Probotics Cye Robot (Review)   by Chih-Hao "Chubby" Kung In the midst of all the Coppermine vs. Athlon articles, GeForce 256s reviews and Savage 2000 previews, finding something else to read about can be quite hard. Yet, there's so much more to PC related hardware than just graphics cards, motherboards and CPUs. Here at 3DHardware, we have taken a look something very different to the motherboards, graphics cards and speakers we've reviewed during our life span. Today, we take a look at the Cye Personal Robot. I have always wanted a robot, ever since seeing the first Star Wars movie I've always wanted a robot - a robot just like R2D2. Sadly, robots have only appeared in the movies just like R2D2 doing his thing on the big screen, until now. Recently the giant of home electronics, SONY, presented their future toy - the AIBO. It can walk, bark, do tricks and listen to human voice commands - just like a real dog. Of course, not everyone of us want to shell out $2500 for a piece of engineering masterpiece. Besides, SONY only manufactured 5000 of them, 2500 units each for Japan and the Norh Americas. Selling exclusively on the web, those puppies were gone after only twenty minutes. This brings us to the Probotics Cye Personal Robot. In the month of May this year a company named Probotics Inc. issued a press release concerning a new type of affordable personal robots being produced by the same company. Designed for the home and/or business the Cye robot could do a wide variety of chores, from delivering mail in the office to vacuuming the house. For ages now, domestic robots have been just "around the corner", on the surface the Probotics Cye seems very promising but can it deliver what it promises and become the first affordable and functional robot of its kind? In The Box The Cye Robot is available through mailorder, and our sample unit did not arrive in any particularily fancy box - rather, it came housed in a standard cardboard box fit for international shipment. Laid inside, beside two pieces of styrofoam, was the Cye robot itself. Weighing about 10 lbs (~5kgs), the Cye is not exactly your average small toy. A radio transmitter and a recharge unit was also bundled within the box and finishing everything off was a very thin instructions manual and an installation CD containing the Map-N-Zap software. All in all, you have the Cye robot itself, a radio transmitter coupled with its own power brick, a recharge unit for the Cye also with its own powerbrick, one installation CD and one very thin user's guide. There's a lot of wiring to be done, but everything is extremely straightforward. The radio transmitter is to be placed at a elevated position for best effect, but its range is good enough for almost any apartment. The recharge unit is composed of two protruding metal plates which, when in contact with two metal screws on the bottom of the robot, will recharge Cye's batteries. The recharge unit is fitted with self-adhesive pads used for fastening the unit to a wall for better access by the robot. The Cye robot comes in many different colors, and is composed of the base body of the robot and two large wheels, one on each side. Cye is about 16 inches wide, 10 inches deep and the wheels have a diameter of 5 inches - which makes them the tallest parts of Cye. Overall, Cye weighs about 10 lbs and comes in a variety of colors. Why only two wheels? The Cye must be able to rotate around its own axis which improves its mobility and this is best acheived with only one wheel pair. Cye's brain is an onboard 16bit, 16MHz microcontroller which handles serial communication with the PC, motion control, ded-reckoning (keeps track of X, Y, and heading info), obstacle detection and many other tasks such as beeping and making sure the batteries are charged properly. Probotics used a slightly different approach to detect obstacles. They do this by implementing encoders and current sensors at each each wheel motor, monitoring it 500 times per second and detecting any sudden drops; which would mean that Cye has run into an obstacle. Probotics even plan on providing a black box solution which will give the user the ability to hook up vritually any sensor to the robot. Cye's wheel tips are made of the same urethane as on in-line skate wheels. This makes the wheels tough and slightly sticky which prevent them from slipping on tile and wood floors. Under normal operating conditions Cye can keep on going for about 2 hours on normal carpet. On thick carpet, where there is more resistance the operating time is lowered to 1 hour. If you just fancy Cye standing still and beeping occasionally, you can do so for 24 hours. Normally, you switch the Cye off with the Map N Zap software but there is also a way to shut it off manually by rotating it clockwise for 2 seconds. Sweet isn't it? Features Obviously, there's more to the Cye than just the robot. Probotics wanted the Cye to be very versataile and expansion friendly, thus they included a mounting hole in the center of the Cye, so that the user could attach extra equipment to the robot for further functionality. There's a vacuum cleaner available for the Cye which effectively turns it into a robotic housemaid, vacuuming the areas you've marked out for it. A cordless vacuum cleaner model is also available due to the fact that Cye can end up tangling itself in the cleaner cord. In addition to the vacuum cleaner, a wagon can also be ordered from the website. The wagon mounts to the Cye robot and has two support wheels on the back for stability. With this wagon Cye can carry mail, coffee and cookies, books and anything else that will fit in the tray. Imagine the Cye serving you breakfast on the bed in the morning plus fetching the morning newspaper. Okay, so it doesn't exactly serve you the breakfast but it can bring it to your bed. To further extend its capabilities, Probotics added an expansion port located on the front of the Cye. The expansion port is fully electrical and is via an RJ45 connector sitting in front of the small LED and is protected by a rubber cap. With the expansion port, you can power lights, sirens, and sensors. Furthermore, you can also receive input from both digital and analog devices. Although you can build your own expansion units to fit the RJ45 expansion port (a clear pinout of the port is included), Probotics will also soon introduce a line of attachments using this expansion port. Due to the fact that the expansion port is connected to the Cye's radio transmitter it is possible to transmit data from the Cye to your PC (and vice versa). Think wireless webcamera. Getting Jiggy with it: Operating Cye You control Cye with a PC with the aid of a specially designed software named Map N Zap. As the name implies the program is split in two parts: Map and Zap. Using the Map In order for Cye to reckognise its surroundings it must have a clear picture of what lays before it. This is where the map comes in. The map should, obviously, represent your home as seen from above. You navigate Cye by clicking on the robot icon and dragging it while holding down the mouse key. While doing this a line will appear on the screen, linking the robot icon and the mouse pointer. Cye and the icon on the screen will move in the direction in which you pull the line. The shorter the cord, the slower the speed at which Cye will travel. Cye, at its top speed, can reach a velocity of 3 feet per second. The aim is to move Cye around the house as much as possible, as Cye travels white "wakes" will appear behind it on the map which represent areas which Cye can move around freely. After navigating Cye around the obstacles in your house (furniture, walls etc) the Map will be filled with white - free area, and gray - non-discovered area. If you have correctly navigated the Cye around your furnitures you can easily fill the gray areas in the map with black lines, which represent obstacles which Cye will avoid, using the drawing tools provided in the Map-N-Zap software. After a while you will notice that the white "wake" behind Cye becomes fuzzier. This is because the more it travels, the less certain it becomes of its precise location. In addition to the fuzzy wake a yellow "halo" will appear around Cye, it represents the area where Cye "thinks" he is, the larger the halo the less sure Cye is of its exact position. In order to remedy this, once in a while Cye needs to check where it really is against where its navigation system calculates it to be. Cye can carry out these "reality checks" at CheckPoints, which you can lay out on the Map. For example, the Home Base where Cye re-charges is an example of a CheckPoint. As the map expands and the need for more CheckPoints arises you can easily set up new CheckPoints in the new areas. If Cye is set in "auto-check" mode, it will automatically verify its position using these CheckPoints. When Cye is not in use, it will automatically find the nearest CheckPoint, check its position, update if necessary and then return to its Home Base. HotPoints are specific locations which you designate on your floor plan. When you select the robot icon and click on the HotPoint, Cye will automatically navigate itself to that specific location. What's cool with this feature is that you can actually see Cye calculate the path it will use. A red "go-path" will appear whenever you specify a location for the Cye to move to, and you can how it adjust its route in order to avoid obstacles that are recorded on the floor plan. There are probably areas, such as stairwells and heavily traveled corridors, where you don't want Cye to navigate in. To avoid this, you can place Danger Zones on your floor plan to designate places you don't want Cye to move in. Regardless of whether you are manually steering or Cye is finding its own path, it will never move into Danger Zones. One of the best features Cye has is the ability to Vacuum the house. To do this you must first specify a "Vacuum Path", by using the Map you select any part of your floor plan as an area you want Cye to vacuum. After creating the path, you can also specify which corner of the Path you want Cye to enter, you can also designate whether you want Cye to follow a horisontal or vertical zigzag pattern. This makes is possible for you to create a path that won't cause Cye and the vacuum cleaner to run over the cord (if you aren't using the wireless vacuum cleaner). Whenever you click on a designated vacuum path on the screen map, Cye will navigate itself to that area and take a nice cruise through the pattern you selected. Cye will pull the vacuum cleaner through this pattern and clean your floor. Isn't he wonderful? Zap the Map After completing the Map part you now have a detailed floor plan of the area Cye will navigate in. It shows all the open spaces and the obstacles, the Home Base, the HotPoints, the CheckPoints, the Danger Zones, and the Vacuum Paths. Now it's time to use the Zap part of the Map-N-Zap software. With Zap you set up a list of tasks for Cye to carry out in whatever order, at whatever times, and under whatever conditions you specify. For example, I can have the Cye move to a designated CheckPoint at a specific time of the day, after reaching its destination I can set up for Cye to move to a HotSpot and carry out a Vacuum Path. After finishing its Vacuum session, I want Cye to make a beep for 1 second and then return to its Home Base. This is all possible with Zap. Doing all of this will of course drain batteries and whenever Cye's batteries are getting low he will put his own priority over the designated tasks you have set for him and will automatically calculate a path back to the Home Base for re-charging. If Cye can't calculate a path or can't get home for some other reason, he will shut himself down. Usability The Map-N-Zap program is laid out very simple and contains easy to follow step-by-step instructions for how to start building your floor plan. Navigating the Cye is another issue as I constantly found it quite difficult to make Cye drive around as I wanted it to. Just because Map-N-Zap is laid out very clear and detailed doesn't mean it is very easy to use. I got stuck at the first part which was to designate the Home Base and Cye's location to it. For some reason my Cye wanted to drive into the wall instead of backing away from it. Cute. Spending more time with the Map-N-Zap software and just playing with it eventually solved my problems. Driving Cye around is quite amusing for the first hour, after that you get quite bored unless you have succesfully completed one part of the floor plan. The whole "setting up the floor plan" process is very tedious, annoying at some parts, and it takes a lot of time setting up the entire floor plan correctly but you just have to go through it. Cye is very strong and has no problems pulling the vacuum cleaner or the wagon around but my apartment has small ledges in between each room and Cye definately has problems with them but with a bit of force it can manage to drive over them, just don't expect it to manage it while pulling the wagon filled with morning coffee... But then again, I live in Sweden and our homes are built this way ;). Most of the rooms in my house have hard wood tiles and after a bit of heavy driving I noticed that Cye's wheel tips are a bit worn out. Cye definately prefers carpet as its ideal driving surface. It can't climb stairs (obviously) and for those who live in houses with multiple levels will have to construct separate floor plans for each level and manually move Cye up the stairs when switching level. Conclusion Cye is very different from the hardware we usually review here at 3DHardware and it was nice to review something different for a change. With something like the Cye you tend to question its usability and value. At $650 USD, Cye isn't cheap and the Vacuum cleaner + Wagon comes at an additional cost. This means that most people can't afford their own Cye but then again they can't afford the Sony AIBO either. Cye is probably the cheapest robot of its kind and with the Vacuum kit it can actually do useful work. When in motion and beeping, the Cye is a wonderful sight to the eyes and a great show off! Offices could use Cye to carry mail and notes to co-workes or why not mount a wireless speaker to him and send messages all over the office. All in all, the Cye robot is more of a fun toy with a few practical uses than a full fledged chores-robot that will make your everyday life easier. Reproduced from 3DHardware.