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

how lazy have we become?

[Chuck Bucket]

I can understand the tech behind this that's cool, but is it something we really need? What will the humans be doing, drinking cokes and eating some pizza? we're big enough already, I'd rather see tech going to improve the antiquated dewey decimal system.

HFCB$

Archives

[MrWim]

This sounds like it could be really useful for managing archives. I know in Oxford they have a library called the Bod which has several miles of bookshelves underground as it has a copy of everything that has been published in the UK, but if you want somthing that isn't in the publicly accessable parts you need to order it and wait for the old bloke to take the bod train underground and get it for you, which can take a while. I envisage an underground colony of these little robots going about, organising things, retrieving books with a great increase in efficiency.

A good use for RFID?

[oostevo]

(watch this get modded down to 'troll' ...)

This might actually be a good use for RFID, or something similar.

It seems like once the robot gets to the bookshelf it needs to look in per the database, it does a very, very inefficient search book-by-book.

Could this perhaps be a good use (imagine that) for RFID? It seems that some sort of radio tags on books would help the robot localize the book a bit more and speed up the searches.

OCR?

[general_re]

"Once it is in there, it starts using its cameras. By moving the arm with the cameras, it takes an image of the bookshelf," said Professor Pobil.

"It can read the labels and the position of the book using its image processing and optical character recognition software," the professor said.

Wouldn't it be easier just to RFID-tag the books, or give them barcodes on the spine, or otherwise modify them in some way to facilitate the robot's work? I have a sneaking suspicion that either of those would be faster and more reliable than trying to OCR book titles or call-number tags, albeit less "clever". "Clever" solutions that are less functional than more straighforward solutions don't particularly impress me, and I doubt I'm alone on this.

Re:OCR?

[general_re]

Well, you wouldn't have to do it all at once - you could just tag books as they're returned by patrons, for example, as part of the reshelving process. Slow, but it would work. Alternately, most large libraries already barcode books on the inside cover, in order to scan them for checkout and checkin - why not put the same barcodes on the spine where the robot can read them? All you'd need is a second copy of the same barcode you already use.

I heart books

[rsklnkv]

I work at Powells, a massive bookstore in Oregon. Some of us make light over the fact that we are slowly becoming an extremely corporate entity, and that we are reaching a horrid level of 'Barnes & Nobelization'. At this point someone always chimes in and makes a joke about how we will soon have automated bookstore employees, and maybe a drive-through window. Not so funny anymore.
I have to admit that this sounds cool. I just wonder what this thing would do with the masses of people who come in and say "Yeah, I'm looking for that big red book...You know, the one that was mentioned on the radio this morning...I think it has 'God' in the title..." Hehe. Good luck. I can't tell you how many times people come in and have no clue about the book they want, they have some concept of maybe the size, or the approx. year, or maybe simply a small bit of the plot. I don't think the communication that takes place between a knowledgeable book geek and a person looking for just that right book can ever be fully replaced.

I need to browse

[GrEp]

I hate automated systems like this. When I am looking for a book on a certain subject I like to browse through all the adjacent books to see what I may be missing.