We talked to Ohad Shvueli, VP of PrimeSense’s Commercial Markets Division, about the future of robotics.

Where is the robotics industry going?

The technology is there. It’s improving day to day. The costs are coming down, the functionality is improving and there are so many great brains (and a lot of money) being put into this industry, that there’s no way that it won’t become a sizeable business. The applications are endless. People are talking about everything from education to hospitality.

The saying in general in robotics is that they want to replace people in operations which are dirty, dangerous or dull. The vision from people working in the industry is that in the foreseeable future robots will take over many daily functions from humans and non-humans. They will be very pervasive. They will come in all kinds of sizes and shapes.

The makers of Baxter (an industrial robot from Rethink Robotics which can be taught to perform new tasks) claim that their robot is the equivalent of a $5/hour assembly line worker, which is competitive with places like China and Vietnam. That robot can learn fairly simple operations. This is the kind of thing which could bring manufacturing back to high labor cost countries.

How can 3D sensors be used in robots?

Vision has been one of the major obstacles in bringing robotics to the masses. 3D sensing enables devices to “see” and understand their environment, allowing Natural Interaction between people and devices and between devices and their surroundings. When you put eyes on a robot using a 3D sensor, it can do many things which were not possible before or it can do them in a much more human-like way.

One of them is autonomous movement. A robot needs to be able to see in order to not fall or bump into things. There are touch sensors today – the Roomba bounces around bumping into walls – and that’s acceptable but it’s not very efficient. Robots have lots of sensors today, some of which are trying to do something similar to a 3D sensor but less efficiently, less effectively and sometimes in a more costly way.

With vision a robot also goes from being reactive to proactive. If vision allows you to avoid an obstacle, the same vision allows you to seek something out. A 3D sensor also lets the robot see the depth to navigate and see how close or far an obstacle is away from it. So you get movement, navigation and orientation (knowing where you are in the space), as well as the detection of specific objects.

There’s the 5 foot tall robot that balances on a ball and uses our sensor to see where its going, for example. Created by Bosa Nova Robotics, the Mobi:

Depth-sensing helps with the fine-motor skills which have been lacking in robots up to now. When we pick up an object our brain sees it in 3D and is immediately able to surmise how delicate or robust it is. You need to have 3D depth sensing to determine the volume of the object That’s something that robots haven’t had so when the robot tries to pick up, say a glass, it doesn’t crush it. Watch this video of the SAMI humanoid robot by Criif pouring water:

Can 3D sensing help robots to interact better with people?

Robot movement is very mechanical and often very deterring too. If you introduce 3D vision into that equation the robot can have more fluid motion. It knows not to bump into you since it can see you and knows to turn in time.

Where that is very pertinent is in personal assistant robots. One of the target markets for robots is elder care. People want to be at home, they want to be as independent as possible and they want a companion. iRobot is introducing their robots into hospitals right now. Think, the Jetsons, but in reality. Add touch screens and voice recognition and all of a sudden you have a companion which both understands and speaks back to you. If you make that companion look and feel as close as possible to a human, many elderly people would be ok with that.

Are there any obstacles to PrimeSense sensors being used in robotics?

One of the complications that developers are working around is when you take the robot outside. Taking the technology outdoors presents a whole slew of technical obstacles to overcome. Any outdoor application is not like the living room environment where the sensor is stationary and in a fairly closed environment. All those parameters are being addressed in our development labs for future generations of sensors.

How is PrimeSense software opening up new possibilities for the robotics industry?

We are giving tools to developers so that the platform is the robot but you can add new applications. For a personal assistant, for example, you can arm the robot with some basic, “out of the box”, functionality to understand you, to go here and there. The minute you give the developers community at large the ability to approach the product with these development tools a lot of greatness happens. In OpenNI, we have provided NiTE, which is our middleware. We provide different APIs and SDKs that can be on ROS. It’s been downloaded tens of thousands of times. If you open up the platform, you can enrich the functionality of a robot in a way we can’t even imagine today.

Do you have any favorite robotics applications?

I have to give it to Disney Research for their humanoid robot that plays catch and juggles, also using 3D sensing technology to see the ball.

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Our robot future will look very different than the movies. The vast majority of robots will not be the humanoid showpieces beloved of research labs or have hyper-intelligent AI but will perform a simple, specific job, often in cooperation with human beings. Their intelligence and capabilities will be boosted by a combination of other emerging technologies like the Internet of Things and Big Data. Essentially, robots will become the physical extension of our digital world.

What’s a robot anyway?

Even the experts disagree on what a robot actually is and their physical form varies hugely between applications, but most robots have sensors to detect what is going on around them, some basic intelligence and an ability to take some action the physical world. Robots can replace human beings in dull, dirty and dangerous jobs as well as augment our physical capabilities. How many humans want to inspect sewage pipes or recycle dangerous waste?

Robots can also achieve a level of precision and speed that is impossible for humans, which is why they have been used for years on industrial assembly lines, in complex medical procedures and in the military. We will use robotics to extend our physical capabilities from military drones to space exploration.

How to build a robot

The first thing a robot needs is the ability to sense the world and its own position within it. A bump sensor enables a robot to know that it has collided with another object. An encoder attached to a wheel or motor can detect displacement, velocity and acceleration. Light sensors inform the robot about changes in lighting conditions, while gyroscopes or other mechanisms help it maintain its balance. More sophisticated robots will have vision from 3D sensors, which combined with Natural Interaction software will allow the robot to navigate, recognize objects and interact with the world around it, like what Disney research has done with PrimeSense 3D sensor, see the video:

Finally, your robot needs to take action based on what has concluded from sensory and other input. Robots use actuators - systems of motors, hydraulics, air pumps or even artificial muscles – to move themselves and other objects around. See this spider robot, named Charlotte, that Kevin Ochs created. It can detect collision and move around objects:

Robot Trends

Several trends are fueling the robolution. Robots are complex products but robotics components are becoming cheaper and easier to manufacture. We have already seen developers build robots with our sensors and OpenNI SDK and ROS. Technology developed for industrial or military robots is making its way into completely new application areas. Who would have thought that industrial robots would be filming Hollywood blockbusters?

Robots will start to work alongside human beings, as iRobot’s pioneering Roomba vacuum cleaner did, and will rapidly move into sectors like retail and healthcare. This raises all kinds of new issues from our social relationships with robots to whether automation will take your job.

Robots will also take on completely new forms. In the burgeoning field of soft robotics, a robot arm is no longer a hard and intimidating metal object but as gentle and fluid as the tentacles of a squid.

The robolution starts here…

Stay tuned for a Q&A with our VP of Commercial Markets about giving robots the gift of sight.

The post The Robolution is Here appeared first on PrimeSense.

We also had a chance to show developers attending Google I/O our partners’applications that use Capri which adds depth sensing to the Nexus 10 tablet – this really shows what can be done when you give the gift of sight to an Android tablet. A couple of the applications are what we call Interactive Reality – an evolution to the old Augmented Realty (AR) concept. Its a new paradigm in gaming that goes beyond simply layering the digital onto the physical; Interactive Reality puts the game in the real world. Interactive Reality can surround you with the game interacting with your actual environment, creating digital objects for use in the physical world.

The first app is a cool game called Alice in Zombieland by ActiveMe, a mobile app and 3D game development company. Alice is a little girl that is walking around the real environment of the player and collects flowers (until the zombies start coming, of course . ActiveMe doesn’t use markers, because it doesn’t have to with the device sight generated from Capri’s 3D sensing.

Another demo that we showed is a 3D scanning application that enables “beaming” of objects. Imagine you’re at the furniture store, and you’d like to ask your girlfriend what she thinks about an arm chair. You can just scan it and beam it to her mobile device, she can then “place it” in your living room and have a look on what it would look like! That application was developed by Occipital, a San Francisco based start-up that develops computer vision apps; they also developed the 360Panorama application, a real-time panorama creation for iOS and Android. You can see a demo of their application from last night’s party below.

Then there is another Interactive Reality show off by Seattle-based, NCONNEX. The company created an interior design application that lets users do a 3D scan of a room and then add and move furniture around to design and decorate their home.

In the Google I/O keynote yesterday, Google announced they have had 900 million Android activations to date, 48 billion app installs on Google Play and a new API that will give mobile developers a chance to create apps that “see.” We believe our tiny, embeddable sensor – Capri, and Nexus 10 or similar mobile devices are the perfect companions to open up a world of 3D sensing of mobile applications. We were proud to showcase some of the capabilities that 3D sensing allows in the mobile industry, and to do it with our tremendous partners at one of the most popular mobile developer conferences in the world was for us, empowering!

See what engadget had to say about the demonstrations. And, then take look at Capri embedded mobile 3D sensor demo on the Nexus 10 tablet for yourself:

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The first and most famous was Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, which lets gamers move their bodies to interact with video games. But now PrimeSense chips are also starting to turn up in robots, PC peripherals, and interactive displays.

And here are two more applications that might surprise you: vacation rental marketing and interior design.

Those are two of the use cases being targeted by Matterport, a Mountain View, CA-based startup that uses PrimeSense chips in a new 3D camera being prepped for release this summer. Place the motorized, tripod-mounted Matterport camera in the center of a room and it spins in place, capturing depth and image data that can be uploaded to Matterport’s cloud servers and assembled into a high-resolution 3D model of the space….

Read the full article on Xconomy »

The post Xconomy: Matterport Isn’t Playing Games with Kinect-Style 3D Camera appeared first on PrimeSense.

Read the full article on Engadget »

The post Engadget: PrimeSense demonstrates Capri 3D sensor on Nexus 10 (hands-on) appeared first on PrimeSense.

TEL AVIV and SAN FRANCISCO (May 15, 2013 at 7:05 p.m. Pacific Time) – PrimeSense™ (http://www.primesense.com/), the leader in Natural Interaction and 3D sensing, is showcasing the latest developments in mobile applications that take advantage of PrimeSense 3D depth sensing technology using  Nexus 10 devices and Android’s operating system at the official Google I/O developer conference After Hours party, taking place now, May 15 at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco.

PrimeSense is hosting partners from OpenNI, the largest 3D sensing development community, to demonstrate 3D sensing mobile applications throughout the evening.

The demonstrations showcase innovative developments in mobile 3D sensing featuring the Capri sensor, the world’s smallest 3D sensor, tiny enough to be embedded in many consumer electronic devices. PrimeSense and its partners are demonstrating applications on the Nexus 10 from Google such as: augmented reality games by ActiveMe, 3D scanning, “beaming” of objects by Occipital and an interior design application that allows the user to use augmented reality for interior design and decoration, by NCONNEX.

“We see Capri adding depth sensing and Natural Interaction to mobile devices and tablets, revolutionizing the user experience and usability in ways that no one could imagine until now. We are thrilled to introduce the guests to these applications at the Google I/O After Hours party,” said Tal Dagan, VP Marketing, PrimeSense. “Capri and Nexus 10 are the perfect companions to open up a world of 3D sensing of mobile applications.”

Google I/O is an annual developer conference featuring highly technical, in-depth sessions, and showcasing the latest from Google’s product teams and partners. Google I/O returned to San Francisco’s Moscone West Convention Center on May 15-17, 2013. On May 15 at 7:00 p.m. Pacific, the annual Google I/O After Hours Party features hands-on interactive experiences, sophisticated recreation and live musical performances like no other. Google has teamed up with the best global visionaries, artists, and inventors to showcase their dynamic experiments, heightened realities, and magical experiences.

About PrimeSense

PrimeSense™ is the leader in Natural Interaction^® and 3D sensing, enabling devices to “see” environments and allowing Natural Interaction between people and devices in a simple and intuitive way. PrimeSense offers affordable solutions for consumer and commercial markets including: home computing, interactive entertainment, consumer electronics, robotics, industrial, digital signage, healthcare and more. PrimeSense products include the Carmine (PS 1080) and Capri System on Chip, PrimeSense 3D sensors, NITE™ middleware, and cross-platform enabling software to make application development easy and intuitive. PrimeSense is a privately held company headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices in North America, Japan, Singapore, Korea, China and Taiwan. For more information, please visit www.primesense.com and follow PrimeSense on Twitter @goprimesense.

About OpenNI

OpenNI is the largest 3D sensing development framework and community. The open source SDK is the recognized standard for developing computer vision middleware and 3D solutions. The OpenNI community provides developers with a full range of software tools along with a vivid ecosystem platform for effective collaboration and promotion.

The Open NI consortium was established in November 2010 as a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to promote and standardize the compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI), devices, applications and middleware. For additional information, please visit http://www.openni.org or follow on Twitter at @OpenNI.

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Media Contacts:

Alexandra Crabb, ink Communications

alex [at] theinkstudio [dot] com

+1-617-956-2214

The post PrimeSense Demonstrates 3D Sensing Innovation with Capri™ Sensor and Nexus 10 from Google appeared first on PrimeSense.

And even though there seems to be an app for just about everything these days, how about an app that uses 3D sensors to detect objects in front of you while you are texting-while-walking.

A post-doctoral researcher at the University of Manitoba’s Human Computer Interaction Lab, Juan David Hincapié-Ramos is working on an app called CrashAlert that uses 3D sensing technology from PrimeSense to give your mobile device vision – which will literally let your phone detected and identify objects in their environment.

How does it work? Hincapié-Ramos used a depth-sensing camera to spot obstacles and pops up a warning on a smartphone screen before you smack into them, allowing you to safely navigate public spaces without taking your eyes from your handset.

He wants to integrate this technology into a smartphone down the road, but right now he used a 3D depth sensing camera with a sensor/tablet hybrid to get things moving. And to get that tech into a smartphone you would need a very small sensor which is why Capri is the perfect fit! It’s small enough to fit into mobile devices, powerful enough to “see” the world around it.

Hincapié-Ramos says CrashAlert is part of a bigger vision they are exploring to give mobile devices “vision” and add gesture-based interactions as another application for mobile devices with vision. In other words – are mobile devices able to identify elements in their environment through computer vision technologies? This aligns perfectly with PrimeSense’s vision to bring any digital device the gift of site through 3D sensing technology. Hincapié-Ramos says that PrimeSense’s Capri sensor would be a powerful sensor platform that would enable services like CrashAlert and other vision-based interactions, like 3D scanning, when integrated in mobile devices .

So, go ahead, text and walk, your smartphone just got glasses

The post Watch Where You’re Going appeared first on PrimeSense.

At PrimeSense, our talented software and middleware engineers on the research and development teams work very hard to create interesting applications and software with our 3D sensors.  They are always producing an array of applications, sensor utilities and computer vision algorithms to find the best practice and useful tools for the developer community.  Sometimes these creations find their way into our formal SDK, and often they stay internal.  We wanted to form a formal collection where we can release some of these creations to the community. With that in mind, today we would like to announce PrimeSense Labs, unique applications, useful and interesting utilities we developed for internal use and want to share with the community, for anyone crafting applications and middleware with our 3D sensors.

PrimeSense Labs aims to inspire creation from developers or anyone with a PrimeSense sensor and OpenNI SDK. Today, we will release the first two applications available to the community.

The first is the PrimeSense Labs Grab Detector middleware

This was developed as a powerful tool for developers who are creating Natural Interaction applications.  It is the same Grab gesture tool that we use in our reach UX for gesture control that magically allows the user to reach into the third dimension and grab content or objects through simple and intuitive gestures. Middleware applications like the Grab Detector provide a solid building block for developers to produce applications on top of our SDK with 3D sensors, resulting in more advanced and exceptional community-created content.
Download Grab Detector »

We are also releasing an artistic visualization tool called ASCII Viewer.

It displays the depth map using ASCII characters. This app is a refreshing view for the default yellow NIViewer : )  Now you can you see the world in 3D, brought to life by your favorite ASCII characters! It can also be useful for designers and visual graphic artists or anyone who wants to experiment with the ASCII depth map and imaginative visuals.
Download ASCII Viewer »

PrimeSense Labs’ creations (apps, middleware, utilities, etc.) are available for free in the OpenNI Arena.  We welcome you to discover PrimeSense Labs and provide us with your feedback and thoughts on the community support platform of OpenNI.

The post We Bring You…PrimeSense Labs appeared first on PrimeSense.

Israel calls itself the “startup nation.” Israelis say that technology is the country’s No. 1 export.

By some counts, Israel is home to 4,800 startups today. It’s also home to least two dozen accelerator/incubator programs in the Tel Aviv area, alone, including some run by Microsoft and Google.

There are more incubators in other cities, too, including a program in Jerusalem run by Jerusalem Venture Partners on a campus so big it has its own restaurant and nightclub.

All of this is to say that as a startup hub, Israel is second only to Silicon Valley.

So it’s not easy to name the nation’s hottest, most exciting startups because everywhere you turn there are young companies doing really cool things.

Business Insider recently spent a week exploring Israel’s super hot startup community, meeting with founders, employees and venture capitalists.

Read the full article »

The post Business Insider Selects PrimeSense as one of the “20 Hottest Startups From Israel” appeared first on PrimeSense.

Le TV_Engadget

Quad-core smart TVs? Move over, Samsung and Haier, because another company’s now joining the party. At a press event in Beijing yesterday, Chinese video content provider LeTV announced its first TV series dubbed “Super TV.” Despite the cheesy name, there are a handful of big names behind it: Kai-Fu Lee’s Innovation Works, Qualcomm, Foxconn and Sharp. The last two aren’t surprising considering Foxconn’s parent company, Hon Hai, is an investor of Sharp as well as LeTV. It’s also worth noting, though, that Hon Hai already has a deal with RadioShack to make and sell a 60-inch TV, the RS60-V1, in China since January.

The flagship X60 (pictured above at GMIC Beijing) features an aluminum alloy body that encases Sharp’s 10th-generation 60-inch 1080p panel — as featured on the RadioShack TV — with 120Hz 3D, on top of a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Prime MPQ8064 (with 2GB of RAM and Adreno 320 graphics), dual-band WiFi and S/PDIF optical output. You can also add an optional 2.4GHz gyroscopic remote control and a PrimeSense motion sensor just for giggles. But most importantly, LeTV now streams over 2,000 TV apps as well as some 90,000 TV episodes and 5,000 movies for free (LeTV claims to own the rights to 95 percent of the video content). So, the ¥6,999 or $1,140 price tag seems a steal for the X60. There will also be a 39-inch 1080p (likely 2D only), dual-core S40 model priced at ¥1,999 or about $330, and both TVs will be available by the end of June.

Read the article on Engadget »

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