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Robots and Space

12/14/2013

In NY at the WTN event, I had the privilige of watching Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory give a talk about Curiosity, NASA's latest robotics mission to Mars. The highlight of the talk was a video called "Seven minutes of Terror" about Curiosity's landing on the Martian surface. An incredible feat of engineering, it required the largest parachute ever deployed, multiple pyrotechnic devices, an aerial "crane" and a landing sequence that would not be out of place in any science fiction movie. The distance between Earth and Mars meant that by the time the team at JPL got any information about the landing, it would have already been over. The movie of the landing can be found here on JPL's website and I would encourage every roboticist to view it - it is inspiring and exhilirating and brings out the hard engineering work required to make a robot perform in the real world - the last 5-10% of any real engineering effort is often harder than the first 90-95%.

Sitting at the table with me during dinner was Dr. William Borucki, leader of the Kepler mission from NASA Ames. Kepler has been trying to find other planets in the universe and has been spectacularly successful. Its the first step in finding out if there's someone else out there. Dr. Borucki won the WTN award that night but was still incredibly modest about his role in such a ground-breaking endeavor. NASA's role in inspiring generations of engineers and scientists is an important one - let's hope that they can continue to do that even in the face of hard economic times.

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Robotics and AI

11/30/2013

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One of my recent trips was to NY where I got a chance to attend the World Technology Network Summit. Its an annual gathering of some of the world's best technologists, policy specialists, educators and others. This turned out to be a completely different experience for me - I am used to traveling to academic conferences and talking with Robotics researchers. Robotics was certainly hot at the summit with several of the awards going to people who were doing robotics to some degree. The highlights of the summit included several talks by some of the world's leading experts in technology.

Eric Brown, of IBM Watson fame, gave a fascinating talk on the progress of Watson. The success of Watson in Jeopardy has re-invigorated interest in AI, a field which has been on the verge of breaking through (just like Robotics). Eric talked about how IBM was now developing Watson for applications in the healthcare industry, mining data from medical records and tests to suggest informed decisions in medical cases. If it succeeds in such a venture, it would be a great example of a successful "tech-transfer" where a promising technology goes on to also be commercially successful. Its also a good example of why technology should never be judged solely by its cover - the Jeopardy task may seem trivial in light of all the more important issues in the world but the ultimate applications of the technology are much more worthwhile.

AI, in a certain form, is already part of our lives, e.g. in Siri and competing similar services. AI also made headlines recently with the claim by Vicarious, a Bay Area startup, that they had beaten Captcha (my former office-mate and colleague from Willow Garage, Bhaskara Marthi, now works at Vicarious). Robotics is the ultimate frontier for AI and we'll have to wait and watch for how long it might take for these two fields to converge (again).

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Trends

11/30/2013

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For the last few weeks, I have been traveling a lot - to Robotics workshops, industry meetings and trade fairs. One of my shorter trips (at least in terms of commute time) was to RoboBusiness 2013 in Santa Clara. RoboBusiness is an annual Robotics trade fair that has traditionally been held in Pittsburgh and moved to the West Coast this year.I was part of the SRI International booth, showing off MoveIt! but also got a chance to walk around and look at some of the other exhibits.

The show brought out a lot of new players in Robotics, especially the new generation of robots aimed at enterprise and commercial customers. Virtual visitors from all over the world could visit the show using the BEAM robots from Suitable Technologies (a Willow Garage spinoff). Also on display were Baxter (from Rethink Robotics), the UR5 from Universal Robots, a Danish company that has been making waves in the US robotics market and the UBR-1, a new robot from another Willow Garage spinoff (Unbounded Robotics).

The trends emerging are clear: (1) low-cost (2) safety and operation around people (3) easier to use teaching interfaces. Some early prototypes aimed at the consumer market were intriguing, e.g. Budgee, a shopping cart robot that can follow you around. Its clear that these robots are not yet ready for the market but the concept merits attention. The trend in the education market, on the other hand, is much clearer and primed for maturity by the success of the PR2. The Baxter Research robot and the UBR-1 are two robots hoping to take advantage of this trend. Similarly, the UR5 shows how an easy to use teaching interface combined with a solid robot (with good quality of motion) can fill an existing gap in the commercial and industrial arena.

Overall, its an exciting time to be in Robotics.

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Reflections and a new start

10/19/2013

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After almost 6 years at Willow Garage, I have moved on. Its hard to find one word to describe my time at Willow - it was exciting, exhilarating, tumultuous and certainly a roller-coaster ride of a lifetime. Its a place where I met and worked with incredible people, had the fortune of finding the best student interns and contributed to an industry taking off. The end of my time at Willow was bittersweet - a feeling of a vision not yet fulfilled yet pride at what had been done.

The Robotics industry today seems to be at a crossroads, ready to take that next leap into the promised world where robots will play bigger roles in our daily lives, in no small part because of what Willow Garage was able to do. And yet, there is still a lot of work to be done for that promise to be fulfilled. I have watched and been a part of the growth of robotics in the Bay Area which has now become the premier destination for robotics-focused startups. Willow Garage itself spun out 8 of them. I will continue to do my part in this effort, building the next-generation of robotic systems at SRI International along with an incredibly talented group of robotics scientists and engineers in the Robotics program. Among other things, I will also continue leading new development there for the MoveIt! software platform. I can't wait to see what the next few years in Robotics will bring.

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