Toyota Wants to Put a Robot in Every Home and Make It Your Pal
Toyota Wants to Put a Robot in Every Home and Make It
Your Pal
Toyota's Human Support Robot is the machine the automaker
sees as closest to making the leap from the lab to the living room.
By Kevin Buckland Bloomberg | Dec 26, 2018
Toyota Motor Corp. has sold enough cars to put one
outside every Japanese home. Now it wants to put robots inside.
Well-known for its automated assembly lines, Toyota sees
a not-so-far-off future in which robots transcend the factory and become
commonplace in homes, helping with chores -- and even offering companionship --
in an aging society where a quarter of the population is over 65 and millions
of seniors live alone.
Machines have become much smarter in the last decade or
so. Yet, every attempt to build one that can do simple things like load a
washing machine or carry groceries encounters the same basic, physical problem:
the stronger a robot gets, the heavier and more dangerous it becomes. What
Toyota has going for it are $29 billion in cash reserves, a new artificial
intelligence research center and a well-respected inventor, Gill Pratt, heading
its effort.
“This is a company with so many resources that you can
never ignore them,” said Morten Paulsen, a Tokyo-based analyst at CLSA Japan
Securities Co., who’s covered the robotics industry for decades.
Toyota has been experimenting with robots since at least
2004, when it unveiled a trumpet-playing humanoid with artificial lips, lungs
and movable fingers that could accompany an actual human orchestra.
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Since then research has become more practical. Toyota’s
latest android, the T-HR3, is a kind of avatar that can be manipulated remotely
via wearable controls, with vision goggles that allow users to see through the
machine’s camera-eyes. The device could one day serve as arms and legs for the
bedridden, or as a surrogate for relief workers in disaster zones.
In 2015 the automaker spent a billion dollars to open its
AI-focused Toyota Research Institute in Silicon Valley. Last year it set up a
$100 million fund to invest in startups and new robotics technology. This year
the company restructured its Partner Robot division to speed decision-making
and shorten development time.
“There’s internal pressure all of a sudden to move
faster,’’ senior manager Keisuke Suga said at a recent industry forum near the
automaker’s Toyota City headquarters.
The road to robots has had its setbacks. In 2011, Toyota
demonstrated a machine for lifting patients in and out of bed, but engineers
had only tested it on healthy volunteers. Once they discovered that the frail
and elderly required a more delicate touch, the product was shelved.
Regulatory Hurdles
Another device, a personal scooter that resembled a
Segway, looked promising in trials but was kept off the streets by regulatory
holdups.
Outside of factories and warehouses, in fact, unfulfilled
promise has been the main story for robots. Boston Dynamics, a ballyhooed firm
started by engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for
example, has spent more than 12 years developing four-legged automatons but
still hasn’t proved they can be commercialized. Most of the $2.1 billion spent
by consumers last year on household robots was for automated vacuum cleaners
and lawnmowers -- not exactly the stuff of science fiction.
Toyota says the need for elder-care will change that. The
automaker illustrates the point with a chart showing Japan’s inverted
age-pyramid in the year 2050 when a third-fewer workers will have to support
twice as many old people as today. (Some 22% of the world’s population will be
over 60 by then, according to the World Health Organization.)
Toyota’s Human Support Robot, or HSR, is the machine the
automaker sees as closest to making the leap from lab to living room. The
robot-equivalent of a Corolla – all function and no frills – the HSR is
basically a retractable arm on wheels with a video screen on top and two large
camera eyes that give it the rudiments of a face.
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It weighs as much as a half-dozen bowling balls, but can
only lift a 1.2-kilogram payload, about the weight of a medium-sized water
bottle.
Still, loaded with the right software, the machine can do
some interesting things.
In a demo this fall by one of Toyota’s partners, an AI
startup called Preferred Networks Inc., the robot was able to learn where
books, pens and other items belonged on a shelf, and clean a room that looked
like it had been turned upside-down by a three-year-old. Using its sensor-eyes
and its pincer, the machine arranged a pair of slippers neatly on the floor
next to each other, with both feet pointing in the same direction.
Asked when its home helpers will be available to
consumers, Toyota wouldn’t say. But adviser Masanori Sugiyama, a former top
manager in the robot program, says the HSR could be ready for hospitals and
rest homes in two or three years to do simple tasks like tidying up or
delivering meals. For machines with more profound skills, the wait will be
longer.
“They need to be able to understand what people are
thinking and have empathy,” Sugiyama said. “The idea is for the robot to be a
friend.”
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