Consumer robotics seeks 'killer app' to get rolling

Picture courtesy Wow Wee/ Robosapien

The Roomba vacuum and Robosapien toy robots have shown how inexpensive, fun applications can make a big splash in the consumer robotics market, but investors are waiting for a new 'killer app' before putting their money on the table again.

"Rosie," the do-it-all robot housekeeper in the 1960s futuristic American cartoon show The Jetsons, may be just what investors are waiting for when it comes to a potential "killer application" in consumer or personal robotics.       

To date, two lone consumer robots have dominated the market: US-based iRobot's Roomba vacuuming robot, which costs from between $150 and $329, has sold 1.2 million units; and Hong Kong-based Wow Wee's Robosapien  humanoid toy robot, which costs about $200, has sold more than 1.5 million units. Both products have limited functions, but their low price and novelty have captured the imagination of consumers throughout the world.

Most of the activity in Europe has been with higher priced vacuum products (the Electrolux Trilobite vacuum runs about $1,700, for example) and Japan has had some success with robotic pets. France's Wany Robotics has made inroads in developing software such as for interactive toys.      

"But no one has built a killer application beyond the iRobot and Wow Wee," said Neena Buck, vice president of emerging frontiers at Strategy Analytics, a market research firm based in Newton, Massachusetts. She made her comments at a recent robotics conference at Boston University. "We're at the stage now where the personal computers were in the 1970s," she added. "The subsystem vendors aren't there yet nor are the component vendors. They need funding. It took iRobot 15 years to get where it is now."      

Industrial applications

Indeed, much of the focus on funding robots worldwide has been for industrial or military applications. In 2004, more than 95,000 industrial robots were installed worldwide, up 17 percent over the previous year, according to the World Robotics 2005 survey published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics.

That is expected to rise to 121,000 in 2008. That's a 6 per cent annual growth rate. Such robots can cost in the millions of dollars.

A different study by ARC Advisory Group, Dedham, Massachusetts, predicts the worldwide market for industrial robotics, which is being driven by the automotive sector, will grow almost 8 per cent compounded annually to more than $5 billion in 2010 from $3.6 billion in 2005.      

World Robotics 2005 also predicts a rapid rise for household robots. Some 550,000 were installed worldwide in 2004. The report predicts that domestic robots of all types, including vacuums, lawn mowers, and window cleaners, could reach 4.5 million units from 2005-2008, worth about $3 billion. Leisure robots, including toys, are forecast at 2.5 million units over the period, with a value of $4.4 billion.

It's still slow going in the funding arena for personal robotics companies. Both Roomba and Robosapien took a while to get funded and off the ground. Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist who has worked for NASA, DARPA and other US government labs, developed the basics for biomorphic robotics, or robots inspired by biological systems, in 1988. Tilden is considered the father of BEAM, or biology, electronics, aesthetics, mechanics, technology. He joined Wow Wee, and Robosapien became the first commercially available robot based on the principal.       

"He joined Wow Wee because the company was prepared to invest in an expensive project few others were willing to explore," said Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends, a Massachusetts robotics consultancy company. Kara also pointed out that Wow Wee was purchased by giant toymaker Hasbro, and then returned to its owners because Hasbro did not believe there was a market for the Robosapien. It cost $1 million to develop Robosapien, and Wow Wee expects sales to double to 3 million units soon, and it has a manufacturing capacity for five million units. The company intends to introduce one new robot a year over the next five years.      

Out of the minefields

For iRobot, the road to a popular consumer product was more than a decade in the making. The company, an MIT spin-out founded in 1990, initially sold robots to the government and military that could get into difficult or dangerous areas, like minefields. Its first Roomba vacuum robot hit the market in September 2002 and it was an instant success: two years later the company had sold more than one million units. The company went public in November 2005.

"The public offering helped iRobot, as did the fact that it has about 50 patents or patents pending surrounding the basic mechanism for design and control," said Jed Dorsheimer, vice president of equities at Canaccord/Adams of Boston, which was one of the five investment banks that brought iRobot public. "About 75 per cent of the company's revenues are from making vacuum cleaners, but it has a lot of inherent intellectual property to trade on. So investors saw this as an opportunity to capture market share."    

Dorsheimer said institutional investors and venture capitalists are eager for the next big investment to come along. "One of the themes for them is robotics, but the market is still nascent," said Dorsheimer. "Over the past six months we have seen an increasing appetite by venture capitalists to fund robotics companies. The curiosity is in how, who and where to place their bets."      

He does see a possible killer application in robots that can help in caring for the elderly. That would mean a potentially huge market for maids like "Rosie" or even nurses that can tend to and keep company with the millions of aging baby boomers throughout the world.

Deb Theobald, CEO of Vecna Technologies Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, agrees. Vecna is using a Segwaybalancing scooter base for its BEAR or battlefield extraction and retrieval robot. "We want to shift this military robot to eldercare," said Theobald. "In 10 years we could be importing robotic nurses from Honda or Toyota. That's why it is important to develop this intellectual property in the United States and get funding for it."      

Another potential boom market is medical robotics, said Russell Taylor, director of the centre for computer-integrated surgical systems and technology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. "Medical robotics …can fundamentally change medicine, which is 15 per cent of the gross domestic product." Key elements are a computer-integrated operating room.

"The potential impact in heart surgery is huge," added Pedro Del Nido, chief of cardiac surgery at Children's Hospital of Boston. Robots could not only be used for training doctors, but also for less invasive surgery on patients. "We could save a lot of people from a lot of big operations."

The Japan Robotics Association predicts that next-generation robots for daily living, social welfare and medical service will reach $16 billion in sales by 2025.      

Buck of Strategy Analytics said that it still is difficult for companies to get funding, unless their robots are defence-related. But she believes Korean companies such as LG and Samsung, along with Motorola of the US, will help accelerate the trend toward consumer robots.

South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication recently said it has gathered more than 30 companies and 1,000 scientists to develop networked robots, and said they will be in every South Korean household between 2015 and 2020.