Robot PR2 Learns Cool New Tasks Without Programming [Video]

The team of experts at Willow Garage are known popularly for their PR2 Robot that does interesting tasks such as #-Link-Snipped-# or  #-Link-Snipped-#. To make Robot PR2 do all such tasks, it needs special programming to be used for developing the required software applications. Now, Maya Cakmak from Georgia Tech wanted to do something that would let people teach PR2 to do things, even if they weren't skilled at coding. So, she developed a spoken dialog interface that lets you teach PR2 new tasks by physically moving PR2’s two arms and using simple speech commands. Her work gives a really amazing angle to the way we we thought robots could learn. Now users can easily teach their robot simple tasks like picking up medicine from a shelf or folding a towel.
Robot programming normally uses a verbal dialog interface, but a user always needs video tutorials and user manuals to make robots do stuff. So, Maya conducted a user study where 15 men and 15 women, ages 19-70) with no prior knowledge of how to program the robot were left alone with the robot and a combination of supplementary materials. They had to figure out on their own how to program different skills.
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The study revealed that information presented in the user manual easily gets overlooked and instructional videos are most useful in jump starting the interaction. We're still away from the day when teaching by demonstration replaces traditional programming, because robots still require some degree of common sense to function properly in our uncertain world. You should check out the video for sample interactions from their study here -

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