Tekniker-Ik4 Kutxa and develop a personal assistant robot

La Caja Gipuzkoa San Sebastian Kutxa and technology center Tekniker-Ik4 developed a prototype robot for personal assistance with advanced application in the home, office, hospital or museum. This project, called KTbot, will last two years and have a budget of over half a million.

In a statement, Tekniker Ik-4, based in the technology park in San Sebastian Miramon explained that develop, with the economic contribution of the Welfare of Kutxa, a new robot that available to people with the latest technologies in this matter.

As he indicated, will be mobile, autonomous and a number of advanced features targeted assistance especially in indoor environments, allowing its application to the home, office, hospital, home or museum.

This project, called KTbot, culminating in two years with a prototype that will be an "important milestone" in developing this technology, positioning Gipuzkoa as "reference in an emerging field with significant development potential and will allow future The transfer of this technology to the industrial fabric, "he said.

Kutxa provide, through its Welfare, 540,000 euros to this initiative. Tekniker-Ik4 stressed that the robotic assistance is becoming "an effective alternative for the future to meet human needs in different contexts, such as support for dependents for reasons of age or health, as well as for professional purposes, recreational or other useful service for the welfare of people.

KTbot The result will be a robot made entirely in Gipuzkoa care that will incorporate features such as autonomous mobility, interaction with humans through voice and images or recognition of persons, for research is necessary on different technological aspects, such as mechatronic development, integration of sensors and machine learning.

Initially, the prototype will be a demonstrator which would make an instructive fashion the potential of robotics and services that will incorporate more functionality than originally planned.

The project also opens the possibility of launching new businesses in Gipuzkoa in a market with great future potential. The technology center said that according to recent figures from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the end of 2007 were sold in the world 49,000 service robots for industrial use and over 5 million for personal use (home and entertainment) .

It is estimated that in the period between 2008 and 2011 worldwide are selling 54,000 new service robots for professional use and no less than 12 million robots for personal use.

Source: europapress

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