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Social Robot?

Posted by michael on from the please-and-thank-you dept.

smashr writes "Researchers are currently putting the finishing touches on robots that will be attending the AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence) conference this year as part of the AAAI robot challenge. In addition to robots wearing tuxedos and serving drinks, several robots designed to actually register themselves will be participating in the conference. One such robot is GRACE, being built by Carnegie Mellon University and the Naval Research Lab (among others). GRACE features a digital face and speech recognition to interact with people attending the conference. (She even runs Linux!) Her goal is to register for the conference, give a speech and answer questions. Stories at: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CNN.com, and USA Today."

2 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. I recall something vaguely like this. by Dthoma · · Score: 5, Informative

    This has been done before. Back in 1999, five robots had to make their way around the American Assocation for Artifical Intelligence annual meeting in Orlando.

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  2. Laser rangefinders? by iamroot · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Looking over photos of the convention center in Edmonton, one of Simmons' fears is the center's glass elevators.

    Grace uses floor-level laser range-finders to find her way around; the laser beams go straight through glass, rather than being reflected as they are with other obstacles."

    I can see the laser rangefinders at the bottom, but it also has a bunch of ultrasound transducers in the middle, and some other lens(laser scanner?) above those in front. The glass shouldn't be too much of a problem provided that the ultrasonics are working.

    Sonar does have some problems, but it works well enough on the robots I've seen/used/built. The ultrasound clicks they make can be annoying, but it works. At a university I toured once, they were demonstrating some robots, a heathkit one, and two custom ones which looked exactly like GRACE, execpt they had thermal, visible, and UV(I think) cameras, 24 ultrasonics, laser rangefinders, a 3D laser scanner on top, and no screen. The robots were roaming around, and greeting people. They didn't seem to have any problem avoiding obstacles, it was actually kind of funny when the heathkit said "Pardon me." to a supply cart:)