Thanks for the responses guys. Some very interesting points and ideas to consider.
I'm not convinced by quadrocopters. Almost all the cool videos you see out of ETH Zurich and UPenn's Grasp Lab involve rooms with numerous Vicon cameras ($100k+ each) tracking each robot. There's no way to do this in the home. Even if the prices came down, I don't want a solution that *relies*on fixed infrastructure, even if part of what I'm suggesting involves home automation and implies infrastructure. The setup and calibration of a system like that might be suitable for B2B with a service contract, but doubtful for consumers. I would like the robot to be *capable* of operating just fine on its own, but to be capable of greater things if part of an interconnected home. In terms of TVs/computers/smartphones being able to do the things I'm suggesting, this is true in part, but definitely not as a whole. Part of the reason for using a mobile robot is that one set of sensors can be moved to perceive different areas of the home - fixed TVs and computers can't do this unless you have lots of them, and then the costs blow out. Smartphones don't currently have an RGBD camera or any other great means of building 3D maps, and even if we tried to do this with camera data only, they don't have the processing power onboard to achieve it. Sure, we could offload that computation to the cloud, but if you're going to all that trouble you should probably just buy my robot instead... :-) Incidentally, some of the people in my research group have done work in tracking people in known environments when they continually go out of the field of view of a robot (or group of robots). It is certainly possible, although obviously the longer they're out of view, the less trust you can place in the estimated solution. Someone I bumped into today suggested that even if I'm not able to include a manipulator, I should at least sell a cup-holder attachment. Cheers, Tom -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Vist http://siliconbeachaustralia.org for more Forum rules 1) No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. 2) No jobs postings. You can use http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/jobs To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
