Georgia Tech professor Charlie Kemp was never much of a dog person until his wife brought home an energetic goldendoodle named Daisy about a year and a half ago.
Since then, the robotics researcher’s work has literally gone to the dogs.
Inside Kemp’s Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, he and co-workers are developing a robot dog they say could someday perform the same functions as the service dogs that are vital to many physically disabled people.
At a skinny 5 feet 7 inches, with wheels instead of paws, their robodog named El-E (pronounced “Ellie”) doesn’t look anything like a real dog.
But El-E can open doors and cabinets, fetch dropped objects and do other service-dog functions — all without ever needing to eat or relieve itself.
Ultimately, Kemp and co-researchers plan to train El-E to do things not even highly skilled service dogs can do, such as dial a cellphone for help or relay data about its companion’s condition to a doctor.
“A lot of people have looked at robot dogs for entertainment and companionship,” Kemp said. “But we said, ‘Hey, what about looking at this in terms of physical assistance?’ ”
Kemp and colleagues began working with Georgia Canines for Independence, a service- dog group in Acworth, Ga.
They studied the manual of 71 commands service dogs must learn and watched how real dogs moved and worked and how they were trained.
A year or so later, El-E knows about 10 standard service-dog commands, including “bring it here” and “give” (many others, such as “sit” or “lie down,” just aren’t applicable to a robot).
Its success rate at obeying is 90 to 100 percent. That’s better than some service dogs can do, especially if they’re distracted or feeling playful or tired.
Of course, real service dogs offer something robots can’t: warm and fuzzy companionship. But there’s a real need for the type of robot Kemp is building, said Ramona Nichols, executive director of Georgia Canines for Independence.
It costs her organization about $17,000 and takes at least two years to properly train a service dog, Nichols said. Training starts when puppies are 6 weeks old, and by the end of two years, only about 50 percent of dogs pass.
“Certainly with dogs you also get a tremendous emotional benefit — but (training and development) takes so long,” Nichols said. “With robots, perhaps this is a way down the road that we can help people with disabilities a lot more quickly.”
