The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Your points are well taken on the quality of life. There are a vast number of people who cannot afford services because they cannot afford [to hire the] people who provide those services. They may be able to afford to buy a robot to provide those services, depending on what price point robots show up in. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I think robotics is extremely promising, and the whole democratization of access to quality services is very ambiguous, compelling and also not terribly difficult to figure out the value of.

Rich Mahoney: I think another part that is getting a lot of adoption lately is agriculture. There is a company called Blue River based in Mountain View. They are focusing on lettuce farming. This is a very difficult manual task – the fitting of the lettuce after you do the initial planting. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Your point is well taken. From what I know from bringing products to market, anything that requires too much work on the part of the consumer basically fails. As long as the products that come onto the market have self-learning capabilities, that would be fine.

Rich Mahoney: At the end of the day, these robots will be products. They will have to meet customer demands and have some value for the price people are paying for them. That is a phase that has to happen. There is a lot of attention to robotics right now. Even the smallest bits get a lot of attention at the moment. That is just the nature of the technology. But if you compare it with any other consumer product or any other area, the overall activity is extremely low. It is still very early. >>>

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How will the holiday shopping season shape up? TecchCrunch’s Leena Rao sums up predictions from eBay and Amazon. For this week’s blog posts, click on the paragraph link. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I think the way to think about it is from different societies, where there is a lot more use of services and a lot more domestic help. In American society that help is there, but probably in the more affluent class of society and not as penetrated into the broad mass of society. If you look at lawn mowing, for example, I could see a parallel of the Roomba technology.

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The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: If you look at today’s robots, what would the market penetration look like? Are we still mostly in the area of industrial and manufacturing applications? How much have consumer applications taken off?

RM: First off, robotics is a very broad technology. There were talks about robotic kiosks at the airport that were handling the check-in for people bringing their bags. It was the first time I ever heard anyone refer to a kiosk as a robotic kiosk. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 1)

Rich Mahoney is the director of robotics engineering at SRI. He has more than 20 years of experience in the development and research of robotics. He holds a BS and an MS from Drexel University in Pennsylvania and a PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge, England. In this interview he talks about current developments in the robotics industry and potential uses of robotics in our daily lives as well as the future of this fascinating field.

 Sramana Mitra: Rich, let’s start with a bit of context. Give us an overview of where you think robotics sits today.

Rich Mahoney: This is my 25th year in robotics. I started in 1988 as a graduate student, and robotics itself emerged in the 1960s as a manufacturing technology in Boston and Silicon Valley, where the first demonstrations of industrial robotics were gaining traction. >>>

Catching Up On Readings: Where Does Physics Go Now?

Wired’s Adam Mann discusses the pros and cons of the Higgs boson discovery. For this week’s blog posts, click on the paragraph link. >>>