THE prospect of disembodied arms creeping around your house like caterpillars sounds spine-chilling, but a British robotics expert believes this kind of robot could one day give disabled people more independence around their homes.
Mike Topping of Rehab Robotics in Staffordshire came up with the idea when he was trying to extend the capabilities of robotic feeding arms that clip onto wheelchairs. He wants to create a new type of arm that can move about the house doing jobs that would normally be beyond easy reach of someone in a wheelchair鈥搒uch as washing dishes or changing a light bulb.
Each arm, called a Flexibot, is symmetrical lengthwise and has a four-pronged gripper at each end (see Graphic). These act both as manipulators and as plug contacts. Either end of the arm plugs into the power supply via a wall socket. The arm can move, caterpillar style, by stretching a free end to the next socket and plugging itself in before pulling its other end out of the wall. The free end flips round to the next socket, and the arm crawls its way along the wall, socket by socket.
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It sounds bizarre, but at least one potential user contacted by 快猫短视频 is interested in the idea. 鈥淚t would be fantastic,鈥� says Stephanie O鈥機onnell, who has cerebral palsy and already uses some equipment from Rehab Robotics. O鈥機onnell uses a fixed-arm system developed by Topping that, she says, has transformed her life. 鈥淚t allows me to feed myself,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 would be lost without it.鈥� It also helps her with make-up, drawing and playing games.
With Flexibot, she could extend her repertoire to tasks such as making herself a cup of tea. But she doesn鈥檛 want Flexibot to replace human carers altogether.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a good idea,鈥� says Mark Yim, a roboticist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California, who envisages the arms doing useful work in space. They could clamber around the space station or shuttle and spare astronauts from making potentially dangerous space walks.
In the meantime, Topping also foresees his peripatetic arms finding work in able-bodied households. At night, the lonesome limbs would be programmed to creep around and do housework while everyone is asleep.
He reckons most clutter in our homes is found on the floor, so his system would be designed to keep the floor clear. The robots will also be cheap, he says, because they won鈥檛 need their own power supply or microprocessor鈥搕hese would be contained within the walls or supplied by a PC.
Topping believes Flexibots will have the kind of precision normally restricted to factory robots working in fixed, predictable environments. Unlike factory droids, these mobile arms will need sensors that stop them dead if people or pets get in their way. Topping is studying existing snake- like robotic locomotion technology (New 快猫短视频, 4 December 1999, p 9) to design the most effective motor system.
Perhaps the biggest challenge Topping faces, says Yim, will be making the arms strong enough. 鈥淲ith snake-like robot arms you quickly run into torque problems,鈥� he explains. 鈥淭he longer the arm is, the more difficult it becomes to hold itself up.鈥�
But Topping doesn鈥檛 see the problems as insurmountable. He has filed a patent on his idea, and hopes to have a working prototype by the end of the year.
The Flexibot idea means having a network of sockets set in the walls and ceilings, but Topping thinks it鈥檚 a small price to pay for the advantages it brings.