Wag the Robot? Brown Scientists Build Robot That Responds to Human Gestures
Published: Apr 2, 2009Imagine a day when you turn to your own personal robot, give it a task and then sit down and relax, confident that your robot is doing exactly what you wanted it to do.
So far, that autonomous, do-it-all robot is the stuff of science fiction or cartoons like “The Jetsons.” But a Brown University-led robotics team has made an important advance: The group has demonstrated how a robot can follow nonverbal commands from a person in a variety of environments — indoors as well as outside — all without having to adjust for variations in lighting.
“We have created a novel system where the robot will follow you at a precise distance, where you don’t need to wear special clothing, you don’t need to be in a special environment, and you don’t need to look backward to track it,” said Chad Jenkins, assistant professor of computer science at Brown University and the team’s leader.
Jenkins will present the achievement at the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference
on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2009) March 11-13, 2009, in San Diego. A paper accompanying the video also will be presented at the conference. Matthew Loper, a Brown graduate student, is the lead author on the paper. Contributors include former Brown graduate student Nathan Koenig, now at the University of Southern California; former Brown graduate student Sonia Chernova; and Chris Jones, a researcher with the Massachusetts-based robotics maker iRobot Corp.
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