Man-machine interaction has now reached a
new level with a robot that is programmed to anticipate people’s
movements in advance, the better to help them with daily tasks.
Researchers are constantly endeavouring to
optimise the ability of robots to mimic human actions with the aim of
making them more useful for the general public. Following the example of
a team at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technologywho
recently developed a robot capable of imitating human beings,
researchers at Cornell University in New York State have now managed to
programme a robot to predict a human being’s actions and so help him/her
with the task in hand. Using a sensor, the robot observes the person’s
movements and compares them with a database of videos before deciding
just what it ought to do to help the person carry out the intended task.
The researchers claim that this more intuitive approach will make the
interaction between man and robot much smoother.
Identifying and anticipating gestures more accurately
The way this works is that the researchers give the robots access to a
database of over 120 3D videos showing humans making everyday gestures
and movements. The robot, which incorporates a Microsoft Kinect 3D
camera, therefore learns to analyse the movements of the person in front
of it, and then classify the actions into a predefined category –
reaching for something, carrying, pouring, drinking and so on. This
analysis also factors in details such as where the action takes place
and the location of nearby objects, thus enabling the robot to make a
best guess at the ultimate objective of a series of human actions. The
researchers estimate that the robot predicts correctly in 82% of cases
an action which takes place one second later. The robot is even more
accurate and confident in identifying an ongoing gesture when the
anticipation algorithm works in parallel.
Fields of application
This approach is likely to have useful applications in a variety of
fields. For example, it could improve the quality of robotic
telepresence (a system to facilitate remote communication and action
using a camera and a screen to transmit a person’s face and voice). In
addition, robots capable of anticipating human actions could be assigned
to various workplaces to help people with their tasks – factories and
hospitals being prime locations for this kind of support. Last but not
least, older people could certainly benefit from technology that will
help them to carry out household chores, thus increasing their
independence from human carers.
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