Having robots to do the daily chores like cleaning and laundry may soon be realized now that the Kinect gives developers and an ample and effective way of navigating them through objects and obstacles. The Carebot of GeckoSystems was the target of Kinect developers as the potential of this mechanized system as well as the Kinect’s depth tracking gave developers the means to take the first step of automated robots. Using the Kinect as the visual guiding device, robots are able to detect incoming obstacles and therefore avoid and be properly guided to their destination. The Carebot was designed to give assistance to its human users. With this kind of goal, some further processing advancements and the Kinect, we might be looking at Mechanized Robot Caregivers and labor in the future.
Here is a description of the Kinect Enabled Personal Robot from the developer:
“Kinect processing is handled by a piece of software called GeckoImager, running on a dual core 1.66GHz Intel Atom motherboard. The navigation is handled by two other GeckoSavants(tm), GeckoNav and GeckoSuper, running on a separate dual core Atom machine. Both computers were located on the robot during the video.”
For more information about the Kinect Carebot, visit the project’s Youtube Page.
