The ‘plug-and-play’ Personal Robot – that could be easily bought in any shop, freely configured in hardware and software according to personal needs, plugged in at home (to charge the batteries for the first time), switched on, and from this moment on could be effortlessly operated, i.e., instructed to perform required services. In sharp contrast, most of today’s service and Industrial robots need to be installed and operated by experts. A ‘plug-and-play’ personal robot, however, would only need minimal training because most of its skills would be already in-built by the manufacturer. If teaching is required it could be done interactively via a multimodal human-friendly interface that could be intuitively used.

To be accepted as a new member of the household or work team the Robot would have to act like an intelligent being that is eager to learn more about its new environment by asking people and observing and exploring the environment. It is obvious that such a robot would not be useful if it had to learn everything from scratch and had to be taught by the user like a small child. Instead the robot would require many in-built functions (innate characteristics) that would help it to easily adapt to its new environment.

To advance research in this promising field and to show what can be done with state-of-the-art components and Technology today we have developed the Humanoid experimental robot HERMES. It is constructed from 25 motor modules with identical mechanical and electrical interfaces, thus yielding a very flexible, extensible and modular design that can be easily modified and maintained. With its omnidirectional wheel base, body, head, eyes and two arms it has now 22 degrees of freedom and resembles a human in height and shape. Its main exteroceptive sensor modality is stereo vision. Both camera “eyes” may be actively and independently controlled in pan and tilt degrees of freedom. A variety of proprioceptive Sensors further enhances its perceptual abilities. A multimodal human-friendly interface built upon the basic senses – vision, touch and hearing –enables even non-experts to intuitively control the robot.
Source: Complete aricle in pdf available at http://robotik.w3.rz.unibw-muenchen.de/PDF/PuPRob.pdf

Tech Materials (Free)

Robot Behaviors Exploring the T-Maze: Evolving Learning-Like Robot Behaviors using CTRNNs
Humanoid Robotics A Biochemical Subsystem for a Humanoid Robot
Industrial Automation Systems Applying Agents for Engineering of Industrial Automation Systems
Robot Team Cooperation A Descriptive Model of Robot Team and the Dynamic Evolution of Robot Team Cooperation
Kuka Robots For ONU ONU Robotics Technology Center of Excellence, powered by KUKA Robotics Corporation
Augmented reality Annotation System for Robotic Application
Modular Robots Self-Reconfiguration Planning Of Identical Modules
Autonomous robots A New Approach To Robotics
Robotic Mounting Flat Panel Displays With Robotic Mounting
Calibration of Industrial Robots A Photogrammetric Robot Calibration System Based On Off-The-Shelf Low Cost Hardware Components

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Amazon Books

	Creative Projects with LEGO Mindstorms by Benjamin Erwin Buy new: $20.64 / Used from: $13.00 A good place to start, especially for kids, with Lego Mindstorms
	A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics by Joe Jones Buy new: $20.67 / Used from: $15.13 Very good for programming not so much behavior as control. Language and controller agnostic