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

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[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.