{"id":30503,"date":"2011-03-05T19:38:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T03:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=30503"},"modified":"2011-03-05T19:38:01","modified_gmt":"2011-03-06T03:38:01","slug":"mobile-robot-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=30503","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Robot Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I interview Martin Spencer of GeckoSystems.com<\/a> Feb. 19, 2010.<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cWe\u2019ve been around over 12 years. Our focus is on mobile robot solutions for safety, security and service. We\u2019ve had to develop many inventions from a plain sheet of paper, predominantly in software. We\u2019re in markets such as consumer, commercial, security, professional healthcare, public safety, agriculture, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cSo how does GeckoSystems.com<\/a> propose to integrate robotics into people\u2019s homes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cWe already have robots in our homes. They\u2019re just camouflaged. The traditional definition of a robot is an electro-mechanical system under software control. That\u2019s a modern car. That\u2019s fuel injection under computer control. That\u2019s TIVO. Even your old VCRs were robotic systems. What differentiates us is that we\u2019re a mobile robotic system as opposed to a fixed robotic solution such as you have in your printer, scanner or VCR.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had robots programmed by knotted strings, cams, and gears for about 3,000 years. In fact, line-following robots were developed in the 1930s, using vacuum tubes and relays. They are presently on exhibit at the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a child, my mother bought me an electro-set one Christmas and I got the bug. In 1966, when I started in electrical engineering school, it was to become a roboticist.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe term \u2018robot\u2019 has been around for about a half century now. Even Leonardo DaVinci did a robot that was programmed with gears, cams, and knotted strings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cHow will the CareBot transform the delivery of home healthcare?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cGreater efficiency. Like any good home appliance, like an automatic washing machine, it doesn\u2019t eliminate the need to wash the clothes, you still have to do it, but now you don\u2019t have to manually run the wet clothes through the ringer, you don\u2019t have to manually hang them out on a line, so the automatic washing machine and automatic dryer are time-saving, labor-saving and time management appliances. Any time we get something in our homes that lets us do more in a timely fashion, like a microwave oven, or a crockpot, or a VCR, those devices become popular so long as they are cost-effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cWhat kind of patient can benefit the most from the CareBot?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cThe frailest. There\u2019s physically frail and emotionally frail. Perhaps the greatest horror for an elderly person who\u2019s physically challenged is the emotional trauma, the loss of independence, in being forced to relocate their home of many years into an alien environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose with short-term memory loss, those on a lot of medication, say 10-15 medications a day at 20 different times, that coupled with short-term memory loss, is a very different administration problem for the caregiver.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s far more benefit to the robot than a simple reminder and a simple monitoring system. It is its ability to be customized by the family in ways that are reassuring verbally to the caregiver. Favorite family stories, anecdotes, jokes, Bible verses, songs, the family can now customize their CareBot so that grandma has a whole new way of being told by their family of their love and honor of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cI can see how this could even save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cMy grandma lived by herself as she wished. Despite my uncle visiting her every two or three days, to his horror, he found her one day, he hadn\u2019t visited for a couple of days, and she\u2019d fallen and broken her hip and hadn\u2019t been able to get to the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe survived but the suffering she endured was just unconscionable for most families. While the CareBot would not have saved her life, she lived anyway, her pain and suffering would\u2019ve been diminished dramatically had there been a CareBot to automatically notify my uncle or his wife or any of the other relatives in town that she was down and unable to get up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been instance when people have dropped into an insulin shock, into a coma. Even though they may have a button on their wrist they can push, if they are out cold, they can\u2019t push it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CareBot ends up being a new kind of safety net allowing the family to manage the risk of giving the care receiver too much independence given the frailty of their health and inability to get around regularly.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s say the grandchildren visit grandma. It\u2019s a great visit. And then they leave. Thirty minutes later, due to memory problems, grandma has forgotten they were there. That\u2019s tragic. What she needs to hear for the next several days, every hour or so, is for the robot to say, \u2018Mama, Danielle and Philip were here yesterday. You had the best visit with them. You talked with them about this. You talked with them about that. They\u2019re really excited about coming to see you again on Thanksgiving.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSince she forgets everything in 20-30 minutes, telling her that once an hour for days and days would drive a human being crazy. For a machine, not a problem. And look at what we just did for grandma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cHow does the CareBot monitor if someone falls down, breaks a hip, or goes into insulin shock?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cWe\u2019re advanced with sensor fusion. It\u2019s how we understand what people say in a noisy crowd. We not only hear their words, we also lip-read. We use two senses to determine what they\u2019re saying. We use multiple sensor systems. We have passive infrared, which gives up body heat, we have machine vision, which gives us color recognition, we have sonar, which gives us distance, as well as infrared range-finders, which also gives us distance, and we have the ability to verbally interact with grandma. If grandma doesn\u2019t respond, it\u2019s time to call 9-1-1. That happens within minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cI have an 85-year old friend who fell off his bed. He got tangled up in his sheets and stuck between his bed and the wall for three days until a neighbor found him. My friend lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cI\u2019ll tell you how we would\u2019ve detected that. I was at a situational awareness technology called Gecko Prox. It\u2019s designed to watch Grandma to see whether or not she\u2019s in bed, out of bed, or not to be found. In that scenario, we would\u2019ve detected her movement in the bed, we would\u2019ve noted her disappearance, and not being able to find her, there\u2019s yet again to call the neighbors or the other designated caregivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost families have loved ones and the last thing they want to do is to move them into a nursing home because of the frequent depression, the medication to deal with that depression, and within a couple of years, grandma\u2019s physical state has deteriorated dramatically, because of her emotional depression at not being in her own home anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome families are indifferent to their parents\u2019 security and safety and look at nursing homes as an opportunity to park mom and dad, but those families who do cherish their elderly family members are desperate to keep them home, secure and safe as long as it is feasible. This is where we are the most cost-effective. In that scenario, we have a payback in six to nine months because of the high cost of nursing homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cDo people typically buy, rent or lease the CareBot?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cAll three. Our business model is much like that of a car manufacture where people buy, rent and lease. We agree with Honda that the personal robot market is larger than the cell phone market as soon as the small personal robot costs less than the small car.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as cars have a minimum price due to the laws of physics, it takes this much steel, this much iron, this much copper, this much rubber, to have a vehicle capable of transporting a couple of people at safe speeds in highways and towns. You have this same fundamental cost structure in mobile robots. To have sufficient power to run 15-20 hours, to carry the appropriate level of electronics, gives a floor to the cost structure, unlike systems that are predominantly electronic, that can be cost-reduced, such as a radio\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBill Gates a year ago in Scientific America, did a wonderful article entitled, \u2018A Robot For Every Home.\u2019 If he\u2019s right, that\u2019s 110 million homes. That\u2019s a staggering market. And just as there are homes with more than one computer or television, we\u2019re going to see homes with more than one personal robot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cHow does the CareBot help care for children?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cMuch the same way it does for adults. Adults can be two places in a house. They may have an active two-year old playing in a room while you work at your computer in another room, but the instant the child wanders off into other parts of the house, it can get into mischief. So the adult in that scenario needs a video camera in the lower left hand corner of their computer monitor so they can be notified and see for themselves that the child is no longer playing in the bedroom, but, because the robot automatically follows the child, they can see the child is now headed for the basement, an area of treachery for a small child. The CareBot enables time management and labor-saving. The adult can be productive most of the time and still have an eye out for the child.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe smart home approach with multiple sensors per room, I\u2019ve never seen any cost studies on those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cWhat makes the CareBot different from the competition?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cWe\u2019re complete. You need two sets of capabilities \u2013 the base bot with basic locomotion and power and sensor and software for navigation, and the next level is verbal interaction, scheduling, and tracking so the robot stays proximate to a designated care receiver. To the best of my knowledge, we\u2019re the only company in the world with that sufficient suite of technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cSo you\u2019ve been in robotics for 40 years?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cYes. I worked for six years for Harmonic Drive, the sole supplier for a key component in electrical industrial robots during the 1980s and 1990s. This technology Harmonic Drive is in just about every electrical robot in the world. During my tenure, I learned a great deal about what you can and cannot do in electrical mechanical systems under software control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cWhen is the CareBot better than the conventional nurse or assistant?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cIt\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy does the typical bricklayer have an assistant? So he can lay more bricks faster and better. That\u2019s the situation with us. We don\u2019t replace. We augment. Nurses spend a lot of time doing routine repetitive tasks such as temperature and blood pressure. Simply taking those two tasks off the nurse\u2019s shoulders gives her more time to provide better healthcare with more favorable outcomes. The CareBot lets the nurse do a better job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason for the popularity of robotics in surgery is that it doesn\u2019t replace the doctor. His skills, his eyes, his understanding of the issues is still critical to the outcome, but due to the delicacy and low-invasion properties of a robotic surgical system, they are able to have quicker and less invasive surgeries and more favorable outcomes. This is what we\u2019re doing. We\u2019re enabling caregivers to do a better job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cHow does one save money with the CareBot?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cHalf the nursing homes in Florida are in bankruptcy. The cost for the average nursing home nationally is $4500 a month. Many believe that nursing homes are economically untenable. That\u2019s a hard reality. Grandma can generally stay in her own place for $2500 a month. When she goes into a nursing home, someone is going to have to come up with another $2,000 a month to make up that difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect the CareBots to sell for $12,000 to $15,000, the price of a small car. What\u2019s the payback? Six to eight months. On a two-to-three year note, the payments will run $400 to $600 a month, which is still less than putting grandma in a nursing home and she\u2019s far happier staying in her own place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cWhat are some of the things a CareBot does in a typical day with a patient?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cFollows her around. Reminds her to take medication. Enables the caregiver to know that they\u2019re safe. Communicates to the care receiver, the grandma, family anecdotes, Bible verses, that the family has programmed in to the Carebot, so that she gets not only oversight and assistance, but the CareBot routinely communicates to her how the family feels about Grandma.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung children frequently have imaginary friends. A personal robot to a child is a new playmate. A personal robot to the elderly is a new kind of companion. While it is a machine, it knows all the family jokes, stories, all the medications and when she is supposed to take them. How does it know that? The family loaded it in via a software application that looks like a spreadsheet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev: \u201cWhat\u2019s the reaction within the medical community to the CareBot?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin: \u201cMuch like corporate business\u2019s reaction to personal computers in the early 1980s. During that time, if you carried in a personal computer into your Fortune 500 workplace, not infrequently it was perceived as basis for termination of that employee. Why? We\u2019ve got millions of dollars in mainframes, we\u2019ve got hundreds of dumb terminals, we have no need for these newfangled personal computers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, by the late 1980s, big business figured it out and started buying personal computers by the train load. But the first adopters of personal computers were accountants. When they saw a spreadsheet demonstrated on an Apple or PC, they pulled out their checkbook and bought one on the spot. The bump in productivity was so significant, they had no choice but to buy one now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose were individuals, not corporate America. They understood it would pay for itself within a few months.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor all the right reasons, the medical community is risk averse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to enable that practicioner to be in more places at once and to focus their attention on the greatest priority. If there are seven patients they are monitoring, they know which one they need to visit first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited about the evaluation trials of the CareBot. We\u2019re looking to expand them. You don\u2019t want to put out a lot of them until you have most of the wrinkles ironed out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m asked frequently, what\u2019s the biggest problem? And the biggest problem with this venture for the past several years is that the technology has been a head-banger. The greatest difficulty in many ways has been the skepticism in the investment community. We\u2019ve encountered the sort of disbelief that the first airplanes had. If God had meant man to fly, he would\u2019ve given him wings. Why should I invest money in something this ludicrous? That skepticism is our biggest challenge. That\u2019s why we have dozens of videos on our website Geckosystems.com. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve thrown public conferences. That\u2019s why we\u2019re going to several public conferences to demonstrate this year, to overcome that skepticism. \u2018If this is such a wonderful invention, why didn\u2019t General Electric do it?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBreakthrough technology tends to come out of Steve Jobs\u2019 garage. It comes out of Harvey Firestone\u2019s kitchen on a Sunday morning when he figured out how to vulcanize rubber.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I interview Martin Spencer of GeckoSystems.com Feb. 19, 2010. Martin: \u201cWe\u2019ve been around over 12 years. Our focus is on mobile robot solutions for safety, security and service. We\u2019ve had to develop many inventions from a plain sheet of paper, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[578],"tags":[25645,25642,25643,25646,25641,25644],"class_list":["post-30503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-knotted-strings","tag-leonardo-davinci","tag-many-inventions","tag-mobile-robot","tag-mobile-robotic-system","tag-vacuum-tubes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}