phyrex1an
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Willow Garage’s gifted PR2 robot just got even smarter. Developers from the University of Tokyo and the Technical University of Munchen have collaborated to give it the ability to find an object it can’t see or isn’t even sure is there. In a way similar to humans, the PR2 can now go after an object by reasoning where it is most likely to be.
If you’re at someone else’s house and you need a bottle opener you’d probably begin by looking in the kitchen drawers as opposed to, say, the bathroom (candles, maybe, but not the bottle opener). By using “semantic search” the PR2 calculates the probability of finding the object in a number of places. If it doesn’t find it in the first place, it continues its search in other likely places.
In the following video, University of Tokyo researchers send the PR2 out for a sandwich. It looks in the refrigerator, doesn’t see one, then takes the elevator to the ground floor and orders one at Subway!
spectrum.ieee.org
If you’re at someone else’s house and you need a bottle opener you’d probably begin by looking in the kitchen drawers as opposed to, say, the bathroom (candles, maybe, but not the bottle opener). By using “semantic search” the PR2 calculates the probability of finding the object in a number of places. If it doesn’t find it in the first place, it continues its search in other likely places.
In the following video, University of Tokyo researchers send the PR2 out for a sandwich. It looks in the refrigerator, doesn’t see one, then takes the elevator to the ground floor and orders one at Subway!
PR2 Can Now Fetch You a Sandwich from Subway
Thanks to semantic search, PR2 can now figure out how to go and get you that sandwich you've always wanted
spectrum.ieee.org
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