Robot Colleague
In the project Robot Colleague researchers at Mälardalen University continue to strive for easier, more flexible and efficient robotics solutions. Researchers investigate how to program robots with speech and gestures, instead of using traditional programming.
Baran Cürüklü and Robot Colleague.
Studies show that companies with approximately 25–30 employees often cannot invest in robots because it is difficult to program them. This is something the Robot Colleague research project will tackle. The goal is to get robots to interact with people via speech and gestures.
“Robot Colleague is an ordinary industrial robot that we have modified with regard to the software,” says Baran Cürüklü, lecturer at Mälardalen University. “We have written an interface for the robot that allows you to speak to it. You can also gesticulate on a screen, and even send text messages or write ordinary text via a computer. The aim is to avoid having to program the robot.”
“As an example, you can tell the robot to pick up all red objects and place them in a special box. It takes a few minutes to get the robot to do something that would take a programmer 30–40 hours to achieve.”
Many possible applications
“There are also other applications of interest,” says Baran Cürüklü . “When robotic manufacturers sell their robots, they send off sales reps who are experts at selling products, even though they often do not know how to use the technology. Using our system, sales staff can show what the robot can do during a meeting. The technology can also serve as a mentor with the robot becoming the instructor for new users.”
A functioning prototype is to be available for testing in the second half of 2011. If research heads in the right direction, Baran Cürüklü believes that it will also be possible to add images, CAD drawings and job descriptions to the robot’s camera so that it can reprogram itself.
Robotdalen has financed the project from the start. It was one of the subprojects of
Robotics for SMEs – the research project, and ran from 2006-2009 under the name Human Robot Interaction. The project entered its second phase in 2010 and was renamed Robot Colleague.