Alan Brown

"Are We Close to Plug and Play Robots?"

ABSTRACT -- Is the market for robots about to explode the way personal computers did in the 1980s?

We may not see robots (other than Roombas) in every household for years to come, but seemingly overnight, autonomous robots are checking supermarket inventory, cleaning airport floors, disinfecting hospital rooms, checking petrochemical storage tanks and pipes for corrosion, and tending machines in factories.

In many ways, it looks like the explosion of the PC market in the 1980s. When IBM released its first PC in 1981, it was one of a kind. Over time, others learned to emulate its hardware. The industry standardized on buses and components. And that afterthought of an operating system vendor—Microsoft—was able to supply DOS to any PC builder. Pretty soon, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of companies were slapping together standardized (and semi-standardized) parts in their back room, garages, and even dorm rooms (where Michael Dell got his start).

Are autonomous robots heading that way now? They have always relied on a combination of off-the-shelf hardware and advanced sensors, which are now plentiful. Many confounding AI problems, such as vision, obstacle recognition, location, and trajectory planning have open-source and commercial solutions. Several companies now offer operating systems.

Yet robots are not yet plug-and-play. They are much more complex than PCs. The bar for safety is much higher. And we are asking them to do a lot. This talk will examine where we stand and try to answer whether now is the time for engineers to build the robot of their dreams.

SPEAKER -- Alan Brown has been writing about engineering, science, and technology for 40 years for such organizations as ASME, AIA, IEEE, Nature, Amazon, and a variety of publications. He has written about topics ranging from robotics, AI, and 3D printing to materials science, bioengineering, and nanotechnology (before they became so trendy).

Next Week: "Thermal Engineering and Apollo", Harry "Hank" Rotter, NASA (retired)

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov