Over the years, robots have changed from being stationary and simply performing one specific task to doing varied activities on its own and these days we have robots automatically performing almost all the activities to assist humans such as cooking, dancing, playing, serving and not to forget robots that can even show emotions. Following these very lines of innovation come the Care-O-bot 3 – The Next-Generation Robotic Home Assistant.
Care-O-bot 3 is the next-generation serving robot developed by research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, Germany that is mainly intended to help humans in the household in their daily life. This highly flexible one-armed robot is popularly known as the “Robot That Serves” as it can carefully pick up bottles, cups and similar objects with its three fingers and serve them to you.
Care-O-bot 3 at IREX 2009
To find the items it needs to pick up correctly, Care-O-bot 3 is fitted with stereo-vision color cameras, laser scanners and a 3-D range camera that can register its surroundings in three dimensions in real time. Care-O-bot 3‘s database consists of three-dimensional impressions of numerous household articles to perfectly differentiate between items it need to pick up. Users can also make the robot to recognize new objects by placing any unfamiliar object in its hand and it can automatically gain a 3D impression of that item.
Care-O-bot 3 is only 1.45 meters high and based on a omnidirectional platform with four separately steered and driven wheels that enable the robot to move in any direction with ease. Other important feature of Care-O-bot 3 include ability to be directed by spoken commands, recognizing and responding to some of the gestures and inclusion of sensors to prevent it from touching humans inadvertently.
