco provides new a prototype of collaboration features for its Telepresence brand.  Called Spring Roll.  Eweek discusses.  And a demonstration.  Collaborative and interactive sharing of data is a particular interest in the enterprise.  A curved screen is featured, but that is not enough.

You need to provide focus on the task at hand, and the best focus today is data.   See in particular work done with Business Sphere. Telepresence does not appear to be addressing this strongly, but should.  It deals with the display aspects and not interaction with the data.   Send me more if you have more about possibilities regarding collaborative data in Telepresence, or elsewhere.

See also in BizJournals.  And more on the prototype.

Home Telepresence Robotics

In IEEE Spectrum.  I recall seeing these proposed for conferences, but never saw one in operation.  We examined something similar for warehouse inventory.  Appears very cheap ... but would it work well?  How could it be used in the retail aisle?

" .... At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, IEEE Spectrum got a peek at the newest telepresence robot from Silicon Valley robotics startup Suitable Technologies. It's called the Beam+, and while it does just about everything that the original Beam can do, the new Beam+ wasn't created for offices or conference settings—it's designed to be used at home. A person who's away from home or lives far away can remotely connect to the robot, drive it around, see what it sees, and talk and interact with family and friends. Suitable is offering the first thousand Beam+ robots for US $995, with units expected to start shipping in the middle of this year. Would you use a telepresence robot at home? ... " 

Telepresence Robotics in the Office

In IEEE Spectrum:  Cisco and iRobot working to produce a telepresence robot.  Conceptually an appealing idea, but I wonder about the practicality before robotic systems are more autonomous.  The proposed system seems to be remotely driven.  Experienced some uni task systems in the office halls of the enterprise that were less than successful.    " ... One of the biggest companies in robotics has teamed up with one of the biggest in telepresence to create a new remote collaboration robot. iRobot and Cisco announced today they are working together to develop a robot called Ava 500 that can autonomously drive around an office and offers crisp HD video experience. The two companies, which are demonstrating the new robot at a trade show this week in Florida, say it will be available early next year (no details on price yet some reports say the robot will cost around US $2,000 to $2,500 per month to lease). The Ava 500 blends technologies from both companies: iRobot has built a capable autonomous navigation platform that it's been integrating into its remote presence robots; and networking giant Cisco is a major provider of video telepresence systems to the corporate market (and to Jack Bauer). Telepresence robots designed to let off-site workers participate in meetings and visit remote locations are becoming increasingly popular. Offerings vary from streamlined models like the Double to sophisticated and more costly robots like iRobot's RP-VITA, which can be used in hospitals. Other remote presence robots include Jazz, Vgo, QB, and Beam. ... " 

Telepresence Healthcare

Brought to my attention by Mark J Perry.  Description and link to a video.  This addresses remote healthcare in an enclosed kiosk..  In the early days of our retail center development the major vendors we worked with believed that most things could be serviced via kiosk.  We explored cosmetics examples.   That was before the smartphone.  And now there is a belief that most things can be done with the smartphone.  A similar distraction?  More at Healthspot

Mobile Telepresence

A slick looking idea that combines a robotic base with the telepresence idea. How practical is unclear.  We examined a warehouse tracking idea that used Segways and video cameras to display inventory in a large space.  Not the same thing, but the hardware requirements were cumbersome.  " ... When we say that Double is "iPad-based," it's literal: Double is pretty much just a mobile base for an iPad. You can log into the iPad from any computer or iOS device, and drive the robot around while streaming two-way audio and video lets you talk to people, go sightseeing, or do whatever else you want while remotely inhabiting the body of a robot. The iPad can be extended vertically from three and a half to five feet to maintain eye level with people sitting or standing, and the Segway-style base uses high-efficiency motors to zip around for up to eight hours on a charge. It's a looker, too, with a futuristic, minimalist design ... "