Smartphones Are Now Control Hubs for Personal Service Robots

The next decade will see huge strides in artificial intelligence and connectivity, supported by the internet of things. All this creates the technological foundation for the growing smart home market, especially in the domestic robot segment. In its global forecast, MarketAndMarkets predicts that the global value of domestic robot market will hit with a CAGR of 22.4%. This is where mobile gadgets come into their own: they will be the devices used to issue commands to these various robots and other smart home appliances through one or more mobile applications. AI enhancements are making it possible to manage these semi-autonomous devices as robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers remotely via a smartphone or a smartwatch, the latter being a big part of right now. Yet, in order to ensure these interactions are as painless as possible, much work needs to be undertaken to streamline and optimize conversations with all these disparate helpers. There are physical solutions that can coordinate devices, known as smart home hubs. One example of that would be Samsung's SmartThings, priced at about $65 and rated as a best-seller in the home automation hubs category. However, being hardware-based, these devices have a rather limited connectivity range for a truly remote interaction, allowing only voice commands in the proximity or direct tapping on the user interface.Software-based smart home management hubs are a different thing. Installed on your smartphone or wearable, they go wherever you go and provide an unprecedented level of convenience and security. This didn’t escape big tech players’ attention; that’s why each of the renowned smart home controller vendors like Amazon, Google, or Logitech offer free mobile apps compatible with a range of smart home appliances, including domestic robots. Let’s take a look at the robotic household of 2019 to see where the smartphone as a go-to communication medium will become even more irreplaceable.

The Assisted Household: Where Robots Belong

While domestic robots were only imaginable as a sci-fi fixture a few decades ago, now they are omnipresent. In its latest report, the International Federation of Robotics stated that nearly were shipped in 2017 alone. This figure includes domestic, entertainment and leisure robots, typically categorized according to their functions: 

• Task-oriented robots for domestic chores and surveillance 
• Healthcare robots for personal fitness and management of chronic and life-threatening illnesses
• Educational robots that both assist with and engage in education
• Entertainment assistants that range from drone control to smart movie catalog browsers

Now, let’s take a closer look at each of these categories.

Getting the Job Done: Task-oriented Robots

These are robots and devices we are already familiar with. While we have grown up with washing machines and dishwashers, these can now be pre-programmed and instructed to start, pause, or end a task. As far as actual robots go, Roomba immediately springs to mind. The little vacuum cleaner has been around for some time now in many households, together with its outdoor cousin, the automatic lawn mower. Here comes the smartphone: the iRobot HOME app was specifically designed for remote management of Roomba vacuum cleaners, including scheduling, smart space mapping, and more. This category also includes security devices, such as CCTV and intrusion detection systems, that can transmit a signal to the owner's mobile device. Another example of a mobile-led task-oriented robot, a baby monitor can be tracked from the next room and anywhere in the world alike.

Staying Fit and Healthy

With the introduction of wearables and fitness apps, this category is already well-embedded into millions of peoples’ daily routine. A virtual personal trainer can now be easily "hired" by anyone interested in keeping fit. Personal health management by checking heart rate and temperature via a wearable is also easily accessible. Further developments in managing one's personal health will evolve as the use of big data and artificial intelligence in healthcare matures. Just earlier this year, Samsung unveiled its latest Bot Care device at CES in Las Vegas. The little robot can perform a range of health-tracking activities, making the user’s vitals and other data accessible to family members and medical professionals as needed. While it’s still in the demo phase, we can soon expect more robots like Bot Care on the personal health tech market. Tireless and intelligent, healthcare robots can help us keep tabs on our health condition as well as the environment metrics like air quality and humidity. Combined, this can enable earlier detection of life-threatening illnesses and better, more hands-on management of chronic disorders.

Learning with Robotic Assistants

Education has seen a massive disruption via online offerings and the rise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Lifelong learning is a necessity, not a luxury, and robots will assist in a variety of ways here, both inside and outside the classroom. There are more than a few projects underway to build AI-powered robot teachers, which are meeting a particularly high demand when it comes to teaching foreign language to children. Robin and Elias are just two examples of friendly humanoid robots helping toddlers and older kids learn English. While they are architecturally autonomous, learning assistants like Tega, a social robot, are smartphone-based and interacted with using a visual user interface.  

Having Fun and Managing Lifestyle

Whether it is controlling a drone, playing social games, or merely organizing one's movie collection, robots and apps are supporting the state of play. Robots in this space will become the social robots of the next decade, once AI has matured to the point where these aids become more like a human analog. Amazon's Alexa, a virtual personal assistant, is a case in point. Where people are using Alexa to surf the internet or ask for a weather report, there is a new and interesting social relationship between the owner and the device. Alexa is normally housed in Amazon's Echo device, but any other device that is Alexa-enabled can be used, including the smartphone.

Our Robotic Future

Whether you are a technophile or a luddite, one thing is clear: much of the routine work in a household can be carried out by a robotic device even now. Those rosy predictions of what smart home will look like are being fulfilled as you read this. Chances are, you will be using your smartphone to orchestrate all this domestic activity, in coordination with a device like Echo, where you can ask Alexa to order you a pizza to be there when you get home. Facets of your life, like managing your health, can be ‘outsourced’ to a wearable on your wrist that can "talk" to your phone. Our smartphones are becoming much more than devices for communicating via voice and texts. They are becoming our passports to a less cluttered life, where you have delegated much of the mundane to this small and vital object.