Engineers Use Laser Pointers To Guide Household Robots

The New York Times is running a story about a recently developed technique for directing the actions of household robots. Engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a robot that will fetch items for you by simply shining a laser on the desired object. Quoting: "'The pointer gives the robot just enough context and guidance to solve the really hard problem of figuring out which object among many lying around in a room to pick up,' Professor Sukhatme said. 'People in artificial intelligence have been working on this problem for a long time.' Just pointing to an object with natural gestures usually isn't enough to direct a robot, and even when robots navigate to the right spot, it's hard for them to grasp a particular object unless, for instance, they have a three-dimensional computer model of it, Professor Kemp said. Guided by the laser pointer, though, El-E can fetch objects as varied as towels, wallets or coffee mugs with no need for elaborate computer modeling."

Comments

What's the point?

[CRCulver]

If you have to guide the robot around, it no longer saves you much effort. Do you think anyone would buy a Roomba if it required constant intervention? Sure, you can still sit on your ass and direct it with a laser pointer without actually moving or exercising, but you would no longer be able to concentrate on other things.