Hi, guys! Philip English from RoboPhil.com and today we have an interview from Obodroid Security Robot, who are telling us about their robots.
Philip English: Right, so hi guys. It’s Philip English and [IREX 00:00:05] 2019. We’re just at another stand and this is an interesting one. This looks like a security robot and I’ve got a gentleman here who’s going to introduce himself and tell us a little bit more about the company.
Philip English: So what’s your name sir?
Mati Songwonpadee: My name is Mahi Songwonpadee. Yeah, I’m from Thailand. Our company is from Thailand. So just behind us is the security robot that we built with the real estate company in Thailand.
Philip English: Right. So the real estate company?
Mati Songwonpadee: Yeah.
Philip English: Right. Okay. Are they a manufacturer of parts, are they? Or?
Mati Songwonpadee: So actually this is the [Obederoi roid 00:00:36]. This company called Obederoi. It’s the joint venture between my company, a robot company with the real estate company to build a robot company that build a robot for real estate business.
Philip English: Okay.
Mati Songwonpadee: So this one will be used in the retail space, in the condominium or in even the office space. And we already have some orders for the next year, so you start using this robot next year in Thailand.
Philip English: Okay. So as you’re saying, so it’s around the security really? So airports, retail those sort of businesses.
Philip English: And I suppose does it solve the problem of security guards? Is it designed to work with security guards?
Mati Songwonpadee: So it works together with security guards. What the system do, is that it’s combine data from the camera on the robot and also the CCTV camera inside the building together.
Mati Songwonpadee: We have a server that process all the data and turn that into a notification and send that to the secretary room, so the people can make decisions based on the data and make some preventive action instead of waiting until something happen and then if you just go back to review the videos.
Philip English: Right, I see. So the idea is, within the software it’s calculating what’s going on and if there’s something bad going on, it will alert the security guard. So the security guard hasn’t got to be sitting there watching all the time. He can do his job.
Philip English: So, how does the security guard get the information? Does it go out to the cloud or does it going to the wireless network?
Mati Songwonpadee: Okay, so the scheme of the data transfer depends on the need of the customer, depends on the need of the security or privacy that you want.
Mati Songwonpadee: The basic idea that the robot has a very powerful computer insights. Some of the recognition is done on the robot and that is sent to the central computer. Or in some situation we live streaming the video from the robot to the central computer and it’s recognized on the computer.
Mati Songwonpadee: Yeah. And then that will be notifications sent to maybe the message application of the security guard or in the security room or even send back to the central command center of the business. So that is like fallback scheme.
Mati Songwonpadee: So if secretary guard in the building is not respond, then it fall back to the central control. So then they can just notify the human.
Mati Songwonpadee: If they call and someone not respond yet, they maybe send somebody.
Philip English: So, send somebody to get it sorted. Okay. And then, so what’s the battery life of the robot?
Mati Songwonpadee: For this one, one charge can work up to eight hours. Actually it’s more than that, but we limit to that. But in the real situation, it will be a couple of robots working together. One robot will go out for 30, 40 minutes, come back charging, another one will go out.
Philip English: Oh, I see. Mati Songwonpadee: So keep the battery life long and so we don’t have to change very often.
Philip English: So how quickly does the robot charge?
Mati Songwonpadee: Fully charged in two hours.
Philip English: Two hours? Yeah, so it’s a lithium battery, is it?
Mati Songwonpadee: Yeah, lithium battery. Quite a big battery inside.
Philip English: It’s quite a big battery. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so where do you see yourself in five years? Is this the first … like, this is the first one and you’re hoping to keep on developing up and just developing more and more, more, more, more robots.
Mati Songwonpadee: Yeah. So and you can see in our board, you see the security robot here and you might take a picture of the communication robot over there.
Philip English: Yes, so-
Mati Songwonpadee: So, if you’re looking from the social space between human and robot, that one very close intimate distance. Right? So you really deep integrate into your house or in your room. That will be functional, outside [inaudible 00:04:17].
Mati Songwonpadee: We will put more research on robot, delivery robot, so in between. So we will add more robots, so it can fit in your daily life more.
Philip English: In the process?
Mati Songwonpadee: Yeah.
Philip English: But can the robot speak to each other? Can that robot speak to the smaller robot?
Mati Songwonpadee: So actually our software is the [inaudible 00:04:36] of the robot. It really depends on what we’re going to want two robots to communicate to each other.
Philip English: Right, okay.
Mati Songwonpadee: It’s more like preplanned behavior or scheme of how the robot works.
Philip English: How does the robot navigate the area? Is it [SLAM 00:04:51] based system or?
Mati Songwonpadee: Yes, it is a SLAM system. Right now we use the 2D leader in front of the robot to do SLAM and we will add more SLAM features from the camera around the robot-
Philip English: Around the robot?
Mati Songwonpadee: … so it can sense things in 3D. Right now in this event we also saw some interesting sensor that we believe that could be very useful for our robots.
Philip English: How heavy is the robot?
Mati Songwonpadee: So it’s about 80 kilos.
Philip English: 80 kilos?
Mati Songwonpadee: So, and but the [CG 00:05:21] is very low-
Philip English: CG’s low? Yeah.
Mati Songwonpadee: … so to prevent the robot from falling down it is all under [inaudible 00:05:26].
Philip English: Is he quite easy to push, though-
Mati Songwonpadee: No.
Philip English: … to push him? Yeah, okay.
Mati Songwonpadee: Because we have the synchro drive wheel, so that means wheel will lock itself. It cannot be pushed, if we decide that. But it’s so can align in the way that we can push it also
Philip English: Right. Okay. Okay. No, I think that’s quite good, actually. That’s a very good overview of the company. What I’ll do is I’ll put some links to get some more information and we’ll keep an eye on you guys as well. So thank you very much for this interview.
Mati Songwonpadee: Thank you.
Philip English: Thank you.
Obodroid: https://obodroid.com
Obodroid YouTube: https://youtu.be/gT_FZu7LZU8
Philip English: https://philipenglish.com
Sponsor – Robot Center: https://www.robotcenter.co.uk