Soon, That Nearby Worker Might Be a Robot

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General Motors and NASA announced on Apr. 14 that they had jointly developed a humanoid named Robonaut 2, featuring arms and hands that can use human tools. Later this year, R2 will travel to the International Space Station. NASA says the prototype might evolve to one day stand in for humans on spacewalks or perform tasks deemed too difficult or dangerous. GM is now looking to develop further uses for the vision, motion, and sensor technologies built into R2, perhaps to enable cars to reverse with greater security or to make robots more capable of working safely alongside humans in plants. Marty Linn, a principal robotics engineer at GM, says Robonaut's capabilities could be adapted for electric vehicles, which feature similar types of electronic controls.

The robotics market has historically been divided into industrial-use robots, which sold for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and consumer-oriented robots such as iRobot's (IRBT) Roomba vacuum cleaner, which starts at $160. The fields are converging, with advances in commercial and military robotics trickling down to the consumer market as component prices fall. The worldwide market for personal robots—defined as consumer robots that have some intelligence, use sensors to interact with their environment, and perform a desired function—is expected to reach $5.26 billion by 2015, up from $1.16 billion in 2009, according to ABI Research.

Lease Robots Instead of Hiring Humans

Robot makers are seeking new markets. A slew of videoconferencing robots are coming onto the market from makers such as Anybots, Willow Garage, and Vgo Communications, formerly known as North End Technologies. The logic is that workers in another location can use the Internet to control the robots and dispatch them around a workplace to find and speak to colleagues. Using the Anybots device known as QB, for example, it's possible for a remote operator to roll up to a colleague and ask an impromptu question, replicating in some measure the unplanned conversations that occur in offices.

At El Camino Hospital in Silicon Valley, 19 robots fulfill a range of tasks, from delivering medication and food to taking out trash. Hiring as many humans to make deliveries would have cost the hospital more than $1 million a year, says Ken King, vice-president of facilities and support services. Leasing the robots from Aethon costs $350,000 a year, which helps the hospital contain costs and offer patients affordable health care, he says.

The Tug robots pull their weight, say hospital officials. Tugette, for example, rolls through El Camino Hospital's corridors making deliveries around the clock, opening doors, summoning elevators, and speaking politely with workers and patients.

Aethon Chief Executive Officer Aldo Zini says his company's robots are used in jobs that people find distasteful or hazardous, such as picking up infectious waste. There's another benefit, he adds: "They don't take breaks and vacation and you don't have to pay them benefits."

King is a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in San Francisco.

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