TASK

Never mind the humanoid Automated Domestic Assistants walking rich people’s pets in the movie “I, Robot,” or the accordion-armed Robot B9 in the TV classic “Lost in Space” warning of danger on lonely planets.

The real force driving the development of personal robots – and what eventually will create demand for them in the marketplace – is aging baby boomers.

That’s the secret among robotics researchers and budding robot companies. As boomers get older, they will increasingly be unable to care for themselves or their homes. They’ll face a social and medical system straining to help them. But they’ll be comfortable with technology.

Robot experts predict that a decade from now, boomers might buy a specialized R2D2-like robot to clean the kitchen and a health care ‘bot to monitor vital signs and make sure pills are taken. Yet another robot – built more like a skinny, 5-foot-tall human – might specialize in fetching things from shelves or the basement, reducing chances for falls.

“As the demographics change, robots could help solve some problems,” says Rodney Brooks, director of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The question is, where is that transition?”

“At some point, there will be an explosion,” says Sebastian Thrun, director of Stanford University’s AI lab.

With that in mind, robot projects are popping up everywhere. Most are experimental, but some are becoming commercial products.

Robots that are likely to serve the elderly seem to fall into three broad categories. Though the categories don’t officially have names, you could call them homebots, carebots and joybots.

A look at those categories speaks volumes about what’s going on in robotics.

Homebots

The Roomba is Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot’s first offering. Set it in the middle of a room, turn it on, and it finds its way around using artificial intelligence, vacuuming every square inch.

Thrun says, “There will be robots that pick up dishes from the table and put them in the dishwasher within five years.”

That means that homebots probably will be some of the first mass-market robots, emerging just as boomers reach a point where they can’t do much housework but don’t want to move out of their homes.

Still, early versions will be anything but perfect. Making even single-purpose robots has its difficulties. For example, computers and software still aren’t good enough to give a robot the visual capabilities of a 2-year-old human.

Carebots

A handful of hospitals and nursing homes are experimenting with robots. At Johns Hopkins University Hospital, a gadget dubbed Robo-doc helps busy doctors monitor patients following surgery. Carnegie Mellon has worked on robots that can safely walk nursing home patients, for instance, from their rooms to the dining hall.

Those are the early versions of carebots that could help tend to the elderly in their homes.

A robot could autonomously do straightforward tasks such as monitor blood pressure, dispense pills and call 911 if its owner was in a heap on the floor and not moving. For more complex judgments, the Tbot could connect to and be controlled by a human nurse or doctor via the Internet.

Much of that is possible within the next decade, robot experts say. But certain barriers persist.

“To give health care to the elderly, robots need the manual dexterity of a 6-year-old, and we don’t have that yet,” says MIT’s Brooks.

Joybots

“Whether or not you have to love your robot is another question,” Brooks says. “I don’t need my ATM to be cute.”

Here is a great point of departure between U.S. and Japanese robotics research. U.S. labs and companies generally approach robots as tools. The Japanese approach them as beings.

That explains a lot about experimental robot projects coming out of Japan. Sony’s Qrio looks humanoid, and the company bills it as “an entertainment robot that lives with you, makes life fun, makes you happy.” It can learn to distinguish different people’s faces and voices. But, it doesn’t do housework.

Such joybots one day might help with another difficulty that can accompany aging: loneliness. If so, a Qrio could become a significant segment of a coming personal robotics industry.