The Australian automotive magazine, Motor Point has an article online about the development of personal robots by the Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota announced this cybernetic project at the Toyota Group Pavilion at Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan.
It makes sense since Toyota has embraced the use of industrial robots. It looks as if Toyota is following the lead set by Honda with the ASIMO. Such development in manufacuring certainly has implications for other industries.
Toyota has come up with new stabilizing technologies for robots. Through expanded development of their driving control technologies for automobiles, they have developed an attitude sensor that detects tilt on a robot. These high precision sensors are small, lightweight and low-cost.
Such mobility control technology, based upon automotive sensor technology, is one of several advances that Toyota is making in the area of personal robots. A wire operating system also is being developed. The personal robot has power sources located on its torso, which include actuators attached to wires that are used to move the arms and legs. Integrated control of these servos reduces the weight of the arms and legs, thus adding limberness and speed to the robot’s motion.
Toyota intends for these human-assisting partner robots to be agile, warm and kind and also intelligent enough to skillfully operate a variety of devices when providing personal assistance care for the elderly.
Something possibly to be overheard in a service bay of a modern senior care facility sometime in the not-to-distant future:
"The human in 207B keeps saying that he is Commander Taco and that he wants his air car."
(Human laughter with a slight electronic resonance follows)
