Thursday, April 12, 2007

Assistive robot adapts to people, new places


Remember "The Jetsons," a robotic maid named Rosie? Well a robot this sophisticated is still decades away, but, researchers are working on a very early version of such intelligent, robotic helpers, who grasp objects and place them on shelves or counters. Such robotic helpers could help elderly or wheelchair-bound people with simple household tasks like putting away dishes. Other potential applications include agriculture, space travel and assisting workers on an assembly line. Robots that can work in a 3-d environment are considered the next logical step of earlier robots which was designed to interact with humans, and and other types, which could learn to manipulate unknown objects. These more advanced research areas incorporates elements of both of those types robots. The real potential of robots in the future is going to be realized when they can do many types of manual tasks. There are now plenty of robots doing manual work on factory assembly lines, but those machines follow a script and can't learn to adapt to new situations, which is the aim of present robotic research.

submitted by Shaun Saunders

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