US: Indian scientist developing robots to improve daily life

[SpArK]

US: Indian scientist developing robots to improve daily life​

Washington: What if a robot could do all those mundane work for you? Well, this could soon be a reality, as an Indian-American scientist is developing such intelligent robots which he claimed could help people with their everyday task.

Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University in the US, is working to bring robots into homes and offices that can clean up a messy room, assemble a flat-pack bookcase or unload a dishwasher, all without human intervention.

Saxena, who has done his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur in 2004 and joined the Cornell faculty in 2009, believes robots can make people's lives better and more productive, according to a
Cornell release.


"Just like people buy a car, I envision that in five to 10 years, people will buy an assistive robot that will be cheaper or about the same cost as a car," Saxena was quoted as
saying by a university release.

One of the biggest technical challenges, according to Saxena, is endowing robots with the ability to learn in uncertain environments.

It's one thing to make a robot do simple tasks such as picking up a pen or turning sides, but to make a robot understand how to pick up an unknown object or navigate an unknown room is quite different.

Saxena, who led the manipulation group in the STAIR project (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) at Stanford University, has researched how to make robots perceive information in cluttered and unknown environments. His work has also enabled robots to estimate depth from a single image.

"For example, if you look at a new object, how would you pick it up? If you are in a new environment, how do you figure out how far away things are?" he said.

Saxena and his team have focused on how to make robots gather information in cluttered and unknown environments.

Using a camera, one of his robots can evaluate an object -- say a cup or plate and figure out how best to grab it.

This kind of technology will eventually become the basic capability of a full-fledged dishwasher-unloading robot, he said, hoping that such robots could be available within 10
years.

"In a cluttered room, it is notoriously difficult for today's object detection algorithms to reliably find an object as simple as a shoe," he said.

The key, he explained, is not to look at this task in isolation. If the three-dimensional structure of the room is known, it becomes easier to find the objects.

Researchers at the Upson Hall's Personal Robotics Lab, which Saxen heads, are building learning algorithms to enable roboticists to quickly combine several perception algorithms
into a more reliable one.

Their project has recently been presented at the European Conference on Computer Vision in Greece.


Read more at: US: Indian scientist developing robots to improve daily life



Indian-American working on robots to improve daily life - The Economic Times

 

[HAIDER]

Here i feel socialist ..don't take away jobs from poor in the name of modernization ....

 

[humanfirst]

In future i may own a robot who do my office work and bring salary correctly(no AI),while i sit all day long in front of computer and troll in forums.

 

[SpArK]

In future i may own a robot who do my office work and bring salary correctly(no ie),while i sit all day long in front of computer and troll in forums.

You will become lazy as time goes..

And remember not to let robot do all the works..it may become an issue in "later life".. i know , you know what i mean by that.

 

[Chogy]

They've been saying we'd have helper robots "about 5 to 10 years from now", for 40 years. And fusion power. And flying cars, and...

Stuff like this is always in the future. But good luck to them! Maybe they will succeed.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

Originally Posted by humanfirst View Post
"In future i may own a robot who do my office work and bring salary correctly(no ie),while i sit all day long in front of computer and troll in forums."

Nice idea. Though i am likely to look at getting a robot to take care of cooking chores to forestall what Mastan Khan talked about on another thread--About the wife not willing to cook.
Since i can't cook, i did not dare to post there!

 

[siegecrossbow]

They've been saying we'd have helper robots "about 5 to 10 years from now", for 40 years. And fusion power. And flying cars, and...

Stuff like this is always in the future. But good luck to them! Maybe they will succeed.

Flying cars are a failed concept. Please don't compare it with Fusion power, which has great potential.

 

[Chogy]

Flying cars are a failed concept. Please don't compare it with Fusion power, which has great potential.

I am not comparing their potential. I am comparing the fact that so much that is high tech and desirable always seems to be "just around the corner. A few more years... We'll refine it..."

They have been saying this about humanoid helper robots, Artificial Intelligence, a cure for cancer, a cure for spinal damage, gene therapy, etc etc for decades. And yes, fusion power as well.

In other words, there tends to be these premature announcements or news articles of projects and technologies that so often disappoint, and do not bear fruit.