A new beer-pouring robot can predict human behavior a few seconds into the future, enough to know when to offer a refill.
Though it might seem frivolous, such research, funded in part by the
U.S. Army and Microsoft, could lead to machines programmed to know when
and where to offer a helping hand — or, in this case, a claw, scientists
say.
The droid at Cornell University's Personal Robotics Lab is about the
size of a full-grown adult and can roll around rooms on wheels,
manipulating objects with two claw-tipped arms. The robot is named
Kodiak — because Cornell's mascot is a bear, all of their robots are
named after famous members of the bear family. [Read also: "
3D Printers Demonstrate Rapid Robot Evolution
"]
Kodiak sees the world in 3D using a Microsoft Kinect camera, which is
armed with an infrared scanner to help create 3D models of items. The
Kinect was originally developed for video gaming, but is now being
widely used by roboticists to help robots navigate rooms.
Using a database of 120 3D videos, Kodiak can identify activities it
sees, such as when a person microwaves food or takes medicine. The robot
analyzes how other items it sees might be a part of those activities,
predicts a number of possible futures and can anticipate the most
probable course of action — for instance, the robot can open a fridge
door so a person can put a pot inside. As its database of activities
grows, the droid constantly updates and refines its predictions.
"We extract the general principles of how people behave," said researcher Ashutosh Saxena, a roboticist at Cornell University.
Anticipating and responding to human behavior can be difficult
because of the many variables involved. The robot essentially builds a
"vocabulary" of small actions it can put together in various ways to
recognize a variety of big activities.
