If robots are really to help us out around the house or care for our injured and elderly, they’re going to want two hands… at least. But using two hands is harder than we make it look — so this robotic control system learns from humans before attempting to do the same.
The idea behind the research, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, isn’t to build a two-handed robot from scratch, but simply to create a system that understands and executes the same type of manipulations that we humans do without thinking about them.
For instance, when you need to open a jar, you grip it with one hand and move it into position, then tighten that grip as the other hand takes hold of the lid and twists or pops it off. There’s so much going on in this elementary two-handed action that it would be hopeless to ask a robot to do it autonomously right now. But that robot could still have a general idea of why this type of manipulation is done on this occasion, and do what it can to pursue it.
The researchers first had humans wearing a motion capture equipment perform a variety of simulated everyday tasks, like …read more
Source:: TechCrunch Gadgets
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