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A Robot That Learns to Use Tools
The robot--called the UMass Mobile Manipulator, or UMan--pushes objects around on a table to see how they move. Once it identifies an object's moving parts, it begins to experiment with it, manipulating it to perform tasks.
5 votes  by wildcat  on 2008-07-04  2 comments   

Comments

kurzweils_brain    1 votes   Friday, July 04, 2008 at 10:20 AM
This is potentially interesting. It would be nice if there were a competition/prize for this sort of manipulation task. A robot which could pick up any arbitrary previously unseen object up to a certain maximum size/weight would be an impressive achievement and have substantial utilitarian value.
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philosophistry    1 votes   Sunday, July 06, 2008 at 1:40 AM
That's really interesting. Because the way that robot plays with tools is sort of how a baby would play with the world. The baby has built-in "edge-detection" so that it can discern objects, and maybe also a built-in "hinge-recognition": the idea that objects can be composed of things that rotate but stay together.
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