Joggobot is a quadracopter drone with a built in camera and software program. The camera identifies the companion jogger by the specially marked T-shirt he or she wears.
Joggobot is designed to stay in front of you as you jog and react to your motion. It can hover above and in front of you or closer to the ground as if you were walking it like a dog. It slows down when you do. Turn your back to it and it loses contact and gently lowers itself to the ground.
You can choose two settings for the Joggobot: Companion Mode and Coach Mode. In the former the Joggobot accompanies you as you run or walk matching your pace. When you set it to the latter the Joggobot serves as a personal trainer forcing you to keep up with the pace it sets.
Joggobot is a product of the Exertion Games Lab at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia.
Battery powered the Joggobot currently can operate 20 minutes before needing a recharge. But the developers intend to increase the robots flying time and software functions.
Send me information on personal robots you have encountered in your reading and I will happily publish the information here.
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Today’s market is divided between industrial and service robots. Industrial robotics and particularly military applications receive lots of investment from both government and the private sector. Grishin, however, intends to focus money on the under served side of the business, personal robots for everyday use.
Grishin’s founder, Dmitry Grishin, is an entrepreneur who graduated from the Faculty of Robotics and Complex Automation at Moscow State Technical University. Today he is CEO and Chairman of the Mail.Ru Group, Russia’s largest Internet company, the seventh largest in the world. Mail.Ru offers email services, an Internet portal, online games, social networking and e-commerce services.
But Grishin’s first love is robots and it his personal funds that are behind the launch of the Grishin Robotics. Grishin argues that robots are today where personal computers were in the early 1980s.
Companies like iRobot have made robotic vacuum cleaners attractive consumer items but the potential is so much greater particularly since the cost to build robots has dramatically decreased.
Where does Grishin see robots taking off? In areas that affect people’s daily lives. Here are some examples:
Grishin is looking at making investments between $1 and $2 million with a focus on small and medium-sized personal robotics companies. These are companies that are seen as too risky by venture capital firms and as a result get overlooked. The seed capital that Grishin will provide is designed to get these smaller entrepreneurial inventors to the point where they can make a mass-market impact.
Will robots become as ubiquitous as smart phones, tablets and notebook computers? Grishin thinks so and he is putting his money on the line the same way private companies are putting money into developing space technology.
Your personal world in 2030 may be teeming with robot helpers of all kinds. I can’t help but think about the Jetsons and Rosey the Robot.
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