Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 11:12:56 +0530 (IST) From: Poornima Narayan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 14:36:38 +0530 (IST) From: Poornima Narayan To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: Robot Librarians Dear Professionals Came across an interesting article which has appeared in today's (30th July 2004) Indian Express (Youth Express). If Robots are going to manage the future libraries, what is the future of L & IS Professionals? Robot Librarians ******* A group of robotics researchers at University Jaume I in Spain is working on a robot librarian. The prototype has cameras, sensors and grippers so it can locate and collect a book. The hope is that one day, teams of service robots could work in libraries. The question of safety is what has been deterring the use of robots outside of the factory to work in domains surrounded by people, explains Professor Angel del Pobil. Mixing robots and humans in an unstructured, uncontrolled environment, where there are all manner of obstacles to negotiate, could have unpredictable results. Professor Pobil thinks libraries are the best place to start introducing robots into public spaces, or at least to start showing that the technology is possible and works. The robot is a mobile manipulator which means that it is a vehicle with three wheels, Professor Pobil says. It has an arm with seven joints, two fingers which form a gripper, and two micro cameras on its wrist. Four sensors built into its gripper senses the force it is applying. When it receives a request for a book, its voice recognition software matches the titles with the book's classification code in the database. It can then search the database to identify which bookshelf to go to. Because the database will only give an approximate location, the robot will navigate its way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scan books within a four-metre radius. Once it is in there, it starts using its cameras, says the professor. By moving the arm with the cameras, it takes an image of the bookshelf. It can read the labels and the position of the book using its image processing and optical recognition software. Once the book is located, it has to grasp it and take it off the bookshelf. For this, the team had to develop special fingertips like nails, with one nail longer than the other. Professor Pobil says there is quite a possibility that teams of robots could, in about five years' time, realistically perform searching and fetching tasks. They could even mill around doing their work at night, working on library inventories, or identifying missing books, or mapping libraries. However, he does not imagine that at any stage they will be replacing librarians and demanding payment for overdue books. A separate team in Japan is working on a similar robotic librarian automat, but their project is more concerned with developing robots that can be controlled remotely over the web in order to scan and read books. -Courtesy BBC Online -- Poornima Narayana Contact: 080-5086083 (O) Dy Head, ICAST 080-6682781 (R) N.A.L E mail: poornima@css.nal.res.in Airport Road prn_1_in@yahoo.com Bangalore 560 017 Fax: 080-5268072