Marian The Robot Librarian

nusratt writes "BBC reports on robotics researchers in Spain, who have developed a prototype which can retrieve books from library shelves while patrons are present. 'When it receives a request for a book, its voice recognition software matches the titles with the book's classification code to identify which bookshelf stack to go to. The robot navigates its way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scans books within a four-metre radius. Once the book is located, it has to grasp it and take it off the bookshelf, which is not a simple as it might seem. For this, the team had to develop special fingertips like nails, with one nail longer than the other. 'For me that was the hardest part. All the other things were current state of the art technology,' said Professor Pobil.' The article also discusses using robots to assist in digitizing library materials."

Comments

Re:A typical slashddotter response...

[ultranova]

Oh wait, robots are taking librarian jobs and since it doesn't affect most slashdotters, they should go ahead and replace the librarians with robots.

I'm a librarian, you insensitive clod !

However, considering that the mess that most library shelfs are is often difficult for human eyes to parse, I doubt that I'm in great danger of losing my job anytime soon. Not only are books at different depths in the shelf (shading each other), but they are sometimes purposefully hidden when someone finds a good book and notices that they've forgotten they've library card... Not to mention the books that are left lying in the desks. Or the ones that have been put back to shelf in the wrong side of the library, presumably because someone decided that they don't want to loan them after all. Or the books that have been pushed to the shelf back first. Or the ones that are simply stuck and can't be moved without a considerable amount of violence.

Any application that depends on things being where they should be is not going to work in the Real World.