with the bulk of the existing robotic workforce which Joe Engelberger founded in the 60s-- robot arms. Almost all the world's cars and trucks have been welded, assembled, painted, etc by this mindless, brawny workforce that spend their lives bolted to the floor, for the most part. Today's newer robots bring these automata mobility. While most early Service Robots weren't intelligent enough to leave the factory, some from the last decade of the last century have. Through tele-operation (a term for "remote control"), many robots have gone into space service and into Field Robotics, exploring dangerous environments and hard to reach places for us, like the depths of our oceans and the surface of Mars.

More interesting yet were the results of Engelberger's second foray into robotics. Transitions Research Corporation was born to foster more robotic systems that could leave their industrial shackles of floor bolts and guide tracks or wires. This effort differed from Field Robotics in that the focus was on providing new mobile agents the sensory ability to use a rudimentary intelligence to operate independently in environments with untrained (i.e. normal) people. The culmination of these efforts can be found in institutions with simple internal structure around the world. A small but growing percentage of the world's hospitals use and benefit by the HelpMate Mobile Courier.

Mostly in the United States, a larger Fortune-100-owned company now sells, leases and builds these autonomous mobile robots to healthcare institutions, who due to recent cost restrictions welcome these silent workers (unless they need to say they're ready to pick-up, drop-off or ask passer-byers to "excuse them") to their workforce-- indeed, their hourly wages are lower and drop on extra shifts rather than increase ("under-time", instead of overtime?) and having "no life" are happy to roam the halls instead of stopping to chat or take a vacation. Heck, they don't even need sick days.

It is HelpMate's autonomy we aim to surpass--extensions beyond its basic mobility, sensing and wireless networking for remote monitoring and supervision are being supplemented by advancements to on-board programmed intelligence. HelpMate uses stored maps of each of a hospital's floors to navigate from the wirelessly-summoned elevators; A rudimentary vision system prevents most dynamic situations that could arise to personal collision while a large suite of ultrasonic sensors do most of the localization work and detection of obstacles to drive around. We are integrating arms and binocular vision onto a smaller, friendlier base that employs a two-way voice interface rather than HelpMate's talking, cash-machine-style interface.