2012, what direction will the robot go? Although CROPEN has passed 1/3 in 2012, it is necessary for us to spend some time forecasting the development of robots in the coming months.

Because there is no such thing as time machine, the prediction of CROPEN is based on long-term observers in some robotics industry, including the field of automata and Hizook, to ensure that the prediction content of CROPEN is as accurate as possible. Please CROPEN some different background experts in robotics, solicit their opinions on the development of the 2012 robots, "group of experts" provided many valuable comments, summed up all the suggestions, finally compressed to 12 projects, this is not an easy thing, as many ideas are great.

In the selection, CROPEN tries to avoid those "long-term trends", such as environmental robots, entertainment and toy robots. The main focus is on the emerging field. At the same time, we should pay attention to capital flow. For example, the national robotics initiative sponsored by the National Science Foundation, we plan to invest a lot of resources in developing robots that can cooperate with people, as well as part of robot research projects in DARPA. The European framework program is funded by "cognitive systems and robots", which can serve people's daily work and life. For example, in Asia, in order to cope with the aging of the population, the development of medical robots has been for decades.

CROPEN will not attempt to do a comprehensive 2012 robot industry research report, described here is similar to "heat map", stressed that the trend of the robot industry promising areas and technologies, including artificial intelligence, we know there will be many readers disagree with us, sincerely hope to hear your views and opinions, such as what please email or direct comments. But one thing is affirmative: the robot is going through a magical time, and the future will be more exciting.

1. cooperative robots: robot assistants and partners

Robot control usually has two ways of direct remote control and full self control. The problem is that the remote control is very troublesome, and the full self control is often like a science fiction movie. A balance point can be found to allow humans and robots to collaborate on tasks, such as the PR2 robot in the next figure to deliver drugs to people. The US National robotics Initiative (NRL) provides 70 million development cooperative robot projects, the goal is to extend the robot from work and laboratory to people's daily life, just like the computer from military to civilian. These robots must be safe, cheap and easy to use, and the robots use their strengths to work with human beings. The scope of the project is extensive, but one of the key aspects of the robot is clear: that is to interact with people. So I hope to see 2012 cooperative robots have a greater development.

2. 3D remote sensing: the Kinect revolution continues

Last year, a strange decoration began to appear in many robot head, Microsoft Kinect 3D sensor which is popular now, it is cheap and easy to use, use Kinect drawing 3D map and as a motion sensor, Kinect became the favorite robot community (see below). People have been looking for a low-cost device instead of laser rangefinder. Now Kinect helps to achieve (at least indoor use). Kinect 2 will be released this year, and will have higher resolution and frame rate.

3. cloud robot: robot sharing technology

Several research teams are exploring robots on cloud computing infrastructure, which rely on cloud computers to deal with large amounts of data. This method can directly call the "cloud robot", which will make the robot do not need to do complex calculations, such as image processing and speech recognition, and even download new skills immediately. Many related projects are in progress. In particular, Google has a small team to create robot cloud services. If this technology is popular, it may be a structural transformation in the field. (imagine each robot using Google map to navigate). In Europe, a major project, RoboEarth, aims to develop the robot world wide web, a huge cloud database. Robots can share information about objects, environment and tasks (see below). Many other projects are being formed, and we expect that the "cloud robot" will become a fashionable word in 2012.

It also includes compatible driver: soft touch robot, intelligent robot based on intelligent mobile phone: the new robot, easier operation: a robot arm you can afford, driverless cars: the liberation of your hands, robot Helpers: the future of manufacturing, rapid prototyping: every family has a 3D printer the UAV, crowded SKIES Telepresence robot: your avatar, in the real world: the combination of bionics between human and machine.