#metralabs

[stevebattle]

SCITOS A5 (2008) MetraLabs, Thuringia, Germany. SCITOS A5 – Guide, entertainer and security multifunction mobile service robot.

"SCITOS A5 is a multifunctional mobile service robot. Developed by MetraLabs for interaction with humans and guiding to articles and exhibits. Additionally, SCITOS A5 has a 360° camera. The panorama view ensures a permanent surveillance of the environment. The robot drives autonomously towards people. It communicates using speech synthesis, head movements and a touch display. It avoids obstacles and is programmed to be familiar with the given building’s environment. There is no need for additional sensors or marks. SCITOS A5 gets to know his environment by doing." – Handling autonomous mobile robot SCITOS A5.

[stevebattle]

Max (2011) by MetraLabs, Thuringia, Germany. Based on the SCITOS G3, Max is a companion robot developed for long-term assistance at home. It can perform tasks such as user detection and tracking, fall detection, and reminding.

"The Serroga project was the direct evolution of CompanionAble. The robot, Max, provided a new version of Hector, sharing the same base functionalities (i.e., a mobile base with a touch screen). However, this new platform was enhanced by means of an additional RGB-D camera. In addition, in contrast with the aforementioned projects, Serroga augmented experiments in lab-houses with trials in private homes. As in CompanionAble, also in this project the robot acted mainly as a reminder system and as a centralised interface for various communication and measurement systems." – Robots for Elderly Care in the Home: A Landscape Analysis and Co-Design Toolkit, by Gianluca Bardaro, Alessio Antonini, Enrico Motta.

[stevebattle]

Sympartner (2017) by MetraLabs, Thuringia, Germany. Based on the SCITOS G5, Sympartner (Sympathetic Partner) is a novel functional-emotional robot assistant – a "friendly housemate." It has a tiltable “head” and two rotatable “ears” for communicating emotions. 

"As a vision of the SYMPARTNER project, we see a robot companion, that is living together with its user in a long-term interaction situation. As we expect the evolution of an emotional binding of the user to her robot over time, which is reinforced by the ability of the system to adapt to the user’s needs and preferences, adaptation and learning techniques and new intuitive modalities for getting an immediate user feedback (e.g. via haptic feedback or recognition of the user’s facial expression) are required to quickly personalize the interaction behavior of the robot to its current user." – Horst-Michael Gross et al, Living with a Mobile Companion Robot in your Own Apartment.