What would you want a robot to do?

Yeah, I'd go for a dandelion removing robot about now too!

Add chlorine to the pool, mow my lawn and trim the edges.

a dandelion removing robot? I can do that

What else besides lawn care, haha

Not enough of a challenge?

Ok. Go up the stairs to my bedroom, grab all the dirty clothes from the laundry basket. Take them to the utility room, throw them into the washer with an appropriate amount of detergent and run the wash cycle. Extract them and move them to the dryer. When you're done, fold them and return them to my room. Just put them on the bed - I'll put them away.... unless you're looking for extra credit :wink:

edit: Oh, and enquiring minds (my neighbours) want to know - when can you deliver the dandelion robot

Dandilion: Use a color filter to guide the robot. Can use an IR led thing to emit lines to mark property lines. only need one linear actuator to disperse the weed killer. could have an average sized lawn done it about 1.5 hours max.

Clothes: Ehhh that would be tough considering there would be alot of strength needed in the robot.

Any other ideas?

Note: the robots will have a theft protection, so if it does get stolen, you'll just show them the id of the robot and they'll track it down and bada bing bada boom.

How about this: Start "simple", then move from there. I'll actually give you a problem to solve; while it sounds simple, it is anything but:

Build a robot which can navigate from room to room in a house, avoiding obstacles in its way. How it avoids these obstacles is up to you (ie, what sensors you want to use), but the robot needs to be able to:

a) know where it is in the house
b) know where it was
c) know when the immediate environment changes, and adapt

Room beacons or other external novelties are allowed; You can have a "built in" map, or it can build the map from experience (i'd suggest the latter). You should be able to have the robot randomly move from room to room, and also be able to "tell" the robot a "trip" (go to room A, then B, then C, then return - or something of that nature), and it should be able to follow that plan.

As I noted before - this sounds easy, but it is far, far from it. In fact, it isn't a completely solved problem. The problem (which doesn't have a general solution yet - but there is much study on it!) is called SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping):

You could easily spend a few years of learning and research on this one area alone; it has many, many practical uses in robotics (and a few other fields; but mainly robotics).

cr0sh:
Build a robot which can navigate from room to room in a house, avoiding obstacles in its way.

Once that's working, how about adding the ability to open the fridge and bring me a beer?

Talk about solving real world problems.

Brad.

I could figure something like that out, no problem. Only issue is that i'm not that experienced in wireless networking, although I'll be checking it out soon enough as I am working on getting funding through either kickstarter or the university of wisconsin system.

Keep in mind that this will be ONE robot doing these various things. I'm still working out the kinks on design and such until I get it actually down on blueprints.

Any more ideas?

wildbill:
dirty clothes ... washer ... dryer.

In all seriousness, why is this still a problem? We've invented stackable appliances, and front-loading washers. What's the hold-up with a one-into-the-other, or single-drum washer/dryer combo?

I'm telling you, if I ruled the world, there would be changes around here. ]:slight_smile:

On the topic of mechanized lawn-care, I recently acquired an old robo-mower that I can lobotomize. I have no plans for dandelion picking, but I'm keen on any discussion regarding boundary navigation.

P.S., would this robot look good in a dress?

funkyguy4000:
Any more ideas?

Play fetch with my dog when I'm not home.

uhh, maybe the dog can play fetch with the robot by the robot running away and then the dog brining it back

See what happens when you ask too broad of a question?
PBS just had a show on about robots doing stuff around the house.
Robot had trouble putting dishes in dishwasher.
Robot had trouble opening closing fridge - got claw/hand stuck in door handle, was close to tipping the fridge over.

Cost? I am sure I will not be ponying up that kind of money any time soon.

Yea the whole robot will cost about $400.

I'd like a telepresence robot like Wowwee Rovio or spykee.

I'd also like a vaccum robot like Irobot's Roomba.

SirNickity:
On the topic of mechanized lawn-care, I recently acquired an old robo-mower that I can lobotomize. I have no plans for dandelion picking, but I'm keen on any discussion regarding boundary navigation.

Don't know what you have, but I have a old Friendly Robotics RL-500 sitting in my garage waiting for its lobotomy; I didn't want to deal with the boundary wire, either. My idea for the boundary detection is to mount (using epoxy) small magnets to golfball tees, and stick those around the boundary about every 6-8 inches or so. Then use hall-effect sensors to detect them. The greater problem I am wondering about is detecting cut grass from uncut grass (a high-speed humidity sensor might work); I don't want to run the blades constantly, and I want to detect (and map) where it's been cut already.

I'm working on an infrared boundry. I'll keep you updated.

cr0sh:
Don't know what you have, but I have a old Friendly Robotics RL-500 sitting in my garage waiting for its lobotomy

Hey, turns out that's what I got, too. It just fell into my lap. Someone was giving it away, and knew I tend to fix things that aren't (yet) broken, so there ya go. I have a few projects in the queue with higher priority (says I, before the grass has really started to grow this summer ....) I haven't even really looked it over yet. Let me know what you come up with, if you start before I do.

Hm, that looks like a fun robot to tinker with, although it doesn't look like a multi-purpose robot unless you make some hefty modifications.

My robot is designed to be more multipurpose. I'm still developing the coding and such, but I hope to make it simple and easy to use for a person to give it a special task.

I'd prefer one that could lubricate the chain on my motorcycle.

Don't you have a Scottoiler?

You are in a hurry dashing for work you get out of the house and the car is all iced up :frowning: How about a robot that would have deiced it for you while you were in bed and perhaps checked the tyres for tread and pressure?