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Care-O-bot gets an upgrade, now flirtier and available with optional second arm

The Care-O-bot 4 is designed to be an affable service robot on a budget

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Six and a half years after the previous iteration, the Fraunhofer Institute has released an update to Care-o-bot. The affordable service robot for personal and professional use has been made it more agile, more modular and much more personable?, ?bringing science fiction fantasy a little closer to reality.

The third-generation Care-O-bot announced back in 2008 was an advanced piece of hardware for its time that could fetch you drinks, place emergency calls and host videoconferences, but which had the rather uninteresting appearance and demeanor of a timid, somber-looking butler.

Compared to its predecessor, Care-O-bot 4 is a significant step forward. This latest iteration is much more agile, having gone from 20 degrees of freedom to 31 (including spherical joints at the torso and neck to let it bend and twist with grace). Its communication skills have also been revamped, and it can now convey information through a touchscreen, body gestures, sounds, text-to-speech, and even a laser pointer embedded in its arm.

When pitted against the ten-fingered, backwards-running, one-leg hopping Asimo the Care-O-bot doesn’t look all that impressive, but nor was it ever meant to compete with Honda’s flagship robot. Unlike its pricey Japanese cousin, Care-O-bot was designed from the start to be as economical as possible, with large portions of its internals made out of folding sheet metal and one of its standard sensors being a stock Microsoft Xbox Kinect.

The robot consists of six independent and configurable modules, from the rolling base, which can work by itself as an autonomous transportation unit, to either one or two robotic arms with seven degrees of freedom each and that, besides the laser pointer mentioned above, also include time-of-flight (TOF) cameras to measure real-time distance from its surroundings.

"Customers can choose between a wide range of sensors," Fraunhofer Institute’s Dr. Ulrich Reiser tells us. "You might choose to have color cameras in the front and a 3D TOF camera in the back, or several 3D-TOF cameras. The sensor ring is equipped with its own computation unit and receives power supply and Ethernet via standard connector, so you might have several sensor rings and exchange them for different applications."

The Care-O-bot could find use as a high-tech waiter, a mobile information center in museums, stores and airports, to collect and deliver objects or, like its predecessor, as a mobile personal and medical assistant.

Based on their experience from previous iterations, Reiser and team found that social interaction was crucial to making their robot more compelling, engaging, and acceptable to humans. That is why this time around Care-O-bot 4 tries to detect the current mood in its surroundings and react accordingly, communicating emotions (as facial expressions) through a touchscreen. In other words, if you believe its creators, Care-O-bot won’t just care for you as a patient?, ?it’ll care about you too.

Dr. Reiser tells us that battery capacity is 30 Ah (at around 48 V) and will typically last between three and five hours, depending on factors like the specific application and the number of degree of movements used.

Pricing will be announced within the next two months, and sales are set to begin in the second half of the year. The mobile base will be available by the end of the second quarter; the torso, arms and head modules in the third trimester; and the spherical joints by the end of the year. The Care-O-bot 4 will be initially available in Europe only and expand to the US later on.

You can watch the video below for a short demo (warning: includes robot-to-human flirting).

Source: Care-O-bot

自动翻译仅供参考

Care-O-bot护理机器人 Care-O-BOT得到升级，现在flirtier并提供可选的第二arm

护理-O-BOT 4被设计成在预算

图片廊（8图像）

在上一次迭代后的六年半，弗劳恩霍夫研究所发布了CARE-O-BOT的更新。为个人和专业使用的负担得起的服务机器人已经使它更灵活，更模块化，更个性化？？让科幻幻想更贴近现实。

第三代保健-O-BOT宣布早在2008年是一个先进的硬件为它的时候，可以把你的饮料，地方紧急呼叫和主机视频会议的，但它有一个胆小，忧郁，望着管家的相当无趣的外表和举止。

相比前作，护理-O-BOT 4是显著的进步。这个最新的迭代更加灵活，在经历来自20个自由度的31个（包括球形关节在躯干和颈部让它弯曲和扭转风度）。它的通信能力也得到了改进，并且现在可以通过触摸屏，身体的姿态，声音，文本到语音，甚至一个激光笔嵌入其臂传达信息。

当针对该十进站手指，向后跑，单腿跳跃Asimo机器人照料-O-机器人看起来并不是那么令人印象深刻，但也不是以往任何时候都意味着本田的旗舰机器人相抗衡。不像它的昂贵的日本表弟，护理-O-BOT从一开始就设计得经济越好，用它的内部开出的折叠金属片以及其标准传感器是A股微软的Xbox Kinect的一个大的部分。

该机器人包括六个独立的和可配置的模块，从轧制的基础上，其可通过本身工作作为一个自治传输单元，以一个或两个机械手臂与七度各自由的情况，并且除了上面提到的，也对激光指示器包括飞行时间（TOF）相机来测量的实时距离及其周边地区。

“客户可以多种传感器之间进行选择，”弗劳恩霍夫研究所的乌尔里希·赖泽医生告诉我们。 “你可能会选择有正面彩色摄像机和3D TOF相机的背部，或几个3D-TOF相机，传感器环配备有自己的计算单元和接收电源和以太网通过标准的接口，所以你可能有几个传感器环和交换不同的应用。“

护理-O-机器人可以找到作为一个高科技的服务员，博物馆，商店和机场的移动信息中心，收集和传递对象或，像它的前身，作为一个移动的个人和医疗助理。

根据从以前的迭代他们的经验，赖泽和团队发现，社会交往是至关重要的使他们的机器人更引人注目，有魅力，并接受人类。这就是为什么围绕护理-O-机器人4尝试这个时间来检测当前情绪在其周围，并相应地作出反应，通过触摸屏进行通信的情绪（如面部表情）。换句话说，如果你相信它的创造者，护理-O-机器人将不只是关心你作为一个病人？，？它会在乎你了。

博士。赖泽告诉我们，电池容量是30阿（约48伏），将3到5小时之间通常会持续，这取决于如具体应用和运动的使用程度的数量的因素。

定价将在接下来的宣布两个月了，销售将开始在今年下半年。移动基地将可在第二季度末;躯干，手臂和头模块，在孕晚期;与球形接头在今年的末端。护理-O-BOT 4将首先在欧洲上市仅扩展到美国以后

你可以看下面的视频进行一个简短的演示。（警告：包括机器人对人的挑逗）.