Mind Controlled Robot (05.02.07) Crusher Robot (09.05.06) Whole House Machines (05.20.05) Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Domo Videos on YouTube Video Stream STAIR Videos from Stanford There are dancing robots and robot dogs , but many of us are still waiting for a robot that can do chores. As this ScienCentral News video explains, a new breed of robots may one day lead to a robot in every home. Mr. Roboto We live in a world surrounded by robots. While many of the robots today don't look like the ones in the movies "Transformers" or "I, Robot," there's artificial intelligence in our automobiles, toys, and even our microwaves. But the days of humanoid robotic assistants helping us do chores, like Rosie in "The Jetsons," may not be too far away. "Our big goal is to have the robot adapt to the world instead of having the world adapt to the robot," he says. This is key, he says, because robots without artificial intelligence can currently perform very complex tasks, like assembling an automobile; but they must be taught beforehand exactly what to do. "A lot of the really advanced robotics that you see particularly coming out of Japan right now, these robots are very pre-scripted," says Edsinger. "The actions they're going to take are sort of figured out beforehand. You hit play, and it sort of does the same thing over and over again." Edsinger has been getting Domo to work in domestic settings, exposing the robot to objects it hasn't seen before. "Adaptivity is going to be critical as soon as we want robots to come out of the car factory and into our homes, into our daily lives, because we can't program it with everything it needs to know," says Edsinger. For example, he says, household robots must be able to distinguish the countless objects within our home. "A car factory can be very well understood and predicted ahead of time. Your kitchen and all your dishes in the kitchen sink are much harder for a robot to understand," he says. Domo's human-like body also allows it to work well in our settings, filled with objects that are designed for human hands. But typically, object manipulation has been a tricky problem for the robotics world. "You can pick something up, pass it between your hands. You talk on your cell phone, and it's a very manual task ... for a robot to do that, it's really, really hard," he says. But Domo's software allows it to learn for itself. When putting away groceries, Domo finds the best place to grasp a bag of coffee before placing it on the shelf. "It'll wiggle it around and watch the object while it's moving it ... It learns the length, the size of the object, and the orientation in the hands, so it knows how to adjust the orientation of the object so it can pass it between its hands," he says. Robot Fetch According to Ng, after the team taught STAIR how to pick up six different items, the robot was 88 percent reliable at picking up unknown objects. Ng says that the robot was able to quickly learn, for example, that a semicircular shape of a handle was a particularly good place to start. The Stanford team was able to recently demonstrate how STAIR could be asked to retrieve a stapler from one room and deliver it to the person in another. This not only pulls in manipulation research, but also voice recognition, navigation, and other previously separate fields of research. "For the STAIR project, it was time to revisit bringing these artificial intelligence tools back together. Taking tools from different threads of AI for a general purpose robot," Ng says. A Robotic Future Both robot designers say that these robots aren't only used for annoying chores around the house, they could help people like the elderly stay self-sufficient. "So doing a lot of chores around the house can enable them to be self sufficient for a longer period of time," Edsinger says. "And I think that would be a huge win not just for the people that get to live at home longer, but also for the healthcare industry in general." Outside of the home, this artificial intelligence technology could help in manua

victor limjoco, aaron edsinger, massachusetts institute of technology,