YouTube for Robots

YouTube has many educational videos available and has often been used as a supplement by many homeschooling families. However the scope of video teaching has now been expanded to include artificial intelligence. Yes, robots are now using YouTube videos to learn how to perform simple tasks.

Researchers at the University of Maryland have come up with a robotic system that are allowing robots to learn the intricacies of grasping and manipulation of cooking utensils to cook using online videos. The robots are taught a certain set of movements and then they have to “think” about which motion is best suited to the task that they want to perform.

The computer scientist Yiannis Aloimonos, is hoping to enable the robots to observe and identify objects in order for them to generate new behaviour based on these observations. So a robot can learn how to make an omelet by watching the relevant YouTube video and deciding how to manipulate the ingredients available.

Now this is a science project that brings breakfast in bed presented by a robot one step closer to reality. As per Yiannnis the one key challenge was devising a way for the robots to parse individual steps appropriately, while gathering information from videos that varied in quality and consistency.