Babies learn about the world by
exploring how their bodies move in space, grabbing toys, pushing things off
tables and by watching and imitating what adults are doing.
But when roboticists want to teach a
robot how to do a task, they typically either write code or physically move a
robot's arm or body to show it how to perform an action.
Now a collaboration between University
of Washington developmental psychologists and computer scientists has
demonstrated that robots can "learn" much like kids -- by amassing
data through exploration, watching a human perform a task and determining how
best to carry out that task on its own.
"You can look at this as a first
step in building robots that can learn from humans in the same way that infants
learn from humans," said senior author Rajesh Rao, a UW professor of
computer science and engineering.
"If you want people who don't know
anything about computer programming to be able to teach a robot, the way to do
it is through demonstration -- showing the robot how to clean your dishes, fold
your clothes, or do household chores. But to achieve that goal, you need the
robot to be able to understand those actions and perform them on their
own."
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