6 Smart Robots That Can Steal Your Job in Future

Robots now are connected to the cloud, can be controlled by mobile devices and are capable of seeing, hearing, feeling and reacting to the environment in ways once thought impossible.Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, and as technological developments continue; exploring, developing, and building new smart machines will serve numerous purposes, whether locally, from the commercial perspective, or militarily. Commercial and industrial robots are widespread today and are used to perform jobs at lower costs, more accurately and reliably, than humans. Robots are extensively used in manufacturing, assembly lines, transportation, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, safety, and the mass production of consumer and industrial goods. Here are some new generation robots around the globe that will shape our near future.

ChihiraAico: A robot that can sing and serve you

Toshiba unveiled ChihiraAico humanoid at CES this year that looks like a 30 year old Japanese hostess. ChihiraAico is member of Toshiba’s Smart Community that seeks to develop smart solutions for the community as a whole, by using ICT to foster smarter living. It is designed to make conversation in Japanese language, move hands, and sings and cries like a Japanese woman.

The communication is based on Vocaloid synthesiser technology wherein a piano roll type interface is used to input melody and lyrics that can be entered on each note. The main parts of the Vocaloid system are the Score Editor, the Singer Library, and the Synthesis Engine. The Synthesis Engine receives score information from the Score Editor, selects appropriate samples from the Singer Library, and concatenates them to output synthesized voices.

ChihiraAico’s eye movements are amazingly realistic coupled with smooth hand movements. The robot’s movements are based on pneumatic actuator technology and comprise of 43 actuators including 24 on the shoulders, arms and hands and 15 in the face. This technology is helpful in showing emotions as the robot can pretend to be happy, sad or irritated. The robot can be used in healthcare industry to look after the elderly people with dementia, work as a nurse or waitress meaning that they could one day put humans out of a job!

While the robot currently relies on a hidden camera and a human operator to give her life, a fully independent version is expected in 10 years using artificial intelligence, face and voice recognition, and speech synthesis. The company claims that she can also play any classical instrument later in future and thus can be used in musical industry as well.

AirDog: An aerial cameraman that follows you anywhere

Created by Helico Aerospace Industries, AirDog is a drone that follows you anywhere using GPS tracking system when connected to a smart phone. Drone’s precision is based on its predicting movements of the person wearing the Airleash wristband that contains built in accelerometers, sensors and gyroscope. Both the position and orientation of the drone, as well as the angle of the camera, are controlled by algorithms that communicate between the leash and the drone. The leash also has some manual

controls that allow you to make adjustments to the Airdog while you’re riding without having to whip out your smart phone. The drone uses maps within its app, so that users can set areas as fly or no-fly zones, mark out obstacles like trees and buildings, and mark a race course they want the Airdog to adhere and follow them through. It also supports Sony and GoPro cameras and folds down to a backpack-friendly size and comes with custom modes for different sports. AirDog can accelerate up to 45 miles per hour and be used for 10-20 minutes at one go, depending on it’s use: hover time, altitude and other factors. AirDog is suitable for filming action sports and other activities that otherwise wouldn’t be possible or would be incredibly expensive.

iCam PRO: A robot that can track objects in home or at office

Created by Amaryllo International Company, it is the world’s first intelligent domestic security robot that can track intruders. It has the ability to search for and track any movement even in darkness. It is just 3 inches tall and is powered by a high-speed CPU. The bot can actually see, hear, sense, and track moving objects, in real-time a tour home or office, and even in a dimly lit environment all while interacting with you. The bot communicates with Amaryllo app to deliver picture alerts, upload recorded video available in both Android and iOS coupled with 15GB of cloud storage support.

Through the application, you can link your Google Drive with your camera wherein you can manage and access videos right through the app. With built-in audio and motion sensors, you can also also receive push text messages in your smart phone triggered by either motion or audio detected. These push alerts are time-stamped, indicating when the event took place thereby letting you track objects in real time. With 360 degree auto tracking, Smart Sensor network coupled with 3 motion sensors are placed strategically around the iCamPRO wherein if one of the sensors is triggered, the camera will turn to face the object, lock in, and begin to track it using the ITS recording every movement in detail.

The iCam PRO can be largely used in almost all sector of enterprises, homes to identify security threats all while communicating with you and is available at US $300 anywhere in the world.

Furo-i Home: Live in Comfort with this bot

South Korea’s Furo-i Home is a sleek sensor laden bot on wheels and has a tablet that displays an animated robot face that can even speak. It is based on Human Robot Interaction Engine and comprises of three main components including Perception, Intelligent and Expression Component which helps it in servicing and expressing interactive emotions. The bot is equipped with many sensors, actuators, also including facial recognition and can be verbally commanded to turn lights, music or take advantage of its health check software to help care for elderly persons.

It offers 4 modes: Home View, Family Chat, FURo Planner and Home Auto. Home View allows you to cruise around your house to watch your child sleep or check in on the dog. Family Chat allows you to talk to your family in remote locations. Not only can you see their faces, but you can move the robot around. With FURo Planner, you can better plan your daily schedule, set up an alarm, and remind yourself to take any medications, eat breakfast and follow the rest of the schedule. Home Auto enables you to control devices in your home via smartphone, including the lights, music, TV and other electronics. Since the robot can be connected, and controlled by smart phone, if anything goes wrong, the robot sends a message to the family, saying there might be a problem and lets them talk to their parent via video chat.

The robots costs about $1000 each. The Furo-i Home can be used in education industry, health care, home automation etc. It can also be integrated with U-Health Device which helps you check health treatment information and create emergency calls.

Droplet: A Smart Robotic Gardener

It is a smart sprinkler system that combines the robotics, and connected services to transform the way sprinkler systems function. Droplet is easily configured via smartphone, tablet or laptop on the Droplet website, giving users complete control of their system wherever they are. Once configured it can also show advanced analytics on how much water goes into a lawn, garden or flower-bed so homeowners can better manage water usage. It can accurately target two plants less than 6 inches <15cm> away from each other and give them very different amounts of water. It can be configured to water the grass, trees and the areas where you have flowers planted without indiscriminately watering the whole yard. Thus it also saves water by watering only the area where there are plants.

The Droplet also knows about the soil, the type of plants it’s watering, and other data to help ensure each plant gets just the right amount of water to be healthy. You can give it a number of commands, including to water potted plants, fill up the doggy water bowl, or the usual trees and lawn tasks. It is also equipped with a Weather Tracking System, so it knows if there is going to rain on a particular day and accordingly holds the watering of plants. This robot can be widely used in large nurseries having a wide range of plants, home gardens, patios and lawns. The droplet is available for $299.

Otus: A Teleconferencing device that automatically rotates itself to face you

Otus is an smart portable teleconferencing device that automatically directs attention to the person of interest in a session. It connects with an iPad or iPhone and uses sound localization and human face tracking technologies to automatically orient its camera and turn towards (and focus on) the speaker. Once connected it turns a tablet or smartphone to face the user while they video chat.

For example - if they are moving around while they cook a meal in the kitchen they don’t disappear from view. It can be widely used in small and large enterprises to deliver hassle free presentations, board room meetings, family chats etc. The automatic control enables users to concentrate on the meeting itself, rather than having to deal with the hassle of manually adjusting the camera angles. Presenters can express themselves more effectively - by changing their positions, using gestures, standing, writing on whiteboards - all without any interruption. It will be available later this year at $200.