Robots to help seniors, those in dangerous jobs

BURLINGTON, Mass. ― Robots are coming. The chief executive officer of iRobot Corp., Colin Angle, 39, said robots that can help the elderly check their health conditions and send them to hospitals will become necessities in just a few years. Mr. Angle was interviewed recently at iRobot headquarters near Boston. With lifespans increasing due to nutrition, education and technology, the elderly are going to need the help of robots. That’s where iRobot comes in. The company, co-founded by Mr. Angle and Helen Greiner in 1990, is a robot manufacturer. The co-founders used to work in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The firm developed Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. Nearly 2 million units have been sold worldwide. Mr. Angle predicts the role of robots to increase as a substitute for people, especially in dirty, dangerous and tedious work. The Roomba robot is the result of 16 years of research. Initially, the robot was programmed to move around with definite patterns. But because of obstacles that are usually present in rooms, its cleaning work was incomplete. The exceptional artificial intelligence that allowed Roomba to bypass obstacles is a big advantage for iRobot. In addition to Roomba, iRobot is also famous for Sojourner, a robot used to explore Mars, and PackBot, designed to assist with explosive ordnance disposal for the military. Early this year iRobot became the first robot manufacturer to be listed on the Nasdaq stock market. Mr. Angle said over 60 percent of the users of vacuuming robots have given their machines affectionate names and treat them like pets. It’s almost like something out of the movie, “Artificial Intelligence.” But the goal is to develop robots that are practical, rather than human-like. by Ghang Seung-min