Might be the first time I've seen a mobile house-robot besides a vacuum that's actually very useful.
My mom works as a PSW and I showed her this, she mentioned there's a large number of people not quite at the point of needing an in-home person where this could fill a lot of roles.
The video is quite excellent by being simple (designated rooms + designated trays/table areas + follow me + Alexa integration) and showing practical examples.
This is a great example of how "distilling the user's needs" can lead to an extremely simple and useful design. I believe this will be a fairly popular product just like the robot vacuum cleaners we have today.
I've started to think of "OXO" as a general design principle: design for elderly or otherwise challenged folk turns out to be great for the able-bodied (is that still the right euphemism these days?)
One way to look at it: You know the joke meme "It's Uber for FOO"? Well, I think you can come up with great products by "It's OXO for FOO."
> “My charter was to sell 10 to 15,000 units of that kit, and we ended up doing over a million,” he says. “That’s a claim to fame that really impresses six year olds.”
We used Lego Mindstorms in college in a robotics course, because it offered the best value among such kits.
Ahhh I want this so bad! I'm a wheelchair user and moving things around is incredibly frustrating, since you need both hands free to push the wheels. You can kinda get away with holding a cup of water by pushing one wheel at a time and switching the cup from hand to hand, or pushing off of countertops with your free hand, but it's annoying and dangerous if you're moving fragile items or hot liquids.
I really hope this doesn't cost too much. Disabled people tend not to have much money, and my insurance company wouldn't even pay for ramps, much less something like this.
I recently injured my spine (a "tiny myelopathy" and a series of larger radiculopathies) and have recently been assessed for a chair I can sit in for >1 hour without being in pain.
It costs (in USD, although I do not live in the US) nearly $2200. I do not believe it costs anything like that much to manufacture. Added together with a desk, arm supports, and table that they recommended and you end up with nearly $10000 in costs.
Someone, somewhere is making a lot of money out of healthcare systems.
There’s a pretty cool kids show in Germany (Sendung mit der Maus) and in one of the last sequels they showed how the customized seat padding for a wheelchair is made. And that involves a shit-ton of back and forth, measuring, cnc-cutting, fine tuning, adjusting and all of it mostly one-off manual labor with expensive machiner. I’m certain someone is making money off that, but given the amount of highly specialized labor that went into this, I believe 2200 USD is reasonable.
(If you run the math, that’s roughly 2-3 days of work for an engineer that earns 250k, without even considering all attached costs)
If it really turns out useful, I'm 100% sure other companies will manufacture it, too (and I'd expect an open version at some point, too). I mean, technically it's not that complicated, it's details that matter.
I wouldn't say Alexa integration, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), object/room detection (dining room etc), setting up those trays around the house and calibrate it, collision avoidance, path planning through obstacles, 3D depth data processing (I see two Realsense i455 cameras) is "technically not that complicated"
I mean sure most of above can be setup with MoveIT if hardware is already assembled, but making it fail proof for 100s of different houses and use cases is an engineering effort
What I mean it's not some new revolutionary tech but something that we've been using for years integrated and put to a good use. I bet there will be many people interested in having a less advanced version that costs $700, not $7000. That is, if the original deliver on its promises - there's often a significant discrepancy between how a product is marketed and what the first customers say.
Agree with everything you said. But equally these are all things that robot vacuum cleaners already do.
Obviously the stakes are a little higher with a mobility assistance device. But the fundamentals of the technology are well solved already, and I wouldn’t be surprised if companies like Roomba would be interested in working in their space, or licensing some of their tech to companies in this space.
> since you need both hands free to push the wheels
My niece was born without legs, and only one arm. She has a wheelchair that can be operated with one hand. It has the 2 metal push bars fitted to one side of the chair. The left bar is connected to the left wheel, the right bar to the right wheel. You can grab both with one hand. By moving both at the same time you go straight, or grab one ring to steer. It works really intuitively.
I believe this one-hand option was custom designed for her use-case (which would be about 30 years ago now), but since then many other people that have both arms tried her chair, and immediately contacted the manufacturer to order a chair with the one-hand option. AFAIK the manufacturer now offers the one-hand option on all their chairs.
This seems like a very logical and cheap thing to include in every wheelchair design... I don't know why they all don't have it!
Other 'obvious' design improvements that seem to be missing:
* Wheel-assist - an electric motor pushes along with you to stop you getting tired arms, but still give you the feeling of direct control you don't get with a typical joystick controlled electric. Little 100 watt brushless motors with controllers are only $3 now, and that would be plenty of assistance for going up ramps.
* Auto brakes - a sensor brakes the wheels whenever a hand isn't touching the rim of the wheel - and that can be a software only feature enabled by the above assistance motor...
Etc... It seems wheelchairs are crazy expensive yet don't have most of the features an undergrad student would build as a 'for fun' project.
The reasons are regulatory, not BoM costs. Getting a new medical device approved is hard, and that becomes much harder when you’ve got electronics that could hurt the user, or leave them stranded.
If I were a wheelchair user, I'd be pissed if my government was putting in place laws that were supposed to protect me, but were in fact making my quality of life worse every day because all innovations that might make my life better were being stifled.
I'm not actually sure wheelchairs are approved as medical devices. Certainly not the same way pacemakers are. A friend of mine recently had her power chair go haywire on her and try to kill her, which sounded like a melted MOSFET from how she described the repair job. The wheelchair company apparently elected not to recall that model because it only happens to 1% of users.
I have the "wheel-assist" you describe - the Yamaha NaviOne. it works incredibly well, and without it I would need a full power chair since my arms are fragile.
Auto brakes as you describe would be really annoying since it would make the alternate-hand technique impossible, and most wheelchair users stop touching the rims between strokes. (I use the handrim grip favored by quadriplegics because of my arms, so I so keep my hands on the rims at all times, but it's not ideal.)
I agree that disability aids are quite overpriced and lackluster in general, but I love my Yamaha wheels.
Call then up, and ask for one to review. It would look good on their part if they gave you one. This is the first home robotic gizmo that caught my attention.
This devise has a lot of potential uses. I bet we will see these in resturants.
This is really cool. In the last couple of years of my grandad's life the most useful thing we got him was a walking aid that had a tray and a basket on it. It made such a difference for him being able to move things around his flat and stay independent.
I'd be very curious to see if people without mobility issues might find it useful. Maybe after a few iterations on the design.
Then I'm thinking, what if everything in my house was on wheels? Reminders me of those super modular homes that you sometimes see on YouTube where everything is a transformer (bed comes desk, table becomes chair, bookshelf becomes toilet , etc.) or folds away.
Always thought Labrador was golden arm and was going to comment how strange to give a robot without arms this name. Love when I learn new things.
"Labrador is named after João Fernandes Lavrador, a Portuguese explorer who sailed along the coasts of the Peninsula in 1498–99. Lavrador in Portuguese means 'farmer' (cognate with 'labourer')."
29 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 78.2 ms ] threadMy mom works as a PSW and I showed her this, she mentioned there's a large number of people not quite at the point of needing an in-home person where this could fill a lot of roles.
The video is quite excellent by being simple (designated rooms + designated trays/table areas + follow me + Alexa integration) and showing practical examples.
I've started to think of "OXO" as a general design principle: design for elderly or otherwise challenged folk turns out to be great for the able-bodied (is that still the right euphemism these days?)
One way to look at it: You know the joke meme "It's Uber for FOO"? Well, I think you can come up with great products by "It's OXO for FOO."
It's OXO for domestic robots.
It's OXO for cars.
It's OXO for user interfaces.
It's OXO for banking.
It's OXO for ...
We used Lego Mindstorms in college in a robotics course, because it offered the best value among such kits.
I really hope this doesn't cost too much. Disabled people tend not to have much money, and my insurance company wouldn't even pay for ramps, much less something like this.
It costs (in USD, although I do not live in the US) nearly $2200. I do not believe it costs anything like that much to manufacture. Added together with a desk, arm supports, and table that they recommended and you end up with nearly $10000 in costs.
Someone, somewhere is making a lot of money out of healthcare systems.
(If you run the math, that’s roughly 2-3 days of work for an engineer that earns 250k, without even considering all attached costs)
I mean sure most of above can be setup with MoveIT if hardware is already assembled, but making it fail proof for 100s of different houses and use cases is an engineering effort
Obviously the stakes are a little higher with a mobility assistance device. But the fundamentals of the technology are well solved already, and I wouldn’t be surprised if companies like Roomba would be interested in working in their space, or licensing some of their tech to companies in this space.
My niece was born without legs, and only one arm. She has a wheelchair that can be operated with one hand. It has the 2 metal push bars fitted to one side of the chair. The left bar is connected to the left wheel, the right bar to the right wheel. You can grab both with one hand. By moving both at the same time you go straight, or grab one ring to steer. It works really intuitively.
I believe this one-hand option was custom designed for her use-case (which would be about 30 years ago now), but since then many other people that have both arms tried her chair, and immediately contacted the manufacturer to order a chair with the one-hand option. AFAIK the manufacturer now offers the one-hand option on all their chairs.
Other 'obvious' design improvements that seem to be missing:
* Wheel-assist - an electric motor pushes along with you to stop you getting tired arms, but still give you the feeling of direct control you don't get with a typical joystick controlled electric. Little 100 watt brushless motors with controllers are only $3 now, and that would be plenty of assistance for going up ramps.
* Auto brakes - a sensor brakes the wheels whenever a hand isn't touching the rim of the wheel - and that can be a software only feature enabled by the above assistance motor...
Etc... It seems wheelchairs are crazy expensive yet don't have most of the features an undergrad student would build as a 'for fun' project.
Auto brakes as you describe would be really annoying since it would make the alternate-hand technique impossible, and most wheelchair users stop touching the rims between strokes. (I use the handrim grip favored by quadriplegics because of my arms, so I so keep my hands on the rims at all times, but it's not ideal.)
I agree that disability aids are quite overpriced and lackluster in general, but I love my Yamaha wheels.
This devise has a lot of potential uses. I bet we will see these in resturants.
Prices for the machines will be $1500 upfront with 36-month payment plants.
That’s $99 a month for Caddie and $149 a month for Retriever, giving total costs of $5,000 and $6,800 for the two machines.
Then I'm thinking, what if everything in my house was on wheels? Reminders me of those super modular homes that you sometimes see on YouTube where everything is a transformer (bed comes desk, table becomes chair, bookshelf becomes toilet , etc.) or folds away.
"Labrador is named after João Fernandes Lavrador, a Portuguese explorer who sailed along the coasts of the Peninsula in 1498–99. Lavrador in Portuguese means 'farmer' (cognate with 'labourer')."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labrador