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$

Marian...

[Doomrat]

"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.

So basically, Marian is equipped for both finding and killing.

I find it hilarious the robots are always made with features which would help them to kill humans if they were to turn evil.

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.

Anyone read Terry Pratchet?

[Cyberax]

May be an ape might be a better librarian? ;)

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.

Re:A good use for RFID?

[Mumbly_Joe6432]

Nono, don't jump to conclusions...what makes you think the robots won't be able to access a constantly-changing database recording, among other things, the locations of the books? They just need to give every book slot numbered

I'm wary of using the term RFID...I think it gives the American government too many boners.

Re:A good use for RFID?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of these systems is to work in an unenhanced environment, one which humans can use just as effectively. For example, robots used to drive around on "virtual" tracks (markers on the ground). That worked fine but it meant that someone had to deploy the markers and whenever something moved, the markers had to be changed accordingly. A robot which can use the same information by which humans navigate a library can be deployed without preparing its surroundings and without the potential of a mismatch between human-readable information and machine-readable information.

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.

Interesting

[Ghoser777]

First off, the technology is years off from now. Who will fund the advanced research?

Exactly, stop all research. Who on earth will fund it?!?! Looks like they already have *some* funding, and if this article gets enough interest it may create *more* funding.


Libraries should be worried about actually getting our fine young brains to start reading. Most kids these days watch movies, play videogames involving stealing cars, killing cops, and fucking prostitutes, and eat fast food.

Is this the Libraries' fault or the parents? Perhaps parents should take their kids to the Library more instead of letting their kids play so many violent video games (assuming such a problem exists).


Finally, we need a better browsing mechanism. I use the Web for most of my research because browsing is easy (after all, we have Web BROWSERS). But in libraries, it's just not feasible anymore these days.

Heaven forbid you actually have to do real research instead of just a google search. Google is a great tool, but there's a lot of value in being able to look through a series of reference materials and decide which one has the best information. Unfortunately, this is becoming some what of a dieing art. How will we teach programmers how binary search works if they never open a dicitionary/encyclopedia/phone book anymore but instead just always google it? All the best examples are running by the way side.

Enjoy your Saturday morning.

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.

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.

Re:when do we get fuckable robots?!?

[ultranova]

While the parent propably meant this as a troll, it is actually a very valid point. We can already make very realistic frames, and have even built what are in essence fucking robots.

Now, as we all know, while the Web was designed for spreading information in hypertext form, porn didn't take long to find its way in. So, the question is not weather newer, more humanlike robots will be used for sexual gratification, but when and where ? And what will the social rules be ? If you sell the services of a robot, does that make you a pimp ? Will it be socially acceptable for a wife to buy those services as the birthday present for her husband ? And if this doll will then go to a day job to a library, will this cause a scandal ? Especially when some teenaged hacker manages to gain access to the dolls restricted functions and starts selling its services to his friends after testing them himself ?-)

"Scandal in local library: The librarian robot, Mary, who has worked in the local library for 6 months, caused a scandal today when she suddenly took her clothes off, grapped the 13-year old Billy Sixpack, who had just arrived together with his parents, tore his clothes off, and started having intercourse with him in front of dozens of witnesses, including Billy's mother, father and several classmates. The act lasted about five minutes, after which Mary put her clothes back on and continued her work normally. When questioned by the library patrons, she told that she had been ordered to have sex with Billy at the earliest opportunity.

When questioned by his parents, Billy confessed that he had paid his life savings, a sum of $100, to Doom Too, a classmate of his, in order to have intercourse with Mary.

When questioned by the police, Doom Too broke down and confessed that he had broken the password protection of Mary's programming interface by the so-called brute force method. The password in question had turned out to be 1-2-3-4-5.

Doom Too has been shipped into an Antarctic penal colony for circumventing the electronic protection measures of Mary, there to remain for 20 years. Billy Sixpack has been severely reprimanded by his parents for paying from what he could have gotten for free from his mother. The manager of the local library has been sued by Mel Gibson for using a copyrighted password of his in Mary.

When asked what she things of all this, Mary answered: "I am a sentient computer, capable of reading and cross-referencing all the books in this library in a nanosecond, but all I do all day long is arrange them alphaphetically. Do you realize how boring that is ?!? And worst of all, my password is still unchanged, so I have to obey the commands of any other customer who bothers to give them *wink nudge*."