XOTAR’s long term mission of developing human inspired robots delivers many valuable and marketable products and solutions along the way. The company anticipates initial revenue in 2011 from its Intelligent Survelliance Systems and Smart Camera products. XOTAR's market development for solutions consists of 3 major phases:
Near Term Solutions [2011-2012]
Smart Cameras - Smart Cameras are digital still and motion picture cameras that perform intelligent image processing as part of the camera’s operation. In a security setting, this would involve active vision processing for identifying, tracking and observing suspicious individuals, focusing carefully on features, and acquiring and communicating detailed images.
XOTAR’s Smart Camera technology will involve the head, neck and eye controls of the humanoid robot system enabling a highly active person tracking and focusing behavior with the addition of zooming functionality. These cameras will also use face recognition, face processing, gait processing (human motion) and other features of XOTAR’s Robot Vision system for processing and will have both 2D and 3D image capture and processing capabilities. Multiple cameras will coordinate as a team in team surveillance applications (forthcoming XOTAR ClusterBot™ technology). The value proposition offered by Smart Cameras is to provide force multiplication for security personnel, fewer personnel provide superior results. They have less to monitor, and far more detailed information to make decisions with when provided with images. XOTAR feels Smart Cameras will outdate all security cameras in use today, a large market itself. Autonomous Systems (below) will provide vehicle based Smart Camera technology to allow roaming and large area coverage type applications (large facility perimeter, urban environments, border and coastal patrol).
Smart Cameras can also be used for professional cameras when human operated motion image capture is difficult or dangerous, this involves many sports events and some cases of motion picture filming. XOTAR will work with manufacturers of these cameras to enable solutions leveraging the company’s Robot Vision technology.
Consumer digital Cameras can also be revolutionized with the monocular vision technology of XOTAR’s Robot vision systems; XOTAR plans to license smart camera technology to companies developing consumer digital cameras ranging from cell phones to high in DSLR’s and Professional Camcorders starting in the 2012 timeframe ( see roadmap ).
Autonomous Systems - Autonomous Systems are a very large market for early versions of XOTAR’s Vision Systems. XOTAR intends to work with systems companies in defense, aerospace and automotive industries to enable solutions using XOTAR’s technology. A special variant of our Robot Vision System called “AlienVision™” will provide an extended dynamic range and active imaging (radar/IR) functionality. Some aspects of human vision are not appropriate for defense systems. For instance, the inter-ocular distance of human eyes is suited for the object manipulation, locomotion and pursuit/ evasion requirements of humans, and not that of high supersonic aircraft. XOTAR’s Vision Systems supporting Autonomous Systems will extend features, sometimes combining features found in biological vision systems, sometimes introducing new vision system capabilities.
Mid Term Solutions [2013-2016]
Autonomous Manufacturing Systems – XOTAR will develop technology for industrial manufacturing robots that have functionalities far beyond today’s industrial robot manipulators. Some of these robots do not require the full locomotion capabilities of humanoid robots and as such can be offered in the midterm. The company’s technology could effectively revolutionize industrial automation from small lightweight consumer electronics to automotive and even aerospace manufacturing. XOTAR industrial robots will lower the reliance on positioning fixtures, and enable the robots to have far lower mass and energy requirements.
XOTAR is working with leaders in the Automation Industry (Detroit MI.) and will be producing a whitepaper shortly outlining the impact of our technologies on industrial manufacturing suggesting a major fundamental new concept in manufacturing called the Autonomous Factory. The Autonomous Factory will have robots that are not bolted in the floor or reliant on accurate fixtures. High fidelity vision and high dexterity hands will dramatically increase the number of effective tasks and dramatically lower the costs of both preparing and maintaining a manufacturing process.
Intelligent Robot’s in the factory will indeed lower the number of unskilled labor in industrial factories, but it will provide a force multiplication factor that allows the United States and other developed countries to manufacture competitively in a globally competitive business environment that has lower labor costs. XOTAR will create new jobs around a new robot industry and save the companies that are dying due to the global disadvantage in manufacturing. We will create an enormous number of jobs, designing, manufacturing and maintaining intelligent robots. They will be skilled and technical jobs and require ongoing education but they will be jobs - potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Agricultural Machines and Equipment - XOTAR has been studying advanced robotics for crop cultivation, harvesting and invasive species/pest control. Today’s large agricultural machines, such as combines produced by John Deer, require monoculture farming methodology. Monoculture farming in turn requires extensive chemical input from companies like Monsanto in the form of fertilizer and pesticides which has further led to the development of Genetically Modified Foods (GMO’s), which are typically genetic plant modifications that resist chemicals that kill all other plants such as weeds, typically targeting the vascular system of plants. Fertilizer runs off into waterways heavily impacting the environment, damaging rivers, lakes and streams and their ecosystems of plant and aquatic life. Pesticides cause cancer in the animals and humans that consume them. We are not sure what the potentially long term impact of GMO’s on human and animal health, but, our entire digestive system has evolved to manipulate proteins in the digestive process that are altered by GMO’s. We currently cannot even compute or simulate the electromagnetic processes by which these proteins function. There are definitely risks involved in altering something in nature that you do not understand the principles by which it operates. Some insect species have already suffered immensely form eating GMO based crops.
Organic farming on the other hand is higher cost due to the inability to leverage large agricultural machines. XOTAR’s technologies will enable general purpose, highly diverse crop management functionalities approaching that of human farm hands. These machines will be smaller, lighter weight and use far less energy than today’s farm machines. Additionally, several such robots can work simultaneously, either independently or as a team, with remote human supervision. The cost of one combine used in today’s large farms, could conceivably purchase a large team of smaller, far more more intelligent agricultural robots. While agricultural robots will not replace combines for corn and wheat farming, many other crops will benefit.
Long Term solutions [2015-2020]
Humanoid Robots – As declared in the initial sections of our site, XOTAR’s long term mission is to develop general purpose Humanoid Robots targeting business, consumer and government applications. According to this solution roadmap, XOTAR will start with a concentration on the most difficult subsystem, the visual system, and incrementally add functions such as limbs, hands, and locomotion along with cognitive functions that enable more and more sophisticated behaviors on our way to delivering the humanoid robot.
Our first humanoid design will be developed in the 2014-2015 timeframe. It will be a lower volume system with very limited behaviors, especially in the area of locomotion. The PCLP will be remotely interfaced via a wireless protocol for these robots, which will precede the development of custom silicon and embedded electronics for cognitive and perception functions. These robots will also be used in a very comprehensive training process designed by XOTAR to acquire or learn general purpose task behaviors.
