Have you ever dreamed of owning a personal robot servant to pour your beers for you? The idea is now one step closer to reality.
Researchers at Cornell University have programmed a robot that can predict what you’re about to do and offer up a helping hand. Using a Microsoft Kinect sensor, the robot watches your body movements. Then, it accesses a video database of about 120 household activities — ranging from putting food in the microwave, eating, brushing teeth, making cereal, and yes, pouring booze — to predict what your actions will be a few seconds into the future. The robot can then make a decision about what you’re likely to do next, and what it can do to assist you in that task.
This robot is an improvement over previous technologies, says Ashutosh Saxena, one of the computer scientists at Cornell who programmed the robot, because previous models were looking at what people were doing in the past.
“Looking a little bit into the future helps a lot,” he says. While you can’t order this robot from Amazon yet, the code underlying the ‘bot’s predictive powers is available under an open source license. Some developers have already downloaded the code and asked how they could take it further, Saxena says. “The code is ready to go,” he says.
Using their new algorithm, Saxena and his team taught the robot to guess — with a high degree of accuracy — what a person’s sequence of movements might be. That may sound creepy, but it’s really not. Humans do it all the time. Plus, the robot’s intentions are to serve you better. Need to put a heavy turkey in the fridge? Mr. Roboto can open the door so you don’t have to balance the pan on your hip while you carefully reach for the door. That’s what a good roommate might do if he were around.
He’s definitely got a few circuits on our own Wired Beer Robot, who looks cool, but can’t pour us beer.
This technology has applications beyond helping you ease into inebriation. It could pave the way to finally getting a real version of Rosie the Robot, having better telepresence robotics, and creating robots that work better alongside humans in factories, offices, or hospitals. It could also help seniors maneuver around their homes, giving them a fuller sense of independence.
Cheers to that!
Video: Cornell University / YouTube.