Late this year, Californian company Evolution Robotics (ERI) plans to release an operating system that it claims will do for robotics what Microsoft did for the personal computer with DOS and Windows. The idea has two aims: to slash the time and cost involved in developing new robots, and to let people who buy robotic lawnmowers, beer gophers or vacuum cleaners reprogram them. Right now, they can't do that.
The Evolution Robotics Software Platform (ERSP) will use a simple graphical point-and-click system to let users choose from a range of built-in robotic behaviours, or add their own. It will also let them control sensors, cameras, grippers and laser rangefinders.
Of course, while useful domestic robots have been "just around the corner" for 50 years, it's still people who are doing the housework. So what makes ERI think now is the time to try putting robot control in the hands of the consumer?
One reason is processing power. Only a few years ago, processor chips powerful enough to run consumer robots simply weren't available at prices people would be willing to pay, says Brian Friedman of Robotic Ventures, a venture capital company in Chicago. But continued improvements in chip technology mean that a standard Pentium chip can now deliver the performance needed to drive a capable robot. Improved software in areas such as object and face recognition, navigation, sensing and speech recognition are helping too.
ERI wants its software to become as much of a de facto standard for robots as Windows and the Macintosh OS are for computers. Once it's established, third parties will be able to add utilities that can be used by others. So you'll then be able to buy a robot, load up the software on a PC, modify the behaviours as you see fit, and then download the code into the droid. Standardising on a single operating system will avoid duplication of effort, says Paolo Pirjanian, ERI's chief scientist. You'll be able to get the robot to do a host of tricks straight away, instead of having to write software from scratch.
But robots are a lot more complicated than PCs. "With the PC you know what your users want to do," says Chris Melhuish, a roboticist at the University of the West of England in Bristol. "You know they have a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor." Robots use a wide range of complex sensors and are expected to develop strategies to cope with the unstructured environments they work in.
"I don't think it's necessarily the best thing to provide freeze-dried solutions just yet," says Eric Horvitz, an engineer at Microsoft's research division. He points out that there's no consensus yet on how best to solve problems such as robot perception, navigation and motion planning.
One of the big problems facing ERI is the fact that robot manufacturers are under pressure to build their devices on the cheap, with relatively slow microprocessors and too little memory to run the new software. "Nickels and dimes can determine the success or failure of your product," says Colin Angle, a co-founder of iRobot, a maker of research and toy robots in Massachusetts.
Other challenges come from robot makers who see no reason not to plough on with home-grown operating systems. Israel-based Friendly Robotics makes robomowers, using "a very minimal system" according to its co-founder Shai Abramson. But if robots are to perform a vast spectrum of tasks, Abramson doubts that ERI's generic operating system will serve all applications.
He has a point. "Building a robot is incredibly complex, and no two robots are alike," says Angle. "It's a monumental task to write something generic."
And if ERI's operating system does take off, that may not be the end of the problem. As Bill Gates found in his skirmishes over Windows with the US Justice Department, when proprietary software becomes a de facto standard, people soon start complaining that it's an innovation-stifling monopoly.
Nevertheless, Pirjanian insists that his operating system is needed to help the robot population expand. "I think we are one piece of the puzzle," he says. "Whether it's our company or another, there's a need to have a software infrastructure to lower costs and speed up development time."
But I-Robot doesn't plan to let ERI have the market without a fight: "We have plans to push our own operating system products," says Angle. "There are going to be wars."
Author: Duncan Graham-Rowe
New Scientist issue: 20th April 2002
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