PR2 personal assistant prototype from Willow Garage

Apparently, it is difficult to decide the exact time when we would have a thoroughly capable robotic personal assistant in the office. Cheerfully enough, the PR2 prototype from Willow Garage (the place where Google was born), a Silicon Valley robotics research group, does hold a promising future for such assistants. The promise lies in the achievement that this robot was able to walk through eight closed doors to plug it into 10 standard wall sockets. It was even able to ignore a socket behind a closed door, which is important, as the robots need to recognize a task which cannot be completed.

pr2 robot

In another test, this robot completed a marathon within the office covering 26.2 miles in a time span of 4 days. The development stage is very promising and although a fully functional secretary is still a dream, we know that we are at least on the way. Video after the jump.

Via: NYTimes/BotJunkie