Computers off the Desk: Bugs, Hallway Bots, and Teddy Bears Steven Bathiche and Andy Wilson

Mobile Telepresence, Teddy Bears, and Surface Computers

Computers off the desk Dichotomies Even our best portable computers are not really portable Mobil robots are anemic else not all that mobile Design Tradeoffs –Highly interactive || ultra compact –Low power || high performance –Low cost || Powerful CPU Vision and other sensors Sugar How can we use this?

MothMobile – Hybrid Robot Cheating in power consumption and computation for an obstacle avoidance mobile robot Moth Demo

Important Trends LED flux CPU Efficiency Calculations per second

Haitz’s Law of LED Flux LED Flux per package has doubled every months for 30+ years. –(Paul Martin, LumiLeds) Today LED efficiency 60 lm/watt

Calculations per second, Kurzweil, 2001

Meyerson, IBM, 2004

Some Examples: Mobile Telepresence, Teddy Bears, Surface Computers Three emerging trends point to: –Interactive, big, and rich interfaces yet compact –low power performance computing –Decreasing Cost to Performance curve Enabling application specific form factors using Personal Computer technology

PC Based Hallway Bots: Telepresence, mobile telephones, and meeting recorders (Bathiche, Ladas 2002) A computer that has: –two drive motors –Pan tilt camera –array Microphone Served up as controls to a remote client. Army of bots in each building Tele-commuter knowledge-worker tool Attend meetings and go to people’s offices Walk the hallways (autonomous navigation) Demo

Using the.NET Framework (Bathiche, Ladas 2002).NET framework to manage connections XML to communicate interfaces SOAP wrapper to expose functions different platforms

Odometer Resets when: Doorways and Wifi (geometry) Other sensors e.g. vision Manual Docks at a Charging Station The robot asks someone Odometer Resets when: Doorways and Wifi (geometry) Other sensors e.g. vision Manual Docks at a Charging Station The robot asks someone Localization using Sensor Fusion of and Odometery (Krumm and Bathiche, 2004)

Demo

Surface Computers Blending of Physical and Virtual Interaction

PlayAnywhere Lunchbox interactive vision system Self-contained, portable, no calibration beyond factory

PlayAnywhere Short-throw projector, very wide angle lens on the camera Lens distortion & projective transform correction for camera- projector alignment Off-axis IR LED illuminant Very few assumptions about the appearance of the surface All calibration is done at the “factory”

Fast visual codes 12-bit visual code based on edge orientation at center, then blind read of bit values

Paper tracking Edge orientation & Hough transform based detection of rectangular objects

Shadow-based touch

Trackerless manipulation of objects Summarize optical flow field as simultaneous translation, rotation, scaling

Computer off the Desk: Hallway Bots, Teddy Bears, and Surface Computers

Computer off the Desk: Bugs, Hallway Bots, and Teddy Bears Steven Bathiche and Andy Wilson

appendix

MothMobile The car uses the insect: the electronics sense the consequence of the moth’s decisions. The insect replaces a computer, vision and obstacle avoidance algorithms, and camera. Hybrid Electronics: –adapting organic neural network communicating with a programmable artificial system. Insect adapts to the car: –invert world The Neural Chip and Neuromancer

PC Based Hallway Bots: Telepresence, mobile telephones, and meeting recorders Scenarios In a corporate setting each building has a number of these bots in which any worker can log on to have a presence in that area. Tele-commuter knowledge-worker tool Attend meetings and go to people’s offices Walk the hallways (autonomous navigation) The robot can autonomously walk the building to advertise your presence to facilitate hallway discussion. If not available people can leave messages on the robot. Allows you to be in two places at once The Robots would self charge Robie Robie is a robot that has locomotive actuators, motorized pan and tilt camera, and an array Microphone that are served up as controls to a remote client. The teleoperator logs on to the robot server to initiate an audio and video session, and sequester control of the robot and camera actuators.