Washington: Tidying a messy room is an everyday thing, but daunting chore. But soon, you could buy yourself a robot that would do all such tasks for you.
Cornell University Assistant Professor of Computer Science Ashutosh Saxena and his colleagues are working at Cornell`s Personal Robotics Lab, which develops software for complex, high-level robotics.
Among the lab`s goals are programming robots that can clean up a dishevelled room, assemble an Ikea bookshelf and load and unload a dishwasher - all without human intervention.
"Just like people buy a car, I envision that in five to 10 years, people will buy an assistive robot that will be cheaper or about the same cost as a car," Saxena said.
“Picking up a pen is one thing. It`s quite another to make a robot understand how to pick up an object it`s never encountered or navigate a room it`s never seen.”
Saxena has researched how to make robots perceive information in cluttered and unknown environments. His work also has enabled robots to estimate depth from a single image.
Using a camera, one robot evaluates an object - say, a cup or plate - and figures out how best to grab it. This technology will eventually integrate into the full-fledged dishwasher-loading robot.
ANI
First Published: Sunday, September 26, 2010, 16:29