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- Title:
Demografic Change Robotics: Mechatronic Assisted Living and Integrated Robot Technology
- Document type:
- Buchbeitrag
- Author(s):
- Linner, T., Bock, T.
- Abstract:
- Miniaturization and Downscale as basic forces of our technological development today increasingly enable a seamless integration of sensors, actors, microelectronic and mechatronic systems into buildings, building components and appliances. Furthermore experts and masterminds as for example Bill Gates announce the era of service robotics and estimate that service robotics as part of assisted environments will undergo a similar fast and rigid development as the spread of personal computers in private and economic areas since the nineties. Already in 1961 Joe Engelberger wondered if relegating robotic technologies to only industrial applications makes any sense. "The biggest market will be service robots," [Englberger, 1989] asserted Engelberger, who started the industrial robotics era when his firm (Unimation) delivered GM's first robot. Today, the application of robotics and distributed robotic sub-systems finally starts to extend into our home, office and town surroundings. This transformation which has to be understood as a natural part of the evolution of robotics will especially become visible when robots enter the field of service, assistance and care. We think that modern robotics assisting and servicing human beings will permeate into the “surroundings†of daily life and thus become an integral part of our built environment. An analysis of the development of robotics being applied to provide services in the built environment shows a transition from stand-alone robotic devices to environments which incorporate multiple robotic devices, appliances and services. From the 70s on, patient transportation robots, diagnostic and maintenance robots, humanoids and exoskeletons and edutainment and home service robots were developed as complex stand alone devices mainly designed to serve one specific task. Later on during the 80s robotic service devices appeared to connect and merge gradually with research fields as home automation and ubiquitous computing. The quite new research field urban robotics which combines smart city research and robotics development to create robot supported urban life, gives way to the assumption that this development will continue and transform our well known environment dramatically. This fusion started as prototypes of fully computerized buildings in Japan (e.g. TRON House 1) began to incorporate robotic devices as subsystems. The transition from stand-alone robotic devices to networked service environments is further marked by a tendency towards dematerialization and distribution of complexity. In contrast to early service robots, complex service environments distribute tasks over several “smart†subsystems enhancing the efficiency of the total system meanwhile reducing the complexity and size of the individual devices. Like Mark Wiser once envisioned the disappearance of visible computers as a reason of its fusion with everyday devices [Weiser & Seely-Brown, 1997], we now may describe robotics, the new cutting-edge technology, as something which starts to weave itself into the fabric of everyday life. To outline and visualize the transformations our robotics enhanced surroundings will undergo in the future driven through problems and issues related to demographic change and ageing society, we present in this book chapter an historical overview of the development of high-tech assistance, various studies on application scenarios as well as robotic service systems deployed by our laboratory.
- Editor:
- Chugo, D. & Yokota, S
- Book title:
- Introduction to Modern Robotics II
- Publisher:
- CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Year:
- 2012
- Print-ISBN:
- 978-1-463789-442
- Reviewed:
- ja
- Language:
- en
- WWW:
- https://www.iconceptpress.com/book/introduction-to-modern-robotics-ii/11000023/1010000099/
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