Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Motivation
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Motivation
Indoor smart mobile robots have rapidly been adopted for human society and are widely used in public or private indoor spaces for guidance, entertainment, home service, security and so on. For example, a guidance robot such as Troika [1], shown in Figure 1.1 (a), moves around in the airport and provides directions and guidance for tourists. Entertainment robots such as Aibo [2], which is a dog-shaped entertainment robot as shown in Figure 1.1 (b), can be used to play with children or pets in the house.
Home service robots such as Zenbo [3], shown in Figure 1.1 (c), are used to provide company to family members. Multifunctional smart robots such as Pepper [4], shown in Figure 1.1 (d), can be used as receptionists at offices and banks, home companions at home, and educational robots at schools, universities, and colleges.
These kinds of robots have a level of interaction and self-determination abilities, which are due to the “intelligence” of the robots. This intelligence is created through artificial intelligence techniques. Robots with intelligence are called smart robots.
The aforementioned indoor smart mobile robots, such as Troika [1], Aibo [2], Zenbo [3], and Pepper [4], have already been released and used in houses, airports, stores, and other indoor spaces. These robots are respectively produced by Lucky-Goldstar (LG), a South Korean multinational electronics company; Sony, a Japanese
Figure 1.1 Indoor smart mobile robots (a) Troika (b) Aibo (c) Zenbo (d) Pepper (a) Troika [5] (b) Aibo [6] (c) Zenbo [7] (d) Pepper [8]
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multinational conglomerate corporation; Asus, a Taiwan-based multinational computer and phone hardware and electronics company; and SoftBank Robotics, a holding company in the SoftBank Group. All of these robots mainly interact via voice commands. Zenbo can also interact via a touch screen.
In summary, indoor smart mobile robots are mainly interactive through the application of voice recognition systems and touch screen systems. Indeed, verbal commands and screen touching commands are direct and smart human-robot interactive techniques. However, voice recognition systems typically have limitations with respect to different languages, various accents and even speaking tone. A touch screen system limits the possible distance between the user and the robot. That is, a user must be close enough to touch the screen or to see the content of icons shown on the screen.
Vision-based recognition systems provide an alternative type of direct and smart human-robot interaction. The users interact with the robot through a vision-based human action recognition system. With this system, users are only required to perform a daily life action in front of the robot, and the robot is expected to see and recognise the action and then perform the corresponding reflection. For example, if a robot sees the user sits on a chair, then the robot can move to the user and provide the user some water and food.
With this approach, users who speak different languages can smoothly interact with the robot. Further, because of the vision-based setting, the robot is capable of interacting with a human remotely. Thus, the barriers and limitations associated with voice recognition and touch screen systems can be solved by using a vision-based online human action recognition system. Such systems can therefore diversify human-robot interaction approaches for future robot products.
Moreover, many global market companies have a positive outlook on robot markets and have forecasted increases in the coming years in smart robots, indoor robots, mobile robots, service robots, and other robots. Therefore, robot markets, no doubt, will become a bull market of the world.
The smart robot market is a promising prospect according to research from Maximize Market Research, as shown in Figure 1.2 [9], where the number below the bar indicates the years. The number above the bar indicates the market value to the corresponding years, and the unit is billion USD. The research from Maximize Market Research has reported and forecasted the value of the smart robot market from 2017 to 2026. In 2017, the smart robot market was valued at USD 4.54 billion and the market is
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expected to grow to USD 29.46 billion by 2026 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.1% over the forecast period from 2017 to 2026.
This research also reported and forecasted the value of the global indoor robot market from 2018 to 2026, as shown in Figure 1.3 [10], where the number below the bar indicates the year and colours indicate particular regions. The global indoor robot market is predicted to have a CAGR of 28.9% over the forecast period from 2018 to 2026.
Markets And Markets reported and forecasted the value of global mobile robot market from 2018 to 2023, as shown in Figure 1.4 (a) [11], where the number below the green bar indicates years. The number in the green bar indicates the market value for the
Figure 1.2 Smart robot market from 2017 to 2026 as reported by Maximize Market Research [9]
Figure 1.3 Global indoor robot market from 2018 to 2026 as reported by Maximize Market Research [10]
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corresponding years and the unit is billion USD. In 2018, the mobile robot market was valued at USD 18.7 billion and the market is expected to grow to USD 54.1 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 23.71% over the forecast period from 2018 to 2023.
Mordor Intelligence [12] reported and forecasted the value of the global service robotics market from 2020 to 2025, as shown in Figure 1.4 (b), where the number below the orange bar indicates the years and the arrow indicates the CAGR during 2020 to 2025. The value of global service robotics market in 2019 was USD 14.39 billion and it is expected to grow to USD 63.80 billion with a CAGR of 25.34% over the forecast period.
The overall robotic market is shown in Figure 1.5 [13], where the number below the blue bar indicates the years. The arrow indicates the CAGR during 2020 to 2025.
Mordor Intelligence [13] reported the value of the robotic market was USD 39.72 billion in 2019 and predicted it to have a CAGR of 25% over the forecast period from 2020 to 2025.
(a) (b)
Figure 1.4 Global robotic market (a) global mobile robotics market from 2018 to 2023 as reported by Markets And Markets [11] (b) global service robotics market
from 2020 to 2025 as reported by Mordor Intelligence [12]
Figure 1.5 Robotics market summary from 2020 to 2025 reported by Mordor Intelligence [13]
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Furthermore, Mordor Intelligence also shows the overall robotics market growth rate during 2019 to 2024 by region, as shown in Figure 1.6 [13], where different colours indicate different growth rates. Specifically, green regions indicate high growth rates, yellow regions indicate medium growth rates and red regions indicate low growth rates.
The colours cover over half the world. Undoubtably, robotics markets have a huge economic impact globally.
Indoor smart mobile robots seem to have a tremendous economic outlook and a high chance of bringing considerable economic benefit to many countries. With such high growth rates in the indoor smart mobile robot markets, it is clear such robots will be widely used in the
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oreseeable future. Therefore, a diversity of hardware and software products is necessary to satisfy different kinds of customer requirement. Here, hardware refers to the physical parts of the robots, such as the central processing unit, robot appearance, and monitor. The software refers to the abstract part of the robots, such as control systems, input recognition systems, output systems, and inference systems.Improvements in both hardware and software will increase the economic values of the robots. This research focuses on improving the input recognition system, which is part of the software.
Different types of input recognition systems process different kinds of input information and can result in different types of human-robot interactions. For example, a voice recognition system lets robots interact with humans via voice commands, a touch screen system lets robots interact with humans via screen touching, and a human action
Figure 1.6 Robotics market growth rates by regions [13]
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recognition system lets robots interact with humans via human action commands.
This research develops a vision-based online human action recognition system for indoor smart mobile robots. The system is expected to let a robot recognise human actions while the robot is moving towards the user as well as recognise human actions online.