Did I mention babysitters and fairytale-reading bots yesterdays? Well, just add mind readers to that amazing list. This one has been developed by members of the European Commission’s Joint-Action Science and Technology (JAST) project. The actual intention wasn’t really to read minds; they were indeed programmed to help a person assemble a complicated toy. These robots could analyze the person’s actions (the robots knew exactly how to build that toy) as he worked on the assemblage, offering suggestions by locating the proper tool to complete the assembly.
While observing the user’s behavior and mapping it against the task, it quickly learns to anticipate and spot errors. Similar traits of this robot could be used to make the robot act like a human companion that would make decisions by anticipating or questioning, thus making it more natural. The robots were programmed to deal with (human anticipated) mistakes. It just baffles you to know that scientists are developing robots based on such sophisticated and well-thought-out algorithms. The important thing is that the environment was unstructured throughout the project.
Via: Forbes
