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Japan’s advanced humanoids can now serve tea and
wash the cup afterward, but they still need to learn from their
mistakes if they are to become real household helpers.
A Tokyo University team this week
showed their latest robots which can perform more complicated daily
tasks, but the machines still have a learning curve.
In a model living room equipped
with robotic items including two humanoids, professor Tomomasa Sato
plopped himself down on the sofa, prompting a reading lamp to turn
on automatically.
He then raised his hand and the
HRP-2W humanoid—wearing an apron and kitchen gloves over its
metallic frame—rolled over and asked, “Do you need help?”
“I’d like a cup of tea,”
Sato said.
The wheeled robot dutifully
turned around and went to the kitchen counter, where a two-legged
fellow humanoid grabbed a plastic bottle to pour tea into a cup.
“The focus used to be on making
humanoid robots walk with two legs, but now the point is to shift
one step beyond to make it do a variety of practical movements,”
Sato said.
“There is no script in this
demonstration,” he said. “These components of information
systems react to my actions and create an environment to assist
me.”
Professor Masayuki Inaba, who
heads the team that designed the humanoids, said the next challenge
was to make machines that can handle unexpected situations, such as
accidentally dropping a cup.
“They will need to memorize
information from different situations,” Inaba said. “They need
to learn and expect what will happen next, making their own judgment
using an accumulated memory of what causes what kind of results.
“That is an ability necessary
for them to learn—that when a wet cup slips from their hand, then
they have to grab more firmly when picking up a wet container.”
--AFP
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