Ideas and Writings » Robotic

iRobot CEO Colin Angle talks about the future of robotics

Steve — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:46:02 +0000

Angle foresees that robots will soon become omnipresent and amazingly useful in aging populations.

His main point, that robots will soon do the jobs we don’t want to or can’t do, is a quite cleary coming to pass. I asked him if there was a cave mouth epiphany in the home robotics industry and he shook his head. We’ve sold 2.5 million robots, but that’s 1 to 2% of market penetration. The digerati love robots, but our real audience is middle American homemakers.

I can see this as a future goal, but I still believe that the main focus of the robotics industry needs to be better funded segments of the the population for a while. The robotic ideas that I have been working on do focus on machines doing the jobs that humans don’t want to do, or would prefer not to do. Jobs that would be healthier if a machine could do them. I have two robot ideas that would sell well because they will make jobs faster and easier. These ideas should sell well to industries that have the funding to purchase them, and the speed issue alone will give them a great return on investment. Focusing here first will get the whole “robots among us” thing started. People will be talking about how they use a robot in their job, and after a few years it won’t be an unusual thing to want a robot or two at home. This would be the easier transformation of taking robots from the digerati and into the mainstream American households, which is where iRobot and many other companies want to go.

Cubes with laser pointers

James — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:04:46 +0000

Some envision the next generation of sniper to not be much of a rifle sniper at all but rather a target painter with a laser that paints a enemy target for air strikes, possibly unmanned predators. With a miniature cube that can be placed and camouflaged if needed, the cube could be placed at several targets anywhere in the world for later strikes. in fact an unmanned system could land the Cube in the area or even have it delivered via space and dropped in the atmosphere.

So what is the the Cube it would be a device in cube like shape that once landed would have the ability to be mobile no matter what side it landed on. A laser target painter could be sized and thus the size of the cube would differ depending on the range needed to acquire a target.

The Curbee

James — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:49:39 +0000

This idea is one of my favorites to have been working on. This combines several proven teachnologies into one making a awsome trashcan slash robot slash RC.Â Todau i missed taking out the trash as a resultÂ i have tons of flies and more trash than I can put into the can. Now I am stuck with either going to the dump or waiting another week for the teash man to come and pick up the trash, with this idea that will never happen again. intorducing the curbee a trashcan that takes itself to teh curb. It does with with an RC motor installed in the bottom the the can. Once a user starts the curbee and walks it to the curb once it will remember the path taken and always take itself out on trashday via this path. The outter shell of the curbee could be a solar collecter so know charging would be required. We are still working on a few bugs but we should have this thing launched by years end.

Rewind Toolbar via videobot

James — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:39:42 +0000

Woiuld it not be cool, if we could rewind a website back a few hour, days, months, or even years? Alot of time on the front page of Yahoo a news story is there and while I am reading something else or doing a searchÂ I come back to Yahoos front pageÂ and the article is gone. Well with this idea anyone would be able to rewind any website they favorited. I would like to purpose a bot that once a user has favorited a website that bot starts to record thatfwebsited so at anytime that user could rewind that websitee. Should anyone out there in the computer world want to help witht this videobot let me know becasue advertisers would love it since there ads may be seen twice.

Robotic Ideas

Steve — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 05:37:36 +0000

I have some very practical robot / robotic ideas coming out soon.

These robotic ideas can be easily created today. Right now similar machines are already in production. Modifying and combining existing proven technology, these 2 lines of people helper robots should be able to sell in the 100,000 unit range within 2 years. Small investment required to complete the finished / exterior housings for the prototypes. At that point we will create the commercials in house and have 30 second, 60 second, and 30 minute commercials. At this point we would need to know we have enough cash flow to order a lot of parts, and the cash to buy tv (and web) advertising for 6 months. At that point the company should be able to maintain itself, turn great profits, and predict it’s necessary growth as far as production, sales staff, etc.

Why do I think my robot idea is so great? Well, it’s practical. There are plenty of engineers out there making great advancements in the world of robotics. I do not claim to have some new super technology that will make a robot seem like a perfect android. I have an idea for two very useful robots, that many people would want and use right now today. Existing technology can make these easy, I’m talking about quick adaptation and sales, not 10 years of R&D for a chance of having something life like.