3D printed pizza is already a thing, so it only seems logical that the next step would be a robot chef baking a pizza by reading WikiHow. At least, that’s what one group thinks. This is PR2, and it’s a European research project called RoboHow.
TEACHING ROBOT’S HOW TO UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE
How can you talk to a robot colloquially and have it respond to queries or perform actions without having to use syntax the robot understands? Communicating with technology is a difficult problem, and it’s one of the major objectives that RoboHow is trying to tackle. Most robots now are programmed with specific functions in mind. If you walked up to one that was programmed for one task and asked it to do another, it might spit back an error message.
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RoboHow is looking to figure out how you can communicate with a robot in a way that doesn’t require giving the robot a complex set of instructions.
ROBOHOW’S SOLUTION
That’s why the project is using WikiHow to look up directions in order to communicate with PR2 through text and voice commands.
The idea is that RoboHow wants to give the PR2 a simple set of instructions, and have the robot programmed well enough that it will be able to read and understand the directions without having to add extra details on how to specifically perform actions–even if it’s something the robot has never done before.
“Teaching robots how to turn high-level descriptions into specific actions is an important but challenging task. It is straightforward for humans because we have an understand of all sorts of basic tasks, collected over a lifetime,” said MIT. “A human does not need to be told the specific grasp needed to remove the top from a jar of tomato sauce, for instance, or that flipping a pancake involves using a spatula or some other kitchen utensil.”
PUTTING IT INTO ACTION
The RoboHow team has began to convert WikiHow guides into a form that PR2 can understand, so that it can later perform the actions. So far they’ve had a few successes in both simulation and in life application by having PR2 cook both pancakes and a pizza. There is still a lot of work to be done, but so far this is great progress.
When PR2 “learns” how to do something, the robot will add the information to an online database called Open Ease, which can be accessed by other robots. Now the team is working on using methods such as video to help teach robots.
