A robot in every house

Robots are not just for assembly lines any more. They're knocking at your front door, ready to fetch you a beer, watch for prowlers, or play your favorite CD. The ER1 from Evolution Robotics, Pasadena, Calif. ( ), is designed to be a low-cost robot for the home. Unlike other robotic toys, the ER 1 can do useful things around the house like recognize voice commands, play messages, and watch for arriving guests or packages. A preassembled ER1 retails for $699, and unassembled units go for $599. Minus the laptop which the user supplies, the ER1 consists of a light extruded aluminum frame, power supply, camera, and stepper-motor-driven wheels. The graphical user interface displays the image from the camera and has IF-THEN columns to program the robot for specific tasks. Individual behaviors can be strung together to form more complex ones. Honda's Asimo is the latest in twolegged, walking robot technology. Predictive motion control lets Asimo shift his center of gravity and walk smoother than previous walking robots. Just 20 years ago, useful humanoid robots were little more than science fiction. Most robots back then either looked like ordinary manufacturing equipment or were special devices for undersea exploration. But that's all changed with recent advances in technology that puts the age of personal robots just around the corner. Recent announcements indicate it may already be here. To the home-robot market comes the ER1 from Pasadena, Calif. The company supplies the hardware and software, you supply a laptop PC. The unit comes unassembled or preassembled with extruded aluminum beams forming the main support structure. Software called the Robot Control Center runs on Windows 98 and up. Users can instruct the robot to respond to voice commands, take photographs and/or video of its environment, and send images to an e-mail address. It can also play music from a CD it recognizes, read books from prerecordings, and send reminders to its owner. "With the processing power now available in Pentium processors, and a patent-pending vision