Communications of the ACM
Pr2 Can Now Fetch You a Sandwich From Subway
Given the task of finding a sandwich, PR2 went Subway and purchased one.
Credit: Courtesy of IEEE Spectrum
Researchers from the University of Tokyo and Technische Universitat Munchen have given a robot common sense.
PR2, which already knows how to get drinks and bake cookies, now has the ability to make inferences about an object based on what it knows about similar objects and the environment.
The semantic search technique enables the robot to infer things that it does not know from things that it does know and use reason to make deductions about part of the word that it is less familiar with. Moreover, PR2 is able to quickly adapt to new places and people as it adds to its knowledge base.
In a demonstration, the researchers gave PR2 the task of fetching a sandwich, although the robot had no detailed information on sandwiches. PR2's database told the robot that sandwiches are a type of food, that food can be found in kitchens and restaurants, and the robot was able to determine where it should look. The robot went to a Subway in a separate building and ordered a sandwich.
From IEEE Spectrum
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