Robots: The Next Generation
Reported August 2007
BOSTON, MA (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The Jetsons' Rosie the robot is fantasy, but one MIT engineer is trying to make it reality with a robot named Domo.
"The motivation is to assist people with everyday chores, everyday life, everyday work", said Aaron Edsinger, PhD, who is an Engineer at MIT Humanoid Robotics Group.
Cameras inside Domo's eyes enable him to see and adapt to his surroundings. 29 motors equipped with computer chips run off of a dozen computers continuously updating information.
"What Domo does is it can visually sense what it's working with and adapt how it behaves based on what it is working with", said Edsinger.
Unlike other robots, Domo is programmed to learn about the size of an object and decide how to place it on a shelf.
"There are a lot of humanoid robots being developed around the world --
particularly in Japan. But a lot of those robots you have to program very deliberately, and it is almost like it is playing out a script", Edsinger said.
Domo is different because he can take the lead and adapt to a situation.
"It means that if the robot drops something in the middle of doing a task, it can stop and try and pick it up again and start over", said Edsinger.
The hope is that Domo will act as a human assistant. The need to train users is eliminated because domo makes all the adjustments.
Eventually, researchers want to put Domo in the home. Hopefully, users would be able to update information through the Internet.
The IEEE-USA contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:
Aaron Edsinger, Ph.D.
Humanoid Robotics Group
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 253-7471
edsinger@csail.mit.edu
For more information on robotics:
IEEE-USA
Washington, DC 20036-5104
(202) 530-8353
ieeeusa@ieee.org
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