Colin Angle interview

[Gunnar Peterson <gunnar () arctecgroup net>]

from interview with iRobot CEO and founder Colin Angle:

Are you planning on developing apps for robots like Roomba and Scooba?
The robot operating system architecture will divide in half. The mobile industry is moving far faster and is far larger 
than the robot industry. You’ve got a couple of wonderful front runners, Google and Apple, which have developed 
software platforms that are optimised around communication, voice recognition, graphics and touch screen interfaces. 
That’s enabling for the robot industry but it’s not sufficient. If your phone dies nothing that serious happens. But if 
you’re robot dies and it’s bigger than a Roomba, you don’t want it to topple down the stairs. There’s a need for 
reliable, safe, secure software at the core of the robot.

But there will be a division between the core robot OS which is carefully designed and has fail safes and the cool, 
sexy UI for the consumer. Things like iPhone control first evolve in the informal hacking communities but over time the 
robots will have much more sophisticated operating systems and be able to link in to other systems. Ultimately though 
if the robot’s function is to be vacuum cleaner, it needs to do that well first.

One day I see lots of robots managed by a butler robot. I talk to it and it talks to the other robots. At that point 
you’ll see a lot of human interaction features on the main robot. You could have Android OS running on part of that 
robot alongside a safe and secure robot OS. There’s a place for co-operation.

http://m.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/colin-angle-irobot-ceo/all/1

-gunnar
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