The Little Robot That Supports a Paralyzed Vet

[Narrator] Meet Toyota's Human Support Robot, or HSR.

It's one of the first of its kind,

a bot that's starting to wheel out of the lab

and into actual homes to help actual people.

This is veteran Romy Camargo.

He's paralyzed and needs assistance from caretakers

to go about his day.

HSR, meet Romy.

Romy, HSR.

Toyota has deployed the robot here

as part of a trial to tackle the enormous challenges

of not only getting machines to help

the disabled and elderly but to even get around the house

in the first place.

When they opened the box and I saw the robot,

I figured that will unfold the next chapter

in human support robots helping people with disabilities.

[Narrator] HSR's capabilities

are pretty limited at the moment.

But with the help of QR codes throughout the house,

it can take care of the repetitive tasks

that are essential to Camargo's livelihood.

Using a mouth stick and a special interface,

Camargo can order the robot to open doors, for instance,

or fetch water.

Those are the most important tasks

that I do throughout the day,

and the robot will do it for me.

You know, that's something huge.

[Narrator] Those are simple things

for a human caretaker to pull off,

but it's actually extremely difficult

to get a robot to do the same.

That's in part because Toyota

isn't working in a uniform space.

Everyone's home is different,

with unique obstacles and even textures.

There's even cultural considerations at play.

HSR was designed mostly for a Japanese environment,

and when we bring it over here to a US environment,

we're traveling over longer distances.

So do we want to change the speed of the platform?

Do we wanna allow it to go over

different types of terrains and textures?

[Narrator] On top of that,

the operators will have to customize HSR for unique users.

Camargo has different needs

than, say, an elderly person would.

In this case we're looking at

trying to understand matching that need,

so we're using things like QR codes

for the computer vision to understand

where objects were and how to move

in relation to those objects.

[Narrator] It's all about trying to bring order

to an inherently disordered environment.

Just imagine all the clutter and stairs,

and humans shuffling around.

Robotics works very well

in a more manufacturing situation,

where you can make the environment very static.

You can structure it in a very specific way,

and the robot can do the same repeatable action

over and over again very quickly and very accurately.

[Narrator] So HSR has to be able to adapt on the fly

to the chaos of the home.

It does that in part by seeing with lasers,

just like a self-driving car.

Then there's a perennial problem in robotics, manipulation.

Namely, robots aren't so hot at it at the moment.

So this robot is a little bit unique.

It has both a gripper and a vacuum with suction.

So it can grab both large objects and really thin objects,

like a picture or a credit card

or something that you might drop on the floor.

[Narrator] It's still early days for HSR in the home,

but it's a fascinating look at a future where

increasingly sophisticated robots

don't outright replace caretakers but complement them.

The robot is a tool, after all, not an enemy.

I mean, just look at that face.