The Home Exploring Robot Butler
(HERB) can often be seen through the glass walls of the Personal Robotics Lab
in Newell-Simon Hall picking up iced tea bottles or taking books off a
bookshelf. Complete with fingernails and a British accent, HERB is the perfect
caregiver: The robot can open doors, microwave meals, and even separate an Oreo
cookie from its cream. The focus is on complicated manipulation tasks with a
lot of uncertainty and a lot of clutter. If you look at a factory floor, robots
can do magical things. But if you look at a home — at least my home — it looks
nothing like a factory floor. So researchers are trying to get robots like HERB
to move from the factory floor to homes so they can perform useful tasks that a
caregiver would perform.
Nevertheless, HERB rose to the
challenge and starred in what is now a widely circulated YouTube video
documenting the robot’s success in separating an Oreo’s cookie from its cream.
Not only is HERB the only research robot to have ever completed the task, but
the process through which its algorithms were improved to separate an Oreo
resulted in the creation of new tools that will be useful in completing other
tasks in the future. Despite HERB’s technical capabilities, the robot still
needs to work on his manners. One of the things that we’ve noticed is that we
spent five years on improving capability, but people are still hesitant to
accept robots in their homes. It’s not just about capability — it’s about
behavior, how situationally aware it is, and how sensitive it is to your own
personal space.
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