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Advent of the consumer robot

Sudipta Dev writes about the genesis of autoGRID—a smart and affordable robot for Indian homes

Within the next couple of months, India will witness the unveiling of its first consumer robot, at a price that is affordable to millions of households across the country. Named autoGRID, the robot is in the final stages of development by an Ahmedabad-based startup named Gridbots. It can perform functions like house cleaning and surveillance, and will be priced in the neighborhood of Rs 10,000.

Consumer robots fall into the category of robots that are bought by individual buyers for assistance, education and entertainment at home. Robots that can mow your lawn, vacuum clean your house and take care of home security have been popular in countries like the US for sometime now. iRobot’s Roomba and Scooba are the better known vacuum cleaning and floor-washing robots, respectively. The most famous consumer robots worldwide in the entertainment segment have been Sony’s Aibo and Honda’s Asimo. Ugobe’s Pleo, the robotic dinosaur, which looks and behaves like a week-old baby Camarasaurus, is a much coveted artificial pet. Robots that help the disabled and elderly also fall into the consumer robot category.

The genesis

autoGRID is the first in a series of consumer robots being developed by Gridbots. The company was founded by a group of young entrepreneurs who are set to make their mark on the field of robotics, machine vision and artificial intelligence. Set up in March 2007, the company operates in the field of consumer, industrial and military robotics. It has already worked with agencies like the Ministry of Home Affairs (New Delhi), National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad) and the Central Intelligence Bureau. The company is self-funded with eight people on board, but is interested in tying up with a big organization for business development.

It was his personal passion in the field of robotics along with the yet unexploited scope for consumer and industrial robots in the country that inspired Pulkit Gaur, Founder and CTO, Gridbots to focus on this technology. “We have devised our own proprietary software and hardware modules which can work independently and efficiently. Our software provides an interface to access and control powerful hardware components with an ease which makes the complete system user-friendly, yet powerful,” said Gaur.

The company has recently launched Gridsurv, an intelligent searchable robotics surveillance system for corporate and domestic use. “We provide content analysis, Wi-Fi connectivity of the camera over the Internet, face recognition, object recognition and various other facilities with this solution,” added Gaur.

Key functionalities

autoGRID consumer robot

autoGRID’s current capabilities include using it for home surveillance, vacuum cleaning, pick and place and educational functions. Later robots will have the capabilities of stereo vision, Wi-Fi communication and collaborative robotics. The company claims that it is an adaptable robot and has been designed keeping in mind the various outdoor conditions where it might have to operate.

“The robot can be programmed using a simple GUI which has been designed taking into consideration only one factor—simplicity. So whenever the user wants the robot to perform any particular task he needs to use the GUI to drag and drop the functionalities or select from a library of existing modules. Once done, the robot can be programmed and it is ready for use,” stated Gaur.

For instance, take the vacuum cleaning function. Here, being a programmable robot, autoGRID has the capability of high reproducibility and repeatability on each run. It takes into consideration the fact that people may have different cleaning requirements for their homes as no two houses are alike with regard to construction and layout. “It will remember the cleaning cycle map once the user feeds in the map. This enables the robot to do a better job of cleaning of the house as compared to other products,” added Gaur.

Being programmable, you can make it move from one room to another via the map interface. Gaur pointed out that this series of autoGRID robots does not have any onboard vision facility, however the company is working on this feature and the later versions will be equipped with a vision system to identify dirt or other surface level irregularities.

autoGRID is equipped with various sensors for temperature, light sensor and obstruction, which provides it with the ability to interact and understand its surrounding environment better. “We will be providing mechanical actuator add-ons like a mechanical arm, a gripper. You will be able to serve cold drinks to the guests with these add-ons,” revealed Gaur.

As a home surveillance system autoGRID is more effective than a conventional burglar alarm. It possesses the interface capability for various sensor attachments like motion sensing, human presence, distance ranging, etc. The data can either be processed on board or sent to a computer via wireless data modules. In the event of an intrusion it can activate video recording, call the police and the house owner. “One of the most striking features of this robot is tele-presence. This is a module that enables the user to monitor his home/office from any part of the world on his PC/mobile,” said Gaur, adding that the user can view pictures, listen to sound and can interact with the robot from a remote location.

Artificial intelligence

autoGRID Xplorer is the user interface that provides abilities like Automatic Code Analysis for user generated code. Predictive path planning, smart power monitoring, error correction mechanisms, etc., are some of the features powered by artificial intelligence. “We are working on some other advanced features like automatic robot homing, smart device interfacing and others, which will also utilize intelligence modules,” mentioned Gaur.

Development snags

The team encountered many problems during the development phase. Developing the hardware for the robot was a major challenge due to unavailability of required components. This apart, the biggest technical problem was to design a power source for the robot. The other minor glitches were with regard to accurate robot positioning and traction mechanisms. “We kept on experimenting and revising the designs which led us to stable designs and fault-proof mechanisms,” pointed out Gaur.

Market approach

autoGRID has been designed taking into consideration the Indian consumer and the yet untapped but vast potential of the Indian market. The makers plan a nation-wide launch across metros and state capitals in the initial phase. Other cities will be targeted later. Not surprisingly, there are plans to enter the international market as well. While the basic price of the robot will be in the range of Rs 10,000, additional features will be available for a nominal price across stores.

The company’s plans focus on making autoGRID and its subsequent models smarter and more user-friendly—something essential to enable the vast majority of non-tech savvy populace to operate robots easily in their homes.

sudipta.dev@expressindia.com