Imagine this: Your child wakes up. Because of his physical challenges, he can’t make his own breakfast, but that’s not a problem. Because HERB (Home Exploring Robot Butler) does it for him, setting a kettle of water to boil on the stove, pouring orange juice and then stirring up oatmeal.
HERB has been in development for more than five years at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, part of the Quality of Life Technology Center (QofLT). HERB is an exciting advance in the growing field of technology to help people with disabilities with manipulation and mobility. For my son, who has cerebral palsy, reaching up to a kitchen cabinet to get a cup is a near impossible task, ditto for grasping a remote control and pressing buttons. So robots like HERB are his future. As an article for CyberTherapy & Rehabilitation Magazine notes, HERB will provide assistance with meal prep, unpacking and storing groceries, cleaning dishes, light housework and organizing clutter. Down the road, HERB may help with transferring a person with disability from a wheelchair to a seat or helping someone after a fall. This is all accomplished via a range of sensors and advanced computer algorithm programming. You can see HERB in action in this video, along with a different robot in development:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw2xWgc0-yo
Another robot with a less charming name, PerMMA (Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance), has been in the works since 2006 at QofLT. It’s basically a smart powered wheelchair with two dexterous robotic arms. Here’s PerMMA on a shopping trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNplShFmUsI
HERB continues to make progress; he’s now figured out how to discover more than 100 home objects including items like foods and plants. Recognizing items based on vision alone in homes, which are filled with countless objects, is a major accomplishment. Not surprisingly, HERB snagged the Most Innovative Technology award at last year’s Robot Film Festival.
These robots aren’t yet available for sale and if they were, they’d most likely cost a bazillion dollars. But it seems very possible that they will inhabit homes in the near future and, as is this case with any new technology, be available (even rentable!) at a reasonable cost. In my son’s 11 years, I’ve already seen his world open up because of technology, thanks to his Proloquo2Go iPad speech app. I’m so, so excited for the assistance the future will bring.
From my other blog:
A thank you to Steve Jobs from a special needs mom
Why we can’t do the morning rush at our house
Max speaks his best sentence ever
Image of HERB via Carnegie Mellon’s The Robotics Institute