Robots Learn To Follow 61
Roland Piquepaille writes "Three years after the development of robots that act like rats, UC Davis engineers have designed a control system for robots allowing them to pick up on cues that the leader is about to turn, predict where it is going and follow it. This system mimics the human ability to capture signals — consciously or not — from drivers on the road or people walking in the streets to predict what they're about to do. As the team leader said, 'Robots that are better at following could be easier for people to work with.' With this system, a hospital robot could follow doctors during their rounds."
H.E.L.P.eR. (Score:4, Interesting)
As said the team leader, 'robots that are better at following could be easier for people to work with.' With this system, an hospital robot could follow doctors during their rounds."
Cool. Sounds like we're not far from the development of a real life H.E.L.P.eR. [wikipedia.org]
H.E.L.P.eR. has a wide range of devices in him and knowledge. He can perform surgery (as he once did to retrieve a kidney each from the boys), can fly the X-1, and holds a number of various gadgets in his body -- enough that Dr. Venture could even use him as a makeshift kidney dialysis machine.
Re:H.E.L.P.eR. (Score:1, Interesting)
Cool. Sounds like we're not far from the development of a real life H.E.L.P.eR.
We're probably closer to having autonomous armed drones (flying and/or driving) that better anticipate an enemy's evasive maneuvers.
Sad, but true.
Re:Overlords (Score:4, Interesting)
Read up on the DARPA Urban challenge winners, especially the stanford and carnegie-mellon vehicles. Not only could they adjust themselves according to other vehicle behavior (i.e following the directions and speed of multiple objects on the road) they even learned to negotiate intersections. They sure as hell could follow you around ;)