Eindhoven University of Technology’s Robotic helper. (via EUofT)
Believe it or not, robots sometimes have a tough time trying to communicate and learn from one another. Maybe it’s due to ‘language barriers’ (different programming languages) that cause these issues or perhaps the information to learn from wasn’t readily available. In an effort to create a large repository of learning material that robots can access online, Eindhoven University has teamed up with Phillips and other academic institutions to create a ‘Wikipedia’ of sorts where robots can acquire any information they may need to perform certain tasks. After four years of development, the research team recently successfully demonstrated their RoboEarth online initiative. The idea of RoboEarth is to allow robots to share and benefit from the experiences of other robots, which allows for rapid advancements in machine cognition and behavior.
The end-result the team is hoping for is a more subtle and sophisticated interaction between humans and robots in the near future. In their demonstration, the team used four robots to work collaboratively to help patients in a hospital where they then learned from the cloud-based RoboEarth repository to help human patients with non-invasive tasks, such as delivering medications and water. Essentially, the robots can search online for the things they need to get the job done, which saves time and power, thereby making them more efficient in their tasks. For example, instead of endlessly searching for bottled water in one area of a hospital, they can simply download a map of the area (made by another robot) to find the item’s location. As more of earth’s population grows older, we will start to see more of our mechanical friends in position to help them with everyday tasks, which can prove invaluable in our increasingly busy lives.
C
See more news at:
