“Robo
Brain” to teach robots about the human world
By CBS NEWS August 26, 2014, 11:52 AM
By CBS NEWS August 26, 2014, 11:52 AM
A new system being developed by
computer scientists at Cornell University can both "learn" new
information from the Internet and serve as a resource for increasingly
intelligent robots.
The
computational "Robo Brain" system absorbs data from public Internet
sites and computer simulations so that robots can apply that knowledge in their
future interactions. The Robo Brain is now "studying" about 1 billion
photographs, 120,000 YouTube videos and 100 million how-to documents and
appliance manuals. All this information is then translated and stored in a
format that robots can later access.
According
to the project's website, the system has potential uses in in
robotics research, household robots and self-driving cars.
To become
effective helpers for people in homes, offices and factories, robots need to
understand how our world works and how people behave. Researchers have been
trying to teach robots how to perform basic actions such as finding a person's
keys or pouring a drink, and they say the new new system could help.
For
instance, if a robot sees a coffee mug, Robo Brain will quickly recognize from
its base of knowledge that liquids can be poured into or out of it, and that
the robot can grasp it by the handle. It will also understand that while the
mug must be carried upright while it is full, it's ok to turn it sideways when
it's being carried from the dishwasher to the cupboard.
And just
like a human learner, Robo Brain will have human teachers. The learning process
will facilitated by crowdsourcing. The Robo Brain website will display what the
robot's "brain" has learned, and visitors to the site will be able to
contribute to the existing data and correct it if needed.
"Our
laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we
want," Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science at
Cornell University and lead author on the project, said in a statement.
"If a robot encounters a situation it hasn't seen before it can query Robo
Brain in the cloud."
The
researchers say that Robo Brain will be able to process images to select and
recognize the objects in them. It will also be able to connect images and video
with text, learning to recognize objects and understand how they are used,
along with human language and behavior.
The
researchers presented the project at the 2014 Robotics: Science and Systems
Conference in Berkeley in July. Here a video of the presentation:
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