Moravec's article titled "Rise of the Robot" discusses the reasons whyrobots have not become ubiquitous in daily lives; how today's computerpower and other technologies are helping robots' "brains" achieveautonomous, intelligent behavior; and Moravec's prediction that by 2050robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructionsper second will start rivaling human intelligence.

In the article Moravec describes how his company, Seegrid, is first tointroduce true autonomous mobile robots in the material handling industry,providing low-cost step-change automation in manufacturing, warehouse anddistribution environments.

"It amazes me that commercial mobile robots have found few jobs inmanufacturing and warehouse facilities," said Moravec. "AGVs (AutomatedGuided Vehicles) have been operating in limited environments withtechnology that has been around at least for the past two decades.Installation of AGVs is expensive and time consuming and creates inflexibleroutes. Vision-guided robots, on the other hand, can be easily installedand rerouted."

An excerpt from the article states:

Seegrid's "Tugger" autonomously pulls a loaded cart along a memorizedroute. It sees the world through four stereoscopic cameras on itsnavigation "head," which glimpses a few thousand visual features persecond. A human "trains" the tugger by leading it through a new route.Thereafter the tugger can automatically retrace the route, matching what itsees with a 3-D grid map built from glimpses during training.

"Seegrid's computers and software and thus its products will become morepowerful, intelligent and functional -- all this while the price ofcomputing power continues to decrease," Moravec said. "The result -- morefunctionality and greater flexibility in Seegrid's robots at a lowerprice."

For more than 155 years, Scientific American, one of the world's mostenduring and revered science and technology magazines, has chronicled forits readers major and technology innovations and discoveries using expertaccounts and assorted journalistic features. The magazine publishes 15foreign language editions with a total circulation of more than 1,000,000worldwide.

About Seegrid Corporation

Seegrid (www.seegrid.com) brings a new class of affordable industrialmobile robots to the material handling industry that operate reliably andsafely in dynamic warehouse, distribution and manufacturing environments.Seegrid's robots differ from today's AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) inthat the company's IMR technology is the first to provide early-stagecapabilities of autonomous robot behavior with Sense, Move, Analyze,Interact and Repeat capabilities. The result -- AGV-like competence butwith greater flexibility at a considerably lower cost. IMR-enabled robotsprovide WalkThroughThenWork(TM) capabilities, providing an operator withthe ability to simply and easily instruct the robot along a desired path,adding behaviors such as horns and stop stations, usually in minutes.Seegrid robots literally come straight off the truck, an operator quicklyinputs the path and the robot is immediately productive.