14 DAY TRIAL // You watched "Star Wars" like a science fiction movie, but others do all their best to make it real. A C3PO-like robot has been developed by MIT researchers.
Baptized Domo (from Japanese "domo arigato" "thank you very much"), the new robot type, could soon assist humans in many activities. Domo is designed to interact with humans, it employs 12 computers and can accomplish tasks imagined before only in SF movies. It can identify objects, and maneuver them, like catching and placing them on the shelves.
Unlike industrial robots, this one senses its environment employing a pair of video cameras for the eyes. "The cameras are built into remarkably human-looking "eyeballs" for a reason," said the robot's developer, Aaron Edsinger.
"I found that, by making them immediately understandable as eyes, it was very easy to read [Domo's] eye-gaze direction, which is important when working with it. They also greatly increase people's comfort level with the robot," said Edsinger, who developed it during the last three years.
Domo is highly sensitive to human faces and when it spots one, the robot locks on it.
During one demonstration, at the command "shelf", the robot delicately touched for a nearby shelf with its arm-like appendage made of metal and wires.
When Edsinger placed a coffee bag in the robot' s other hand, Domo could determine its size by optical measurements, transfer the bag from one hand to the other, and place it on the shelf.
This robot could be extremely useful for the elderly or mobility-impaired. Unlike other robots designed to interact with humans, like Kismet or Cog, Domo displays sensibility to touch, needed for safe interaction with humans.
It has springs located in its arms, hands and neck that detect force, and when its hand is pushed, it will move it in the direction of the push. "By placing that spring in there, you get physical compliance that makes the whole body sort of springy, which makes it safer for human interaction," Edsinger said.
The robot is set to produce a vocal response of "ouch" when too much force or moving is exerted on it.
Domo was funded by NASA and Toyota, the last one intending to use it for assembly line production. "Intelligent robots could work together with people to make workers more productive and save manufacturing jobs from being sent overseas," Edsinger said.