Care-O-bot gets an upgrade, now flirtier and available with optional second arm

The Care-O-bot 4 is designed to be an affable service robot on a budget

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Six and a half years after the previous iteration, the Fraunhofer Institute has released an update to Care-o-bot. The affordable service robot for personal and professional use has been made it more agile, more modular and much more personable?, ?bringing science fiction fantasy a little closer to reality.

The third-generation Care-O-bot announced back in 2008 was an advanced piece of hardware for its time that could fetch you drinks, place emergency calls and host videoconferences, but which had the rather uninteresting appearance and demeanor of a timid, somber-looking butler.

Compared to its predecessor, Care-O-bot 4 is a significant step forward. This latest iteration is much more agile, having gone from 20 degrees of freedom to 31 (including spherical joints at the torso and neck to let it bend and twist with grace). Its communication skills have also been revamped, and it can now convey information through a touchscreen, body gestures, sounds, text-to-speech, and even a laser pointer embedded in its arm.

When pitted against the ten-fingered, backwards-running, one-leg hopping Asimo the Care-O-bot doesn’t look all that impressive, but nor was it ever meant to compete with Honda’s flagship robot. Unlike its pricey Japanese cousin, Care-O-bot was designed from the start to be as economical as possible, with large portions of its internals made out of folding sheet metal and one of its standard sensors being a stock Microsoft Xbox Kinect.

The robot consists of six independent and configurable modules, from the rolling base, which can work by itself as an autonomous transportation unit, to either one or two robotic arms with seven degrees of freedom each and that, besides the laser pointer mentioned above, also include time-of-flight (TOF) cameras to measure real-time distance from its surroundings.

"Customers can choose between a wide range of sensors," Fraunhofer Institute’s Dr. Ulrich Reiser tells us. "You might choose to have color cameras in the front and a 3D TOF camera in the back, or several 3D-TOF cameras. The sensor ring is equipped with its own computation unit and receives power supply and Ethernet via standard connector, so you might have several sensor rings and exchange them for different applications."

The Care-O-bot could find use as a high-tech waiter, a mobile information center in museums, stores and airports, to collect and deliver objects or, like its predecessor, as a mobile personal and medical assistant.

Based on their experience from previous iterations, Reiser and team found that social interaction was crucial to making their robot more compelling, engaging, and acceptable to humans. That is why this time around Care-O-bot 4 tries to detect the current mood in its surroundings and react accordingly, communicating emotions (as facial expressions) through a touchscreen. In other words, if you believe its creators, Care-O-bot won’t just care for you as a patient?, ?it’ll care about you too.

Dr. Reiser tells us that battery capacity is 30 Ah (at around 48 V) and will typically last between three and five hours, depending on factors like the specific application and the number of degree of movements used.

Pricing will be announced within the next two months, and sales are set to begin in the second half of the year. The mobile base will be available by the end of the second quarter; the torso, arms and head modules in the third trimester; and the spherical joints by the end of the year. The Care-O-bot 4 will be initially available in Europe only and expand to the US later on.

You can watch the video below for a short demo (warning: includes robot-to-human flirting).

Source: Care-O-bot

自動翻譯僅供參考

Care-O-bot護理機器人 Care-O-BOT得到升級，現在flirtier并提供可選的第二arm

護理-O-BOT 4被設計成在預算

圖片廊（8圖像）

在上一次迭代后的六年半，弗勞恩霍夫研究所發布了CARE-O-BOT的更新。為個人和專業使用的負擔得起的服務機器人已經使它更靈活，更模塊化，更個性化？？讓科幻幻想更貼近現實。

第三代保健-O-BOT宣布早在2008年是一個先進的硬件為它的時候，可以把你的飲料，地方緊急呼叫和主機視頻會議的，但它有一個膽小，憂郁，望著管家的相當無趣的外表和舉止。

相比前作，護理-O-BOT 4是顯著的進步。這個最新的迭代更加靈活，在經歷來自20個自由度的31個（包括球形關節在軀干和頸部讓它彎曲和扭轉風度）。它的通信能力也得到了改進，并且現在可以通過觸摸屏，身體的姿態，聲音，文本到語音，甚至一個激光筆嵌入其臂傳達信息。

當針對該十進站手指，向后跑，單腿跳躍Asimo機器人照料-O-機器人看起來并不是那么令人印象深刻，但也不是以往任何時候都意味著本田的旗艦機器人相抗衡。不像它的昂貴的日本表弟，護理-O-BOT從一開始就設計得經濟越好，用它的內部開出的折疊金屬片以及其標準傳感器是A股微軟的Xbox Kinect的一個大的部分。

該機器人包括六個獨立的和可配置的模塊，從軋制的基礎上，其可通過本身工作作為一個自治傳輸單元，以一個或兩個機械手臂與七度各自由的情況，并且除了上面提到的，也對激光指示器包括飛行時間（TOF）相機來測量的實時距離及其周邊地區。

“客戶可以多種傳感器之間進行選擇，”弗勞恩霍夫研究所的烏爾里希·賴澤醫生告訴我們。 “你可能會選擇有正面彩色攝像機和3D TOF相機的背部，或幾個3D-TOF相機，傳感器環配備有自己的計算單元和接收電源和以太網通過標準的接口，所以你可能有幾個傳感器環和交換不同的應用。“

護理-O-機器人可以找到作為一個高科技的服務員，博物館，商店和機場的移動信息中心，收集和傳遞對象或，像它的前身，作為一個移動的個人和醫療助理。

根據從以前的迭代他們的經驗，賴澤和團隊發現，社會交往是至關重要的使他們的機器人更引人注目，有魅力，并接受人類。這就是為什么圍繞護理-O-機器人4嘗試這個時間來檢測當前情緒在其周圍，并相應地作出反應，通過觸摸屏進行通信的情緒（如面部表情）。換句話說，如果你相信它的創造者，護理-O-機器人將不只是關心你作為一個病人？，？它會在乎你了。

博士。賴澤告訴我們，電池容量是30阿（約48伏），將3到5小時之間通常會持續，這取決于如具體應用和運動的使用程度的數量的因素。

定價將在接下來的宣布兩個月了，銷售將開始在今年下半年。移動基地將可在第二季度末;軀干，手臂和頭模塊，在孕晚期;與球形接頭在今年的末端。護理-O-BOT 4將首先在歐洲上市僅擴展到美國以后

你可以看下面的視頻進行一個簡短的演示。（警告：包括機器人對人的挑逗）.